How Attachment Shapes Your Child’s Long-Term Mental Health

0:01 we see an increase in attachment disorders and attachment disorders have to do with how we raise our children in the first 3 years the longitudinal studies show that when a child has an attachment disorder at 12 months they have an attachment disorder 20 years later what is an attachment disorder an attachment disorder is when we don't provide our children with the emotional Security in the first three years that lays down the foundation for their mental health for life that Foundation

0:27 uh being there physically and emotionally to sooe them when they're in distress from moment to moment is critical when you basically you're dealing with a neurologically and emotionally fragile infant who is terrified of the world the world is a terrifying overwhelming scary place and the only thing between that child and the abyss is that mother or father you know it is funny right if you watch any n National

0:58 Geographic thing you'll see the animal in the wild the baby comes out and gets right on its legs and runs and yet our kids come out like plants like that's exactly right they should be marsupial think about it that way that in other parts of the world mothers carry their babies on their body first on the front then on the back but they make skin- to- skin contact with those babies for the first year until they can't carry them

1:24 any longer and then they always have them with them wherever they go whatever they do when they're working working in the fields if they're working at the co-op where they sell fruits and vegetables or in a store their children are always with them so the idea is they're always Within Reach of that child to sooe them when they're in distress and yes there are other members of the community that are there to play with them and entertain them and be with

1:46 them but when that child is in distress they go back to their primary attachment object so you could think of it as it's not just attaching to a baby it's also reassuring the attachment for the first three years so the first year forms the attachment the next 2 years reassure them of that attachment and so we're not doing that we're really not doing that in this country we're not keeping our children close we're not taking enough

2:11 time off we don't have a system in this country this is the most uncivilized country in the world other than Papa new guini the only country that doesn't have a paid maternity leave you know for at least a year and I don't mean that mother shouldn't work or father shouldn't work that this is the obvious question that comes out of this right when my wife uh gave birth um you know had some maternity leave and and a

2:31 little bit of paternity leave and then she went back to work for about 6 months MH and then this was her choice she said look I can't do I can't do this Y and so she left her career for for years and that was her choice but it's a really hard pill for for people to swallow to to hear someone say if you have a kid that's probably the best thing is that what you're saying I I not the first

3:00 person to say it I'm just the loudest right now n Lee said it many years before me she said you know anybody can have a child but to care for a child and she said if you don't want to care for your child stop having children and I'm not that harsh but I would say that it's not the having the children it's the caring for them particularly in that first thousand days that is critical to forming that emotional security and that

3:23 foundation for their mental health that doesn't mean that if you're there and you give them everything and they're emotionally secure that stuff's not going to happen along the way because the reality is there's going to be adversity that comes but there's a greater chance if you build in that security if you build that foundation in that when the adversity comes it doesn't blow down the house and what is the biggest adversity that's probably going to hit those kids other than things that

3:49 you can predict like divorce or death of a parent or abuse or trauma I mean these are obvious things that are storms in a child's life adolesence normal adolescence is the biggest adversity so there's two two critical periods of brain development 0 to3 and Adolescence which is 9 to 2 we know that it starts earlier and ends later than we ever thought before 9 to 25 9 to 25 pre-adolescence is 9 to 13 middle adolescence is 14 to 18 and late

4:20 adolescence is 18 to 25 and we know in that period the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex does not finish developing until 25 so I've heard this more recently and my qu so one question is has that always been true yes like so this is not something that has like we've gotten a little more mush headed because we're suspend we're suspending adolescence because we're wealthy and so oh now you're now you're a kid till

4:45 you're 26 like that's not what's going on here this is brain development we always knew it but we couldn't prove it until we had technology so and what's the technology that's made it provable fmis where you can actually see the activity of the brain and you can see the development of the brain and you can see that the certain parts of the brain are discrepant in development in adolescence meaning certain parts of the brain develop faster than other parts of

5:08 the brain and the part of the brain that really gives us emotional regulation and balance and helps us to deal with adversity and stress is is the prefrontal cortex and so that's not fully developed till 25 and so in these two critical periods of development you'd say the first three years is what we call neurogenesis lots of cell growth by 3 years old 85% of a child's right brain is developed and the environment is critical to that development so

