I was so glad to meet a happy, confident, socially engaged baby this week. Baby Loren was a stark contrast to most babies--children under 2--that I encounter these days. Most tend to look distracted, unhappy, dazed, and pretty uninterested in others. And their eyes don't glow or communicate understanding like Loren's did. I even had a hard time finding a photo to put up with this post of a glowing, clued-in baby, whose eyes did not look wounded or clouded.
Why are so few babies "glowing" any more?
Although babies obviously represent the future of your family, my family, our society, and the human race, fewer and fewer people in the USA seem to understand what babies need. Charles Blow has been documenting the declining support and wellbeing of children, like on August 26 where he documents how many children in each USA state have food insecurity.
Food is clearly a basic need for a thriving baby. But there are things beyond such staying-alive-needs that human babies require for thriving.
Here is some basic information about babies and some of their needs.
Human babies, unlike any other creature, have only 25% of the brain developed at birth (assuming 40-42 weeks gestation at birth, i.e., full term). Most of what is available at birth are basic survival mechanisms that kick into gear when the child feels imbalanced or life-threatened (e.g. panic at separation from the caregiver).
Unlike most other animals who are mobile at birth, humans emerge from the womb many months early because of head size. Social mammals like humans have lots of growing to do after birth too, and our ancestral parenting practices provide good early care that fosters optimal social and intellectual brain development. What's good care? Good care in the first year or more includes an 'external womb' kind of care (e.g., carried close to the body constantly, needs met immediately, nursing on demand).
A baby's development unfolds on a set maturational schedule (with individual timing varying somewhat). Later capacities build on earlier ones. So if there is inadequate food or attention during this rapid-growth period, the brain will build less-than-optimal systems (e.g., neurotransmitter systems receptor number and activity can be lowered by poor care, which affects how well your memory is set up to work later on--not so well!). A poor foundation leads to poor mental and physical health later (which sometimes may not show up till adolescence or adulthood).
The brain typically grows to 60% adult size by age 1 and is co-constructed by experience. So you can see that the caregiver has a great effect on how well the brain grows.
In the first year of life, the neocortex begins to build up the area for reasoning, thinking, planning, and other executive functions--systems that apparently finish themselves in the third decade if life. The emotion systems get established and connected by age two, which affects social capabilities later. So the first two years set up personality, intelligence and social success. (See Greenspan & Shanker, 2004; Schore, 2001.)
Thus, caregiver care in the first years of life is CRITICAL for optimal brain and body development, for intellectual, social and emotional intelligence.
What does the baby want/need desperately in the first two years when the brain is growing so quickly? Think: EXTERNAL WOMB.
Caregiver constant touch (holding, carrying) keeps DNA synthesis and growth hormone going. Separation from a caregiver's body, shuts both down (Schanberg, 1995). (Have you noticed how distressed a baby gets when isolated? Separation hurts.) Intelligence later in childhood is related to head size growth in the first year of life (Gale et al., 2006).
Caregiver responsiveness to needs. Babies don't have any capabilities for self-care at birth. They need caregivers to teach their bodies and brains to stay calm so they can grow well. When young babies nonverbally gesture discomfort, it means they feel pain and should be attended to right away. Babies should not have to cry to get needs met because crying releases cortisol, killing brain cells.
Avoid distress. Until around age 5, children need protection from stressful situations. Their brains are not yet capable of dealing with loud noises or sudden visual transformations. They need the caregiver's compassionate physical presence to get calm from sudden distress. Later on the child will learn to comfort self when the caregiver is unavailable, based on this early sense of security and systems that were coached to calm themselves.
Avoid discomfort. When a baby starts to gesture discomfort indicating some kind of imbalance, the caregiver can provide touch (carrying, rocking) or the breast for non-nutritive suckling or breastmilk. Meeting a baby's needs quickly when a baby communicates a need builds the child's confidence in the self's ability to get needs met. This confidence stays with the child thereafter.
Avoid crying. When babies are left to cry, they build a more stress-reactive brain (for the longterm) that will have a harder time calming itself. Later on, depression and aggression are more likely. They learn not to trust the world or people, thereby becoming more focused on themselves. In contrast, caregiver responsiveness to the needs of the baby fosters a pleasant personality. In cultures where babies do not cry (because they are not separated from a caregiver, left unfed or untouched), there are no "terrible twos" (see here).
Breastmilk. Provided the mother is not malnourished, breastmilk provides all the nutrition needed to build a well-functioning brain and body. Neurotransmitters like serotonin are fostered by alpha-lactalbumin, rich in tryptophan, in breastmilk. All immunoglobulins are provided by mother's milk plus antibodies for any viruses and bacteria in the vicinity. Exclusive breastfeeding for six months if not longer ensures these benefits will be unimpeded by the pathogens and imbalances that formula encourages (see here).
Frequent, on demand breastmilk feeding. Breastmilk is mostly amino acids which are fundamental to building a good brain. The baby feeds frequently to flood the brain with these needed building blocks. If the baby is put on an adult-centered schedule or an infant formula that makes babies sleep deeply (which is unnatural), opportunities to provide brain-building nutrients will be missed, not to mention the distress it will cause in the baby. This again leads to a stressed brain, less optimal growth, less flexible self-comforting.
Babies become what they experience. The brain learns what is practiced, especially in early life. If early life is a distress-filled life, the brain learns to be a threat detector, using that as a filter for social life. The brain has difficulty relaxing to learn. If early life is an unstressed life, the brain is able to grow in all the ways it is designed to grow (smart, thoughtful, compassionate).
If we don't give babies what they need, should we be surprised that children's academic performance is on the downswing?
SOCIETAL-LEVEL QUESTIONS
How does what babies need affect those who are not parents?
Babies need responsive caregivers, 24 hours. Parents cannot do this alone.
It means we need to restructure society, going back to ways that are more supportive of babies.
How do we facilitate optimal child growth without putting it all on parents? We should be thinking about and planning changes to facilitate structural changes.
