Robin Balbernie: Relationships - transcript



Robin Balbernie: Relationships

Relationships are central to all the work we do with young children, and the relationship that the mother has with her baby, of course, begins in utero. So it’s really important that staff think through relationships; both the relationships they can form themselves with the children in their care, and also looking at how they can promote and aid, and capitalise the relationships that the care givers – whether they are parents or somebody else – have with the very small children that they are looking after.

We know that relationships affect the growth of the mind in two different ways; if we see the mind as being psychological you internalise the relationships that you have had with your parents, and caregivers, and early years staff, and they go into a sort of mental map that you keep with you for the rest of your life. Bowlby talked about internal working models, but really these are just the unspoken assumptions of yourself within a relationship; what will happen when you relate to people, how they will relate to you, your expectations of whether this will be productive, and fruitful, and caring and loving, or not. And within that mental map of relationships are things like self esteem, confidence, cognitive ability, willingness to explore, willingness to take risks, the capacity for empathy - the capacity for putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes – which is the biggest single inhibitor against violence that we know of.

And the other part of relationships is they physically structure the growth of the developing brain, the brain is an organ exquisitely attuned to the quality of early relationships, and this is designed by nature so we can fit into the early mothering environment, which is our first stage into being humanised. The quality of the early relationships that the baby, and then toddler has will leave an indelible imprint on the architecture of the brain, so that the final shape of the brain, if you like, the way the brain is sculpted by early experience, will reflect the quality of that early experience. So good quality early relationships will give the child the optimum start in life, given what would be genetically possible anyway.

The early relationships that the baby is automatically forced to adapt to by nature, and this has happened to all of us, will tell the brain that these are important circuits, these are circuits you need, or these are circuits you don’t need. So that a baby who has been brought up in loving caring relationships will keep the circuits associated with love, and care, and empathy, a baby brought up with secure attachments will keep the circuits to do with making relationships, being able to explore, being able to be curious, and being able to make the best use of their brain. Whereas another baby who has been surrounded by maltreatment, and when I use the term maltreatment - and when I use the term maltreatment I am referring to all forms of neglect as well as all forms of abuse, and we know that these often happen together, so that when we get domestic violence almost invariably the child is being physically abused as well – so all forms of maltreatment provide the antithesis of a loving environment, and the brain is forced to adapt to that quality of care giving, so that they will keep the circuits needed for immediate survival, such as hyper-vigilance, a well activated stress response. They won’t need the circuits for empathy, or love, or care, because they haven’t experienced them, so the brain won’t recognise them, and these circuits will be discarded.

The brain puts itself together on two main principles; the neurons that fire together wire together, so that whatever a child experiences, and that includes not just the immediate interpersonal experiences, but the whole ambience of the home and the wider culture, will leave an indelible imprint on the circuits of their mind, as the neuronal networks that are responsive to that particular experience wire together. The second principle of brain wiring – this is very crude – is use it or lose it. What the child is not exposed to tells the brain that these aren’t circuits I need to keep, and the brain has to whittle down the amount of circuits it has, because there simply isn’t enough room in any of our skulls for all the potential circuitry that we are born with, so we have to discard circuits, this is a normal process. But the brain discards them on the basis of use it or lose it, so what’s not being used is got rid of, and you can see that most clearly with language development, whereas a child can babble in every language under the sun, they can only talk in one language, and they have got rid of the circuits for recognising and producing the phonemes and the vowel sounds of their other language.

Well just as children do that with language, so they do that with an emotional language, and children will keep the emotional language that they are born into, and they will lose the potential emotional language that they have not been exposed to, and that can be positive or minus; so if a child has only been exposed to neglect and maltreatment that is the emotional language that their brain will know and communicate within for the rest of that child’s life.

I think it is paramount for practitioners to realise that the relationships they make with the parents, and the relationships they make with the children, and the relationships that they encourage between the parents and the children are the most important thing that they can do. And to do that is very easy to say, but it is very difficult and it needs a lot of skill, it is not something that comes easy; people need skill, they need reflective supervision, and they need support, and they need time.

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