Читать книгу Raising Girls in the 21st Century - Steve Biddulph - Страница 31

The first six months of little Lucy’s life are rather sleepy, as she just gets used to being out in the world. In the second six months things speed up. Just inside her little forehead is an area of the brain that, if you could see it, looks like a cauliflower, wrinkled and furrowed. This area, known as the prefrontal cortex, is now starting to grow. The PFC is the most complex part of the brain, and it governs some things that are very important for life. The prefrontal cortex is the seat of empathy, sociability and human contact. It’s what makes us human.

The prefrontal cortex couldn’t grow earlier, because it would have made Lucy’s head too big to be safely born. And what’s in there, the software, also needs to be programmed by Lucy’s parents or carers, because they are unique to her family and culture and will help her live with them for the many years it will take to raise her.

Along with its social functions, the prefrontal cortex also controls two important abilities:

1 The ability to focus, to pay attention.

2 The ability to calm yourself down.

Babies can’t calm themselves for one important reason: they are wired up for panic. In the wild (the way we used to live for a quarter of a million years) babies were carried about for most of the day, because that was the best way to keep them safe and give them good care. And often the adults were walking for much of the time, so it was just a practical necessity. (Even today, in the so-called undeveloped world, babies are rarely put down. They also rarely cry.) In our long pre-history there were plenty of predators about that would love to snatch a human baby for their dinner. So if a baby found herself alone or, worse still, a big hairy muzzle suddenly appeared in her face, dripping saliva – and it wasn’t dad – she was probably in trouble. Babies who cried loudly were more likely to be rescued fast. So fearfulness and noisy panic had a survival value that became part of our design.

This alarm system in babies left alone has a very important message for us as parents. For just as we are told right from birth to keep babies warm – since they can’t regulate their own temperature – we have to keep them calm because they can’t regulate their emotions. So dozens of times a day, a baby gets upset, whimpers or cries, and her mum, dad, grandparent or sibling picks her up, soothes her, and helps her relax. ‘It’s okay, everything’s fine, there, there.’ Gradually this soothing becomes part of her, she learns how to do it herself, but this takes several years of receiving the gift of calmness from others. It’s all gradually building into strong mental health for a lifetime.