Early Care and Nurturing
Early care and nurture have a decisive, long-lasting impact on how people develop, their ability to learn, and their capacity to regulate their own emotions.
Parents and other caregivers have long known that babies thrive when they receive warm, responsive early care; now we are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms that underlie this common knowledge. Responsive care giving not only meets babies' basic, day-to-day needs for nourishment and warmth, but also takes into account their rhythms, preferences, and moods. The ways that parents, families, and other caregivers relate and respond to young children, and the ways that they mediate their children's contact with the environment, directly affect the formation of neural pathways. We know, for example, that parents tend to mimic and reinforce their infants' positive emotional responses. Interactions like these appear to influence developing patterns of neuronal connectivity.
Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development, Copyright 1997, Families and Work Institute
Free Parenting Videos by Dr. Susan Turben
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