By Charlene N. Rivera-Bonet | Waisman Science Writer
This article is a summary of a review by Seth Pollak, PhD, and Megan Gunnar, PhD, for the journal Daedelus.
It can be hard – and overwhelming – to make certain decisions on how to raise a child. How do you even know if the decisions you are making are actually going to matter in the long run? Which ones are worth dwelling on? Add to that the fact that we live in a world where you can curate your Instagram feed to give you all sorts of advice on what and when your children should eat, how they should sleep, and what toys they need for each developmental stage. Plus the hundreds of books you can read for each stage of your child’s development. It’s an overflow of information.
Thankfully, scientific research can give some insight into what key aspects of caregiving may lead to positive outcomes for children, and help caregivers make informed decisions on their children’s upbringing. Waisman investigator, Seth Pollak, PhD, Vaughan Bascom Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics, recently published a review article summarizing what developmental science has to say about caregiving, and what’s important. He co-authored the essay with Megan Gunnar, PhD, from the University of Minnesota.
The data can be divided into three major categories: the timing in which children are exposed to certain experiences, the importance of predictability and consistency, and supporting children and making sure they feel safe.
Children are powerful learners, Pollak and Gunnar point out, and what they experience growing up is a central aspect of how their brains grow and develop.
The timing of exposures
A common – and actually important – question caregivers ask is when is the right time to introduce children to a specific experience – foods, activities, languages, motor skills, germs, and more. Caregivers need to consider if the child is ready to absorb and acquire the pertinent skills, and if the experience is appropriate for their age. Sometimes, the authors point out, this is a really obvious decision, such as not giving solid food to a newborn. But other times it’s not as straightforward for the parents. Science can provide guidance.
For example, adults often try to keep newborns clean, because their immune system is not fully developed. However, they may not know that the immune system is a learning system that needs to be stimulated in order to get strengthened, which is done through exposure to natural things like soil, plants, and animals. So, while they think cleanliness is always the way to go, a little dirt can actually help babies develop a stronger immune system.
Another example is bilingualism. It is tricky because as adults, learning a second language is hard. But children, especially very little children, are actually incredibly good at learning language. Their brains are more receptive to it. The science on this is clear, the earlier and the more language children are exposed to the better. It does not confuse the children, even when the same caregiver switches between using two languages.
The healthy development of babies depends on their interaction with the environment. What they experience and, very importantly, when they experience it. There are experiences, which Pollak and Gunnar describe as “experience-expectant,” that just come naturally and parents of typically-developing children do not need to worry about. The brain expects them and is ready, and they occur naturally in most environments. These are things such as exposure to patterns of light and sound.
Other experiences need more active involvement and decision making on when they occur. For example, what is the best timing to introduce sign language to children who are D/deaf or hard of hearing? It is now known that they benefit from being exposed to sign language as early as possible, even as early as a few months old. Access to sign language does not impair children’s learning in other languages, on the contrary, it increases language and cognitive skills in D/deaf children.
Experience-dependent processes, on the other hand, are those of which the human brain is able to learn, but when and how it occurs depends on what and when the child is exposed. Socialization is a good example of this.
Toward a child’s first birthday, they begin to narrow down the information they take in from the world such as faces and speech sounds. They start becoming experts in and gravitate toward characteristics of their own social group, that is people who look and talk like them.
Children that have a wider range of social experiences turn out to be more comfortable with new people, even when they know who is familiar and who isn’t. The earlier children are exposed to the variety of people in their society, the better they should be, the authors say, at functioning beyond their homes and familiar communities.
Consistency and predictability are good
When a child eats dinner, takes a bath, gets in their jammies, and reads a book most nights before bed, bedtime becomes predictable. Even young infants learn patterns and use them to form expectations about their lives. They also use their incorrect predictions to fine-tune their learning. Because of this, children thrive in stability, while chaos can be harmful for their development.
Just like exposure to experiences, some aspects of creating predictable environments are easy to establish. Speech is predictable. Children learn the probability that one sound in a language will follow another. It takes no further effort than verbally engaging with an infant and their brains will do the predictive work.
Caregivers do need to be deliberate with creating routines that are as consistent and reliable as possible. Pollak and Gunnar give regular mealtimes, expected bedtimes, and consistent rules and discipline practices as examples.
The most salient for children, the authors point out, may be caregiver reliability. Are they trustworthy? Are they punctual? Do they provide comfort in scary times?
When their environments are predictable children can better regulate their thoughts, actions, and emotions which affects their academic success and occupational and physical wellness later in life.
The contrary, lack of predictability, can make it more difficult for children to learn patterns in their lives and other people’s behaviors which are a basis for skills such as communication and human interaction. It may also lead to children perceiving their lives as uncertain, resulting in anxiety.
Children do need to learn that they can handle a change in routine, but planning ahead can make this more manageable for children. For example, when children in foster care need to transition into a different home, careful preparation for the change results in less behavior disruption and physiological stress for them.
Another way of building a healthy predictable environment is giving a child an appropriate amount of agency and control. The authors use the example of a loud, cymbal-clapping toy monkey. It can be scary for a child if a caregiver activates it, but fun if they have control over when it turns on. Children, they state, can benefit from caregivers supporting their agency and age- and skill-appropriate limits set on what they can control.
Allowing them to have an appropriate amount of choices, like choosing between applesauce or a fruit bar for a snack, helps them refine adaptive decision-making skills. It would be unreasonable to agree to all of their demands, but not getting their demands met can also help them develop the regulatory abilities to properly deal with anger and frustration. Being overly permissive, or overly protective can lead children to struggle with everyday emotional challenges.
Safety and social support
Humans are social in nature. Our brains are dependent on and shaped by socialization. A feeling of support and safety from caregivers is important for healthy development, as children’s own feelings about their sense of safety affects how their stress response system develops.
Before children can deal with their own threats, the way they cope largely depends on the availability of supportive caregivers who signal safety. When caregivers are reliable, infants expect them to respond to their needs and protect them. When children encounter threats in the presence of a reliable caregiver, they can use these as growth experiences and learn about the world and their own abilities to handle challenges.
This puts the adults in a child’s life in a powerful position to shape the way they view new situations, people, and events. For example, when a child trips and falls, they often look to their caregiver before they cry. How a caregiver reacts, with calm and reassurance, or with panic and alarm, will influence the way the child reacts to the fall.
This power is not unique to infants and young children, but continues to have an effect throughout childhood. Studies show that children that experience consistent caregiving are better able to handle stress, which is crucial for resilience.
Paying close attention to the ages at which experiences are offered to children, efforts to create consistent environments for children, and fostering environments in which children can feel safe are science-based approaches through which caregiving can promote child well-being and future outcomes. Scientific findings like these can empower caregivers to make informed decisions about their children’s upbringing. It can also inform public policy to develop systems that support caregivers in supporting the healthy development of their children.
Read the full article here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/36/127936/What-Developmental-Science-Has-to-Say-About