Thoughts On Parenting And Infant Brain Development
Part of my post on Friday about Cry It Out for babies mentioned that their brains are changed by the stress hormones that flood the brain when crying. Thinking more about it over the weekend reminded me of a recent comic by Hathor. The comic dealt with the love hormones that are released during a normal birth and how those hormones are not being released when births are hindered. She asks what are the effects on infants who are born without this flood of hormones. Does it change their brains? Expand that out to the vast majority of people who were born in medicalized, hindered environments. What does that mean for society as a whole?
I am one who has always felt that Mother Nature knows what she is doing. That things evolve or change to be a certain way because it is beneficial, at the very least beneficial in that it does not kill too many of the population. The natural release of oxytocin during labor helps protect a baby’s brain during labor. The stress hormones from crying can damage a baby’s brain.
Research often shows that though children are born with all of the brain cells they will need the connections are not yet there. It is during the first 3 years of a child’s life that the majority of those connections develop. If the brain is flooded with stress hormones and deprived of love hormones, how does that effect how the child will grow? If an entire nature is full of people like this, how does the nation go? What does it mean for our future?
brain development, infants, parenting
March 31st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
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