Robin Balbernie - Importance of the early years - transcript



Robin Balbernie - Importance of the early years

The baby is born hardwired, one of the few things we are hardwired to do is relate. Babies are born exquisitely sociable, and you have only got to pick up a newborn baby to see that they seek out eye contact, and that’s hardwired, and to see that they mimic facial expressions, that’s hardwired, so all the fun things like sticking your tongue out, or yawning, or holding your hand up, the baby will respond to. Babies are hardwired to make social interaction, and that is because socialisation is so important for humans; we need to be socialised in order to build the right structures in our brain that we are going to need for the rest of our life. We are not genetically set up for any particular environment, we are genetically set up to be adaptable, and what we adapt to is the first care giving environment.

We know that a lack of physical contact, if you are not careful can cause an excess of cortisol, and that in itself will have an effect on a baby’s brain, so things like baby massage are really important. In terms of feeding experiences that is a good example, because of course the feeding experience encapsulates a lot of the relationship. You can imagine two mothers in the same block of flats; one mother comes from a secure background, so her internal working model of care giving is adequate, it’s good enough, she can muddle along, she can get it right roughly half of the time, which is better than most of us, and that’s fine, nobody has to be a perfect parent, that would be disastrous I think. But she is feeding the baby on the left side The baby is getting nice physical contact, the mother is relaxed, so the baby is relaxed, because of course the baby will pick up all the mother’s subliminal signals. The mother is enjoying the feed, she is able to focus her attention on the task at hand and not be distracted; so she hasn’t got other things on her mind which a more stressed mother might have; she has only got the baby on her mind. The baby is enjoying the feed, it gradually gets through, finishes when he or she feels like it, and it’s a complete experience with a beginning and a middle and an end, and that baby has a good experience. And in terms of the brain wiring up what’s happened is, neurons that fire together wire together, in that baby’s internal representation of the mother is mum’s – or relationships as it will be – make you feel good, they care for you, you can feel safe, you can relax. A safe and relaxed baby, attachment is switched off – you should only see attachment behaviour when a child is anxious, so you should not see attachment behaviour, predominantly for most children – attachment behaviour is only a sign of anxiety and this baby is showing no attachment behaviour whatsoever, it is just having a comfortable feed.

Now next door we could have a mother who, for whatever reason, can’t keep the baby in her mind, she can’t hold the baby in her head, because she is overstressed and she is vulnerable, She is struggling with a multiplicity of risk factors, which are impacting the relationship; and these can be social like poverty or racial intolerance, they can be immediate, like an inability to tune into the child because of her own background, or trouble with a violent partner, or they can be in her own past, such as being in care or coming from a background of maltreatment or poor parenting herself. But for whatever reason she can’t hold the baby in mind, and maybe she can’t even tolerate, unconsciously, giving the baby a good experience because she did not have it herself. And so therefore you get the paradox of mothers sometimes being jealous of their own children because they are being asked to do something for their child that nobody did to them, and these mums of course need even more understanding and support, they certainly don’t need blaming.

And perhaps it’s important to do an aside here, and say that there is no such thing as a bad parent; all parents do the best for their babies that they possibly can. No parent sets out to be a bad parent, or a difficult parent, but all parents bring different resources, and all of us who have been a parent know there is nothing more stressful and exhausting than being a mum or a dad. But this poor mum, and this poor baby are getting a completely negative experience; the baby doesn’t feel settled, the baby may be being prop fed, the mother isn’t making eye contact, so there is excitation of the right brain. The baby is just doing a mechanical task; gulping it down, it is probably going to get colic, so that will make it again a more difficult baby to settle, which is make the baby even less satisfying from the mum, and you can see the whole thing going off into that predictable negative spiral.

And yet they are both having the same experience these two babies, they are having a feeding experience. But what’s been wired up in each babies head, the structure of their mind that’s being put in there could not be more opposite.

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