For a long time, parents and educators have thought that babies' brains are like a muscle, a weak structure at the beginning that is strengthening and tanning thanks to bad times, hard life situations, suffering loneliness and separations and all those actions that help a child to be able to live alone without depending emotionally on anyone.
Well, it is true that by doing all that you can achieve the goal, that a child knows how to be alone. The problem is that there is a risk that in addition to knowing how to be alone, the child may prefer to be alone, or that he does not know how to be in a group, or express emotions, or even that he does not know too well how to feel them, of course. drown them to trust others again. And as parents we must be very careful with the stress of our young children, because Children's brain is not a muscle, but rather a flower.
But children are very resistant ...
It is true, the children are very emotionally resistant, and they have to be that way, because throughout history, life has been very hard for them. Many died young or saw their siblings or parents die when they were still young, many have been children that no one has loved, many ... But that does not mean that they can endure everything without affecting their way of being and more now, in today, because now they no longer have to live the hardships that our ancestors lived (or those that children live in poor countries, without going so far).
In Babies and more When you know what happens to unattended babies you don't let them cry againThe brain and stress are not too good companions and, if a child is immersed in a parenting style, say, rather intense, rather authoritarian, disrespectful and points of dialogue or negotiation, response systems can be altered and get to stay that way for a long time.
The amygdala: the brain alarm
Try to approach Dr. Bruce Banner and show him until he gets angry. What's going on? Well, in a parakeet it turns green and large, and goes by the name of "Hulk." Exactly, this doctor has a problem with his tonsil, which is hyperexcitated and works too much. The amygdala is the alarm system of our brain, the one that puts us on alert before a danger, before a menacing noise, when we are about to give a massive conference, etc., is what makes us sweat and accelerates our heart preparing for flight or for the fight.
The interesting thing, what everyone is looking for, is the technique or the way to control it, especially if we know that the environment is safe. The example of the talk is very valid, because nobody wants to stand in front of a large number of people to speak with a hundred heart, dry mouth and sweat soaking their body. The person must gain confidence, must make the reasoning exceed the emotion, to control it. Logically, it is difficult to do if you have never given a talk, but if you have given a few, the habit helps a lot and in the end the symptoms barely appear.
The adults, then, With our reasoning, we are able to dominate our tonsil on many occasions because we are aware of what is dangerous and what is not. Children, on the other hand, have much less knowledge and much less experience and the simple fact of feeling alone already makes them cry and already activates them. They get stressed if they are alone, if you ignore them, if you take them in a stroller but they want you to take them, if they are in the next room and they need you to hug them, if you yell at them, if you treat them badly, if you hit them, if you punish them, yes ...
In Babies and more An investigation shows why the crying baby should always be taken care ofAnd they have a giant, huge problem. They don't know how to calm the tonsil, do not know how to breathe deeply and overcome the bad drink, do not know how to enter the Facebook and say "What a bad day, for God's sake", waiting for dozens of friends to ask "What's wrong uncle ?, account ... "They don't know how to open the freezer and zamparte an entire ice cream" because I deserve it "and they don't know how to call the people they care about to help them vent, precisely because the people they care about, the ones that should help them to calm down, They have decided that nothing happens to them for crying for a while, that they should learn to sleep alone and that it makes no sense that they depend so much on them and that the sooner they learn to not need them better.
So, if we don't help them calm down?
If we don't help them calm down, if we don't stop the stress, if we listen to the advice of letting them cry, what just happens is that the amygdala gets used to being activated in some way and what he ends up doing is hyperactive, or what is the same, being increasingly aware of the environment, more vigilant, to respond earlier.
This translates into children who act in an exaggerated way, getting scared of things that don't matter, getting overwhelmed by insignificant things, being worried about everything and losing patience very easily.
"Already, but most children are like that," you will tell me. And it is true, the difference in this case is that many children who have not learned as children to calm down reach adulthood with many traces of that childhood, being more scary, more distrustful, with difficulty expressing emotions or, as I have said at the beginning, to feel them, with little tolerance for stress and with little patience.
What can we parents do?
As I suppose that no father wants his son to become one of those who at the minimum is screaming and throwing things on the floor because he has no self-control (which does not mean that children go out like this, yes or yes, because there are children very capable of living with adversities), the ideal is help them when they are small to calm down, help them to rationalize the moments of stress, to give them meaning, to be that friend that allows you to vent, to be the ice cream of half a kilo, to be what they need to sigh and relax again.
We cannot protect them from all evils nor should we solve all problems, because children need challenges, they need to try things and make decisions to grow, but we can and we must be there, by their side, to lend them a hand when they need it, So they feel our support. In other words, in those moments when they lose their roles, when emotions overcome them and rage, anger, or even fear invade them, we must be there to give meaning to emotions, so that they see that we know how to control ourselves, understand why they can live the problems in another way and see that there where there seems to be no way out, if they look for it with more patience and giving time.
In Babies and more Seven ways to calm your baby's cryIn this way, children add experiences, add achievements, learn to control themselves and make more and more decisions, being able to face problems and control impulses and negative emotions. In this way, when they grow up, they will be adults who, in the face of stress and anxiety, will be able to face the problems with greater tranquility, being able to work even when pressure, looking for solutions and light where others will only see darkness.
The problem, as I have said and assuming that I repeat myself, comes when those emotions do not work, when we do not help them, when they have to be the ones to calm them down, sometimes being drowned, but not resolved. Definitely, when they keep them to themselves, making the known "ball that is growing and growing" until one day it explodes, sometimes outward, or worse, sometimes inward (with symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, ...).
