The Committed Parent
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Employing social neuroscience to help parents raise kids we can live with and are crazy about ~
The Big Brain Question: Are You There for Me?
By Mark Brady, Ph.D.
This is the basic question our children’s brains are continually asking whether
we’re aware of it or not. The question takes many forms in children’s brains of
course: Do I matter enough that you'll put me first when I need you to – ahead
of your job, ahead of your friends, even sometimes ahead of yourself? Can I
count on you in a crunch? Do I truly and deeply matter to you? These questions
are being asked nonverbally through behavior mostly, and when they get
answered “Yes,” our children relax and feel safe, just as we do in our own
adult intimate and business relationships. Mostly though, neither we, nor our
children articulate this question so clearly to ourselves or each other.
The self-preservation structures of the brain continually monitor our
environment and the people in it for safety. We generally love the people we
feel the safest being around, and this emotional responsiveness that we call
love arises out of this safe “felt sense.” Canadian psychologist, Susan Johnson
notes: “These safe bonds reflect deep primal survival needs for secure,
intimate connection to irreplaceable others. These needs go with us from the
cradle to the grave.” (We often have relationships with people we feel familiar
with, but those are not necessarily based upon love. This is something I will
discuss in future columns).
Needing to feel safe and secure is especially critical in the first three years of
life. (There’s a wonderfully informative website, in fact, that addresses just
how important these first years actually are. I encourage you to visit it at:
www.zerotothree.org). With this early, embodied sense of safety, comes
secure attachment, which numerous studies have confirmed, is crucial for
mental, physical and spiritual well-being throughout the life span.
John Bowlby, the English child psychiatrist, and the many attachment
researchers who followed him, have demonstrated conclusively that babies and
young children who don't get dependable, reliable, attuned responses from
their parents (most often mother), become upset and aggressive in an
increasing attempt to have these essential needs met. They need to have the
question “Are you there for me?” answered “Yes!” Because isolation,
loneliness and disconnection essentially replicate unhealthy neural processes
in the brain, children will often do whatever they need to in order to get any
response at all – any response is better than no response. This can often result
in seemingly bizarre behavior in our children. But once we understand their
attachment needs, such behavior begins to make perfect sense. When children
do not get these needs for attachment and connection met they often give up
in despair, become apathetic and depressed and fail to thrive. In other words –
they become brain damaged!
On the other hand, mounting scientific evidence is becoming overwhelm-ing
clear: children in securely attached parent-child relationships have better
cardiovascular health, stronger immune systems, lower mortality rates from
cancer and other diseases, and less depression and anxiety. They also face
psychological trauma with much more emotional and psychological resilience
throughout their whole lifespan!
What’s primarily required to convey the “Yes” answer to the Big Brain
Question? What promotes secure attachment is not the number of positive
emotional experiences between parents and children. Rather, it’s the quality
of certain interactions, which often may seem incidental and relatively
unimportant to the parent, but they turn out to be critical key secure
attachment-creating moments for a child. Such moments are often determined
by a parent’s ability to attend to emotional cues and respond to them in timely
and effective ways that over and over again convey the unfailing sense, “Yes, I
am here for you.”
So this is the fundamental question of our children’s lives – are you someone
who can really see me, hear me, prize me, and be there for me when it really
matters? Can I count on you to come through in a crisis – and there will be
crises. In strong, secure relationships, we most often answer this question
“Yes” for our children. But what happens when we can’t or don’t do the things
that promote secure attachment? What can we do when frequently the answer
to the Big Brain Question has not been “Yes?” In the next few columns I’ll
discuss this and how we can begin to make necessary repairs.
Mark Brady, Ph.D. is a father and a child brain science educator. Many years
ago, together with friends, he co-founded the Children’s Grief Program at
Kara, a public service agency in Palo Alto, California, where he volunteered
until recently. He is the prize-winning author of a number of books. Two of his
most recent books are entitled A Little Book of Parenting Skills and A Father’
s Book of Listening. Those and others can be ordered from bookstores, or on
the Internet or directly by emailing: committedparent@gmail.com. His most
current book- Safe and Secure: How 12 Recent Findings from Neuroscience
Can Help You Raise Happy Healthy Children Who Live Long and Prosper will
be available in 2008.
