The 10 worst things to say to your children:
On Psychology and SleepTalk™
By Alex Bartsch, B.A. Hons. Psych.
What if you had the opportunity to give your child a lifelong gift? A gift that enables your child to overcome obstacles, recognises opportunities, and maximise their potential for success. A creative gift that allows your child to build the foundations that facilitate a positive attitude to their world, and takes only five minutes of your time each night!
The critical years in your child’s development
We are all born with a certain potential that is dictated by our genes. Whether or not we fulfil that potential is significantly affected by the amount and KIND of stimulation we receive in the early years of our lives.
Social scientists have long suspected that children’s intelligence and well-being are affected by their environment—whether or not they are nourished adequately, challenged intellectually, and given enough affection. Now, modern brain-imaging techniques have confirmed this notion. According to Professor William Greenough, of the University of Illinois, the actual physical wiring of the brain is susceptible to experience. But perhaps the most significant news concerns the impact of a baby’s environment on the development of his brain.
RAS It is in the first years of your child’s life, that the brain undergoes enormous physical changes as it builds its personal “wiring” system, which incorporates a number of systems, or programs that facilitate function, survival and development. This wiring consists of an incredibly large number of connections known as synapses, which are formed as a result of stimuli that cause electrical and chemical activity in the brain. The amount and type of stimulation that a child receives dictates the number, and combinations of connections that are made. These connections are strengthened through further stimulation and use. In fact the foundational networking of the brain’s synapses is nearly complete after the rapid brain development of the first 3 years.
Brief but golden opportunity
As the first few years are critical to brain development, parents have a brief but golden opportunity to help stimulate and form the brain circuitry of their children, which will lay the foundations for the development of effective cognitions and beliefs that are critical in determining a child’s responses to the world around it. Researchers in the field of early childhood development have also made discoveries that provide parents with guiding principles for encouraging development.
Firstly, infants have a biological need and desire to learn. Therefore they are completely open to experience, and actively seek stimulation. This means that you can increase the volume and complexity of your child’s brain circuitry by providing it with stimulating experiences, which can also provide the foundations for enhanced learning in the future. The foundation process of SleepTalk™ provides this essential element. In fact the amount of connections in the brain can fluctuate by as much as 25% depending on the type of stimulation and environment a child is exposed to.
Although visual stimulation can produce developmental advantages including enhanced curiosity, attentiveness and concentration, any type of basic interaction with your child is beneficial. It is during the first few months that the brain’s wiring is fine-tuned, and excess cells and synapses - typically those that have never been used - are eliminated according to Dr. Kathryn Taaffe -Young, a developmental psychologist who has extensively researched the importance of maximising the learning potential of children prior to the age of three. Dr. Young maintains that the first year is critical for healthy brain development and that if synapses aren’t used; they die, with no chance of reviving them.
What this means is that children reared in environments where stimulation is limited actually have fewer synapses than those raised in environments where they are regularly talked to, held, and visually stimulated, according to Dr. Young. You may not have realized it, but all of the things that you do with your baby regularly add up:
When you sing to an infant, talk to her, hold her, play with her, and give her appropriate toys and objects to explore, you are creating an environment that enables her brain to develop to its maximum potential.
Every child has a very real need for attention and affection. Babies do not try to control their parents’ lives; they simply have a biological need for interaction with them. Providing affection and attending to a baby’s needs, creates an environment that is stable, secure and comforting. This is a perfect platform on which to build positive and effective thought patterns that are critical in determining healthy levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy in the future.
The most effective practical strategies
What then, are the most effective practical strategies that parents can employ to create an appropriate environment for their children?
First, talk to your baby often with a kind voice, a wide range of vocabulary, and a lot of expression. Your voice is one of your child’s favourite sounds. It is familiar and comforting. Remember, it has been hearing the sound of your voice since it was in utero!
Second, respond to your child’s requests. This teaches the child that it can communicate with other people and gives it a strong sense of trust and emotional stability.
Third, touch your child as often as possible. Premature infants that are massaged grow faster, cry less, and are released earlier from the hospital than those who aren’t. Appropriate touching encourages a sense of security and comfort in children.
Last, but by no means least, teach your baby through your own model of appropriate and positive behaviour. Encourage your child to imitate your positive, supportive and comforting gestures. Verbalise your positive feelings towards them, and reinforce these phrases with complementary actions. Your baby is constantly observing and analysing your behaviour and working out ways to mimic your voice and facial expressions.
One of the goals of SleepTalk™ is to improve the human thought stream, the running mental commentary that accompanies us through life as we observe, compare and judge events going on around us. While there are some things in our lives that we will never be able to control, the vast majority of what happens to us is directly affected by — us! Many of us have been taught; that good things happen to people who do good, and that if we do “the right thing”, we will be rewarded. So why don’t we always get rewarded? Why do terrible things happen to people who do “the right thing”? Why do some people live in a state of perpetual anxiety? Why do others appear to glide through life without any apparent care?
The answer, to a great extent, lies in the fact that our BELIEFS about things and events, determine our reactions and behaviours towards them. If children consciously, or unconsciously believe that they will “never be any good at school”, are “unattractive to others”, or “will never amount to anything in life”, the chances are they will act out those beliefs and make them a reality. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately, the opposite can also be true. Those with a positive outlook, who display traits such as patience, tolerance, confidence, flexibility, and self-efficacy, tend to cope relatively well with the obstacles life throws up. Just as in the case of infants discussed earlier, children, adolescents and adults also form their personal beliefs from the “programming” they get from the world around them.
How can we take control of our lives and make them what we want them to be? One way is by “reprogramming” the way we interpret events around us, both through conscious and unconscious techniques. Through a program such as SleepTalk™, the power of the spoken word, presented in an appropriate format, ensures that the child internalises, and appropriates desirable and effective beliefs about his/her place in the world. Once these thoughts have been internalised, the child will not allow him/herself, or anyone else for that matter, to tell them they are not capable, or any other limiting statements that have been made throughout their lives.
Children can discard negative and self-defeating statements
By hearing enough examples of positive and effective thoughts, delivered by a person with whom the child enjoys a close and loving relationship, the child can eventually discard negative feelings and self-defeating statements and replace them with powerful and useful ones. In this sense SleepTalk™ shares many parallels with a well recognised psychological I therapeutic approach known as self-instruction or self-verbalisation. It might be said that where the two approaches differ is that SleepTalk™ focuses on the use of the sub-conscious, while self-instruction concentrates on the conscious, which has to by pass the conscious critical aspect, a self protection mechanism.
Alex Bartsch’s article is published in full in Joane Goulding’s book, SleepTalk™.
