Activating Brain Development in ChildrenHARDWIRING HEALTHY SELF ESTEEM AND HIGHER BRAIN DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN What a deeply rewarding time to be a parent as studies reveal page after page of the neuroscientific research discovery behind what we commonly call "good parenting". For example, how a concept such as self esteem, which was until now was regarded as a psychological term, is actually a function of brain structure and how we can help provide the brain with what it needs to produce it. Proper brain development in children and infant brain development depends upon activating the braincells that form the brain structures that comprise the self esteem centers in the brain. To explain more fully, deep within your child’s brain stem is an evolutionally ancient structure called the locus corelueus, which is strongly activated by positive “high intimacy relationship moments”. This arousal triggers norepinephrine, which is released into the blood as a hormone and into the brain as a neurotransmitter bathing the brain and heightening its attention. When this happens events and thoughts are most likely to become fixed in memory. These "feel good" sensations and memories are vital to your child, since they are what enables her to build a strong, healthy sense of self and form lasting concepts of self worth, such as being fun to be with, being able to love and being capable of being loved by others, all the while further developing the social areas of the brain. What a rich gift for your child to take this capacity for healthy self esteem into future relationships! IT IS NEVER TOO EARLY TO BEGIN SELF ESTEEM TRAINING
Even very young babies who are the recipients of high intimacy relational moments, through stimulating social activities such as peekaboo, tumbling/cuddling together, lovingly being read to, or full-attention interaction, quickly become so expert that they can initiate mutually meaningful emotional encounters (complete with unselfconscious engagement, smiles and eye contact) with total strangers across a crowded restaurant.
On the other hand, if we deny our young children’s genetically programmed need to love and be loved, for instance by mislabeling it as over dependency, infantile neediness or manipulation, then we impede neural development in their brains and damage their self concepts, setting them up for such things as depression or emotional emptiness later in life. If a parent’s own capacity for intimacy has been stunted in childhood then their babies could miss out on the enormous advantages of parental brain “sculpting". Even worse, an unresponsive parent can elicit a high cortisol stress response in a child, which can actually damage brain function and destroy developing and already developed brain cells. Famous studies in which mothers were asked to keep their faces very still show that their infants' brain activity quickly becomes quite disturbed. We have all heard about the infant syndrome called, "failure to thrive" in cases where the babies did not receive enough affection and attention, however the extent of the damage to such children's brains is only now becoming known. For example, brain scans from children in orphanages who were deprived of love and affection show entire nonfunctioning areas in the temporal lobes – the part of the brain that processes and regulates emotions, social skills and emotional intelligence. Without good temporal lobe development the prefrontal cortex (the reading, writing and arithmetic centers of the brain) and other cognitive functions have difficulty reaching their fullest potential. Failure to thrive has taken on a whole new meaning The good news is if you consistently meet your child’s impulses of love and caring with warm receptivity, he will feel that his love and his loveableness is a potent force in the world, and his brain will be powered up to create the structures and the neural functions essential to good mental health and high level brain performance, including increased intelligence, for the rest of his life!
One of the easiest, best examples I can have seen of this kind of purposeful training to foster higher brain development in children, including infant brain development very early on, is the children’s Self Esteem Building Book Series, with titles such as, “Magnificent Me!” and “Do You Love Me?” These quality books were developed specifically for this purpose by the people who contribute to the Childrens-Self-Esteem.com website, a resource for a wide variety of support tools and tips for building healthy self esteem and brain development in children. Another important feature of these books, is that they are illustrated with Organimals, the realworld cuddly organic stuffed animals, which, incidentally, are 100% certified organic and free of toxins and agricultural chemicals known to interfere with children's health and brain function. The shared experience of reading together these cleverly simple books, while cuddling with, and later playing with and caring for, the characters right out of the storybook who serve as highly positive mental reinforcement, empowers that potent feel-good brain force within us all with its powerfully beneficial neurochemicals. Moreover this kind of experience expands our ability to endow higher brain development in children as well as to ourselves, and ultimately to generously endow the future brain trust of our planet.
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