5:37 parents say to me if I wasn't there in the first three years is all lost and I say no but a lot of lot happened in those three years we know that the environment is critical then and then in the second critical window the second critical window is a pruning stage so cell growth is as important as cell pruning if you have too many cells then you end up with a lot of problems and so these are the two periods where parents

6:01 play a terrific role in that development they helped to architect the brain of their children just by their parenting Styles which is why I started doing this years ago I worked in clinics and I did therapy with families and children I worked in a clinic with very poor families in Brooklyn and all the therapy I was doing didn't seem to take it was like throwing spaghetti against the wall but it wouldn't stick until I started doing parent psychoeducational parenting

6:32 classes and suddenly the combination of helping parents to understand well understand what wasn't given to them that they needed to give to their children in combination with the therapy that parent guidance piece helped the spaghetti to stick to the wall um so how did you know that how did you know it wasn't sticking and then it started to stick they stopped showing symptoms and signs of stress so a lot of the disorders we see in children and

6:58 Adolescence are stress disorders so if you think about ADHD um there was a whole movement to take the d off of ADHD because it's not a disorder it's a stress response it is the brain in fight or flight it's the flight part so what we're seeing in very young children is that we're seeing increased aggressive behavior which is the fight part or we're seeing increased distractability those are usually the first signs of trouble either aggression in school or distractability and that's

7:27 the first time that parents hear from from the teachers the school there's a problem they'll get a call from the school and the school will say your child is biting other kids your child is hitting or pushing other kids uh or they'll hear your child is distracted and can't sit still and and so that is the fight or the flight call it a stress response so instead of us as a society wanting to look at these children and

7:50 saying why is this child stressed we just want to medicate them right we just want to medicate them and shut down their pain and not see their pain because in the end for parents it works because they don't have to look at themselves the truth is that whenever a child has an issue it is the parents that have the issue with rare exception that's hard to hear as a parent right I mean you know it's like

8:16 bad news it's like I don't want so it's so when my my my kids suffering from anxiety it's my fault is that what you're saying it's not about fault it's trying to understand the connections between things again to understand the connections and to take responsibility is the only way you can help your child there is no treating a child in therapy if you don't treat the parents as well without parent guidance Child therapy does not work and that's because if you

8:42 treat a child and you send them back into the same environment it does nothing for that child you must change the environment what about genetics I mean I I understand that um we're not we're not born blank slates I don't know any parent that could possibly believe such a thing we are not born blank slates we come with a genetic predisposition but the whole field of epigenetics so my books integrate things like attachment research and epigenetics

9:08 research So for anybody who likes research it's it's research put into layman's terms both books but epigenetics is basically the idea that we're born with a certain genetic makeup but then the environment plays a role in turning on those genes so there was piece of res default switches basically so there was a piece of research that came out without that piece of research I could would have written the first book they found a gene for sensitivity

9:34 to stress there is no Gene for depression and anxiety no Gene there's a gene for schizophrenia there's a gene for bipolar disorder there's no Gene for depression and anxiety but there is a gene for sensitivity to stress it's the short Al on the serotonin receptor we need to be able to pick up serotonin in our brain to be happy to feel Joy to feel balanced right certain kids are born born with a short Al so they can't pick up the

10:02 serotonin so the research found that when a child who's born with that sensitivity and you know you have a sensitive child and you certainly know if you have more than one child because you'll say oh Jimmy was such a good baby you know never cried was calm was you know accepted the the loving and the soothing and then there was Bobby and Bobby was from the moment he came out he cried all the time he was hard to soothe

10:27 he had eczema on his skin he was right he he was very clingy so Bobby was more sensitive than Jimmy right that genetic sensitivity the research showed that when Bobby was given uh sensitive empathic nurturing and had the emotional and physical presence of his primary attachment figure in that first year Bobby had as good a chance of developing as a healthy little boy as Jimmy did but if Bobby who was sensitive was denied

10:58 that sensitive empathic nurturing then Bobby would go move towards mental health issues like depression anxiety and attentional deficit so we can see there is evidence to show that epigenetics plays a role you can be born with a genetic temperament but if the environment counters that if it's a sensitive empathic nurturing environment it can actually even counter the genes you're born with if you like this clip you should check out the full video and all the other great content we've got at

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