Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/bringing-love-to-the-young-children-in-your-care/5026338/
Mere physical care and intellectual education is not enough for young children. They need our love, and they need it now (Malloch, Delafield-Butt, & Trevarthen, 2019; Murray, 2021).
Babies come into this world with small heads and incomplete brains, with survival and growth dependent on an extended fourth trimester outside the mother’s body, but close to it. The newborn baby must have loving care to begin to be able to coordinate her senses, emotions, thoughts, and body functions, as well as relationships with people in her environment. Babies do this by copying into their brain’s highways the mind and body habits they sense in their caregiver and others they love and trust. They develop these qualities by having frequent and repeated affectionate and playful interactions with their caregiver. These are often initiated by the baby, taking turns to imitate each other’s touch, motions, facial expressions, and sounds (Schore, 2021; Feldman & Bakermans-Kraneberg, 2017; Schore, & Marks-Tarlow, 2018; Iacoboni, 2008).
This process of infant attachment happens most dramatically in the first 18 months of life, when the brain’s right temporal lobe is being programmed and growing very fast (64 percent in the first three months. This part of the brain unconsciously ...