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Dr Dan Siegel and your child’s brain
The brain needs warm attachment relationships to grow!
Your child’s brain grow in unique and unexpected ways.
Dr Dan Siegel, leading the world in neuro-psychiatry has discovered that what attachment theories postulated so many years ago actually has scientific grounding! Relationships are truly what the brain needs to develop optimally! 
To put this into every day English, our brains are social in nature and need warm, rich, safe relationships in order to grow and thrive. They are not machines that can simply be fed with ‘information’ or even ‘learning experiences’.
It’s people (parents) who grow their child’s brain best!
Link between brain growth, education and relationships
In essence, while education is good and beneficial, it does not come anywhere close in significance to a loving relationship with a significant other – Parents are Essential in the brain growth of their child!
So all the toys, learning devices, after school tutors and computer apps won’t work nearly as well as simply building a strong emotional bond with your child.
An interesting study was done on children’s literacy development. What programs could educationalists develop to boost children’s literacy levels the best? The experts came together and tested a program on a group of year one students. To their amazement all the students mastered the literacy skills faster than anticipated. Conclusion? The program must be amazing and should be put into every school! So the program was trialed in a group of schools . . . but disaster! The same results could not be repeated. Children didn’t learn any better than with the previous program. The researchers went back to study their results – what had gone wrong between the laboratory testing at the university and the program in the schools?
After rigorous investigation into their data and research methods, they discovered the answer.
In the laboratory tests, parents had been the teachers. They had asked a group of parents to come to the laboratory with their children and carry out the program. When they then put the program into schools it was teachers who were carrying out the program!
Lesson:
My child’s brain needs warm attachment relationships with their primary caregivers to grow best!
While teachers, schools, tutors, computer apps etc. are all useful, they don’t come even close to the impact of a parent on their child’s brain function.
So keep the relationship strong!
Here are some articles to help you optimize your child’s brain development:
Building attachment relationships:
Below are a few video clips that parents and teachers should familiarize themselves with.
The Whole Brain Child: How to raise one
