11/04/2022
Did you know that human babies are the most vulnerable, contact dependent, slowest developing social mammal on the planet?
Compared to other mammals, the human brain is tiny at birth; a mere 25% of its ultimate adult size.
Animals born into hostile environments tend to have larger infant brains to help them survive. Zebras, for example, need to be able to run with the herd just hours after birth – their relatively mature brains help them run and respond when a lion appears.
But, mother nature always has a survival strategy. So, what is the survival strategy for human babies? Easy. Mum and Dad. Without their parents, they couldn’t survive and so much of their behaviour is designed to keep us close most, if not all the time.
So, we need to give babies enormous amounts of love, touch and attention to allow them to thrive, not just survive, both day and night. And we should feel good about it - it’s what we’re instinctively driven to do. Despite what our society may say it’s biologically impossible to spoil a baby with love.
The first 3 years of life represent the most rapid period of brain development in our children’s lifetime. In the first 1000 days of life, a staggering 1M neural connections are made each second. These connections determine what kind of brain your baby grows. A brain that is balanced, stable, and resilient to stress. Or a brain that is unbalanced, over reactive and struggles to cope with stress.
While genetics provides a blueprint for brain development, it’s a child’s environment and their experiences that carry out the construction, forming the essential wiring of the brain. Repeated use of particular pathways strengthens individual connections.
Neural connections in the brain are vital in developing emotional regulation abilities. This is why it’s critical that we provide our children with experiences that contribute to healthy brain development.
So hug your baby, pick them up, hold them, nurture them, be with them.
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