By Mark Brady, Ph.D.
This is the basic question our children’s brains are continually asking whether
we’re aware of it or not. The question takes many forms in children’s brains of
course: Do I matter enough that you'll put me first when I need you to – ahead
of your job, ahead of your friends, even sometimes ahead of yourself? Can I
count on you in a crunch? Do I truly and deeply matter to you? These questions
are being asked nonverbally through behavior mostly, and when they get
answered “Yes,” our children relax and feel safe, just as we do in our own
adult intimate and business relationships. Mostly though, neither we, nor our
children articulate this question so clearly to ourselves or each other.
The self-preservation structures of the brain continually monitor our
environment and the people in it for safety. We generally love the people we
feel the safest being around, and this emotional responsiveness that we call
love arises out of this safe “felt sense.” Canadian psychologist, Susan Johnson
notes: “These safe bonds reflect deep primal survival needs for secure,
intimate connection to irreplaceable others. These needs go with us from the
cradle to the grave.” (We often have relationships with people we feel familiar
with, but those are not necessarily based upon love. This is something I will
discuss in future columns).
Needing to feel safe and secure is especially critical in the first three years of
life. (There’s a wonderfully informative website, in fact, that addresses just
how important these first years actually are. I encourage you to visit it at:
www.zerotothree.org). With this early, embodied sense of safety, comes
secure attachment, which numerous studies have confirmed, is crucial for
mental, physical and spiritual well-being throughout the life span.
John Bowlby, the English child psychiatrist, and the many attachment
researchers who followed him, have demonstrated conclusively that babies and
young children who don't get dependable, reliable, attuned responses from
their parents (most often mother), become upset and aggressive in an
increasing attempt to have these essential needs met. They need to have the
question “Are you there for me?” answered “Yes!” Because isolation,
loneliness and disconnection essentially replicate unhealthy neural processes
in the brain, children will often do whatever they need to in order to get any
response at all – any response is better than no response. This can often result
in seemingly bizarre behavior in our children. But once we understand their
attachment needs, such behavior begins to make perfect sense. When children
do not get these needs for attachment and connection met they often give up
in despair, become apathetic and depressed and fail to thrive. In other words –
they become brain damaged!
On the other hand, mounting scientific evidence is becoming overwhelm-ing
clear: children in securely attached parent-child relationships have better
cardiovascular health, stronger immune systems, lower mortality rates from
cancer and other diseases, and less depression and anxiety. They also face
psychological trauma with much more emotional and psychological resilience
throughout their whole lifespan!
What’s primarily required to convey the “Yes” answer to the Big Brain
Question? What promotes secure attachment is not the number of positive
emotional experiences between parents and children. Rather, it’s the quality
of certain interactions, which often may seem incidental and relatively
unimportant to the parent, but they turn out to be critical key secure
attachment-creating moments for a child. Such moments are often determined
by a parent’s ability to attend to emotional cues and respond to them in timely
and effective ways that over and over again convey the unfailing sense, “Yes, I
am here for you.”
So this is the fundamental question of our children’s lives – are you someone
who can really see me, hear me, prize me, and be there for me when it really
matters? Can I count on you to come through in a crisis – and there will be
crises. In strong, secure relationships, we most often answer this question
“Yes” for our children. But what happens when we can’t or don’t do the things
that promote secure attachment? What can we do when frequently the answer
to the Big Brain Question has not been “Yes?” In the next few columns I’ll
discuss this and how we can begin to make necessary repairs.
Mark Brady, Ph.D. is a father and a child brain science educator. Many years
ago, together with friends, he co-founded the Children’s Grief Program at
Kara, a public service agency in Palo Alto, California, where he volunteered
until recently. He is the prize-winning author of a number of books. Two of his
most recent books are entitled A Little Book of Parenting Skills and A Father’
s Book of Listening. Those and others can be ordered from bookstores, or on
the Internet or directly by emailing: committedparent@gmail.com. His most
current book- Safe and Secure: How 12 Recent Findings from Neuroscience
Can Help You Raise Happy Healthy Children Who Live Long and Prosper will
be available in 2008.