How Parenting Shapes Your Child’s Brain
For mental health awareness week, I chose to write about how parenting shapes your child’s brain, with emphasis being on responsive care giving.
Childhood has the power to affect our life for the rest of our life. Affecting our relationships, and our physical and mental health outcomes for decades. Yet, parents who are in charge of childhood, are unaware of responsive caregiving. Leaving parents to parent, based on the style they received or using their parents’ approach as a reference to avoid.
With this being the case, I thought why not share tips on how parents can be more affective, whilst revealing the affect their behaviour has on their child’s brain.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Responsive caregiving
Responsive caregiving is how a parent responds to their child’s needs, promoting a feeling of safety and comfort. Especially, when their child feels stressed, overwhelmed, scared or anxious. There are parents who are responsive caregivers and there are others who are not.
Why are some parents not responsive caregivers?
Some parents do not know what responsive caregiving is, because they didn’t receive it as a child and do not know what to search for when looking up parenting support.
The pressure and lifestyle of a low income or single parent family, doesn’t provide the time and energy. With the parent(s) either not attending to their child’s needs or the parent referring to quick fix options that cause more problems, like beatings, shouting or simply dismissing their child’s feelings (“you’ll be alright”).
Some parents believe that comforting their child will not prepare them for the rigours of life, so they avoid doing so.
There are parents that are pressured out of providing responsive caregiving by friends and family - “s/he has you wrapped around their finger” and “stop (emotionally) spoiling your child”.
When parents support brain development
(Because we mature at different rates, read the below paragraph with a three year old in mind).
Children are immature, their body’s are immature, their personalities are immature and so are their brains. Immature brains cannot regulate themselves alone, so children outsource support from their parent’s mature brain when they need assistance to calm themselves down and feel safe. Assistance in the form of -
Hugs
Head strokes
Crouching to speak at their level with a calming tone
Non judgemental conversation.
Time abs space to collect their thoughts
Something as simple as a hug releases neurochemicals in the brain, that relax your child, increases happiness and lowers levels of depression. Parental regulation assistance not only protects the young brain to grow rich and strong, it also allows the person to experience the world as a safe place.
When a parent comforts their child, they can see the calming affect on the surface however, as mentioned above regarding the power of hugs, ,the value is about what happens beneath the surface.
When parents don’t support brain development
When a child’s emotional needs are neglected and they are left to manage stressful events alone, their brain releases excess levels of cortisol, a neurochemical that creates more connections in the brains fear centre (amygdala). Meaning that your child will see increased threat in places where little to no threat exists, this is due to how their brain was wired, from the previous failed attempts to regulate stressful experiences alone. This explains why some teenagers and adults have high levels of anxiety, yet they’re oblivious as to why. Not receiving responsive care can develop further into depression and decades later into alzeimers.
The increase in cortisol also deteriorates the brain’s hippocampus, the area responsible for learning, memories and stress control. Forgetfulness, a dip in the quality of school work and explosive behaviour, can be signs that something else is going on for your child.
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Understanding the behaviour of unmet children
As a result of your child seeing increased threat, and becoming more anxious, their threshold to withstand stressful events lowers. They’ll see the world as a scary place, a place that requires them to fight or run away from things, both in the name of survival. Survival becomes a regular objective, although there isn’t anything threatening their survival.
Developing the mature brain
Above I made reference to the parent’s mature brain, assisting their child’s immature brain, to support my example. However, some parents were not giving the opportunity to develop a mature brain during their childhood.
Of those who were not provided the support, they either repeat the cycle’s of survival each day, continuing the legacy set by their parents and do not become responsive caregivers to their child. Or they go on a journey of personal development, using Clinicians, friends, spouses, books and other methods of support and information to assist their brain maturation process.
Setting themselves up perfectly to break the cycle.
Exercising unconditional love
Responsive caregiving, is being their to comfort your child regardless of their behaviour. This doesn’t mean that your child shouldn’t be accountable for their wrong doings, it just means that your child knows that no matter what happens, they have a secure foundation. After you cater to their needs, you can talk about their actions.
What now?
If you want more information on how you can be a better responsive caregiver and help your child to develop a healthy brain, things to reflect on with regards to your childhood or support young people you work with, I recommend -
Searching free therapeutic services in your local area
Searching google for responsive caregiving and childhood developmental neuroscience.
YouTube the above phrases, find videos you like and then follow the speakers on social media so that you continue to learn passively.
The brain (prefrontal cortex) regulates behaviour, thinking, judgement and social interaction. When we don’t feel safe, our capability to do those things drop. Teaching responsive care in schools as part of PSHE/SMSC would help young people to understand themselves and their experiences. As well as providing them with awareness of the resources they have, for when they become parents. This will also be good for staff training days, and as a reference when writing behaviour policy.
You can book sessions with me via Emma at admin@soccology.com (via Zoom) if you would like personal support or consultancy on how you can improve your offering professionally.
I hope you found this useful ;)
