How we were loved

It may not come as a surprise to any reader of our content now, when I say that our brains develop as a reflection of the world we grow up in and that we love others the way we ourself have been loved. If we want any caregiver or parent to “be” a more loving parent, we need to be more loving “to” them.

“Given love, the unloved can become loving.”

Love and loving caregiving is the foundation of our development.

To the newborn; love is action

All children have a basic longing to be accepted and affirmed in the truth that they are genuinely loved by their caregivers or parents. Humans are relational creatures, and the capacity to be connected in a meaningful and healthy way is shaped through our earliest relationships in infancy. A parent may love their child but if the response to their child’s crying in the other room is in the form of a neglect where the mother is busy uploading her child’s picture on social media and the baby is crying in the next room, remind yourself that this is “not” attentive parenting. To the baby, skin-to-skin touch, smell of his or her mom/dad, the touch and reflection of his or her caregivers actions all transform into a form of love. All these loving moments or in some cases neglectful moments build the core of an infant’s brain foundation.

When I feel hungry, I cry and they come and feed me

The baby getting a response every time he/she needs something is how babies begin to shape a view of the world; people are good. Children know from a very early age if their caregiver’s eyes are happy to see them, they sense and respond to tenderness, cheerfulness, compassion and patience. They know exactly what quality time means and they know what it feels. These care-giving cues help the infant to feel love and act in loving ways towards others in the future. The surprising take home point here is that caring for the child in this way also develops a sense of fulfilment in the caregiver.

“Isolated and disconnected; we are vulnerable.”

How can this be explained in a scientific sense?

The lowermost networks, lets say the most basic networks, the ones that make up the core regulatory networks first, start in the womb and at this point they are responsible for basic actions such as respiration, circulation or regulating body temperature. Since the brain is developed from bottom up, these functions start to specialize, after which the baby starts to build on his motor movement and there on starts to become capable of some form of reasoning. All these functions are built in a “bottom up” pattern. This development process is “front loaded” which means that most of these patterns will be formed in the early years and obviously the brain is capable of changing throughout most of life, but the early patterns are very powerful indicators of the child’s mental well being.

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