Besides being a labor/employment, mediator and mom, I am also a guardian ad litem, working with at risk children. In that latter role, I recently had the pleasure of viewing "The Connected Baby," a documentary or "film conversation" produced by researcher Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk and film-maker Jonathan Robertson.
In her opening presentation of her documentary, Dr. Zeedyk discussed how there has been a dramatic increase in the neuroscience associated with attachment. Simply put, a baby's brain is healthier and more robust, with far greater neural pathways, if he or she forms early and strong attachments with primary care givers. In the first year of develop-
ment, an infant will have 70% of his or her final brain mass. At three years of age, the child is at 90% of final mass. This mass is built by the development of neuron synapses, or cells talking to one another and making connections through experience. Dr. Zeedyk describes these neural pathways as "highways to joy or anxiety," meaning they can grow out of safety and play, or fear and anxiety.
ment, an infant will have 70% of his or her final brain mass. At three years of age, the child is at 90% of final mass. This mass is built by the development of neuron synapses, or cells talking to one another and making connections through experience. Dr. Zeedyk describes these neural pathways as "highways to joy or anxiety," meaning they can grow out of safety and play, or fear and anxiety.
Moreover, our child welfare systems can exacerbate attachment disorder by failing to understand its implications. As one commentator put it, "we take kids in care, traumatized kids, and torture them with so many placements."
Dr. Zeedyk also discussed the fact that economics support the promotion of strong familial attachment, in that it is far cheaper to raise a happy, well adjusted, attached human being than to seek to educate and--more likely--treat and incarcerate a human with attachment disorders. In the last decade, Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman and others have produced studies showing the phenomenal return on investment for early education, birth through pre-Kindergarten. See Early Childhood Education for All: A Wise Investment, http://web.mit.edu/workplacecenter/docs/Full%20Report.pdf (accessed Dec. 28, 2011). The economic evidence so strongly supports early education and well-being that parliaments and federal reserve banks are even getting in on the game!
However, Dr. Zeedyk explained that the one piece of the puzzle that has so far been inadequately explained is the psychological component--what is attachment and what creates an attached or "connected" baby? This is what Dr. Zeedyk has set out to document in her movie, which posits that babies come into the world connected, and all their movement, actions and reactions are intentional and connected, although the verbal, logical world dismisses them as mere reflex.
I cannot begin to do the film justice here, and strongly urge anyone interested in child welfare or early education to check it out for themselves. However, here are some of the highlights I found most poignant and moving:
- Babies are born more sophisticated and aware than we realize, because they have already become sensitized to our voices, body movements, tastes, sounds, etc., while in the womb.
- Infants participate in the settling and movement process when being held and shifted; they are not passive but rather are participants, as can be seen in their hand and body movements.
- Babies behave like people from birth in a number of ways, as one primate biologist notes. All of their body movements--hands and legs, etc.--are coordinated, controlled by their agency, and express a musical structure, rhythm, and melody innate to all expressive human action and communication. Additionally, because they cannot engage with two things at one time in their still developing mental state, they can be observed to actively choose the object they will engage with--and they invariably choose to engage in the human rather than non-human interaction!
- Although babies don't know what a "mind" is yet, they do feel other minds, and you can feel yourself being sucked into their minds as in a foreign language.
- Babies regularly engage in goal directed behavior. They find mom or dad in an uncomfortable situation, and smile when they find them, although we often dismiss it as gas or some such. Gaze studies demonstrate that babies also track the facial triangle, gazing from eyes, to mouth and back to eyes, which is also a goal directed reading of expression.
- As babies get older, they naturally engage in antics and games, learning anticipation, humor teasing. Depending on circumstances, they can learn that anticipation is fun and safe, or scary. They can also learn that humor is an expressive and communicative interaction that develops connections between the participants.
- In play and navigating the world and experiences, we can observe children processing the changes between games, disconnection, reconnection, and game shifts or changes. Thus, they become self-regulating as they learn to navigate these shifts.
- Observing babies and children, we see that there is even music in their humor, a natural rhythm and melody again, that one commentator described as the "musicality of communication or "communicative musicality."
The ultimate lesson that I took from the film was that we should join the babies and children in their innately connected and goal directed activity and participate in that intensive exchange of emotions, self and meaning.
In the discussion afterward, Dr. Zeedyk observed that we are the most social of all mammals. We saw from the Romanian orphanages how the lack of human love and attachment devastates us. At the same, it is a marvel that we can survive on even a little love. Based on these lessons, Dr. Zeedyk's questions what is the impact of lack of community and respect for families, who come into the world connected? What does it do to us when we lose that connection and become part of a disconnected society?
Dr. Zeedyk shared that an audience member in the prior U.S. viewing stated she didn't think the message was about babies at all, but rather about us--that we should all join anyone/everyone we're interacting with, for that same intensive exchange that we have with children. So, let's all make a promise, to make eye contact in the future, and return smiles, even with strangers!
If you are interested in child-related mediation or GAL (guardian ad litem) services, please contact Pilar Vaile, P.C. at (505) 247-0802, or info@pilarvailepc.com.
