Part 1 : The way to focused attention for your child (and more time for you) is through autonomy
We are experiencing a significant life paradox right now: we must be alone, to be together. The coronavirus pandemic is forcing families into isolation, in order to protect one another--to find connectedness as a society.
This situation is placing demands on us as parents that we did not previously expect to have: spending hours and days on end with our children, feeling pressured to ‘provide’ an education to them, a near-complete disruption of our normal work and activities, social interaction and routine.
Certainly, this is a challenging, unsettling time for us. And yet, as someone who studies and educates about children’s brain development, I find that the current situation is highlighting some of the pillars of optimal brain growth… if we are able and willing to observe. (And those of us who are in a position of enough relative privilege to be able, have not just the luxury, but the responsibility, to be willing to observe the pillars of children’s optimal brain growth. This is one process by which we will turn what is a privilege for our own children--to have attention and resources directed to the development of their whole brain and body--into a priority for all children).
The pillars of optimal brain growth that I see exposed right now are often typically hidden under our expectations, our busyness, and our habits that prevent clear observation. We expect that our children’s schools and activities are meeting their needs for learning and creativity, that their relationships are contributing to a sense of community and connection. We’re busy providing-- each parent in our own way--based on those expectations. We practice the habits of our daily routines, in the constant hope that the way we are living is really what’s best for us, and our children.
And now, here we are, stripped of those expectations, that busyness, and those routine habits. And what do we see? How does our family respond to being “alone together”?
I’ve heard from many parents (and experienced myself) a number of challenges that, when viewed through a lens which focuses on what growing brains need for optimal development, reveal major opportunities for growth. Growth that is necessary to meet the demands on us as a family right now, and that will serve our children’s long-term wellbeing and success in life.
Here’s three big challenges right now--see if any of these feel familiar to you.
Challenge #1: “I’m not a homeschooler, and I’m not my child’s teacher. I don’t know how to get my child to keep engaged in activities and continue learning, and I can’t get anything done with them needing my constant attention”.
Challenge #2: “I’m feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Not only that, but my child is picking up on the anxiety around us, and knows there’s a major pandemic that’s threatening lives. How can I handle their fear and anxiety if I can’t even manage my own?
Challenge #3: “Our family depends on our social network. Now, we can’t have visits or playdates with family and friends, and we’re feeling isolated and disconnected. Being cooped up together is driving us crazy, and the frustration is making us fight a lot”.
We’re going to walk through these challenges, and view them through the framework of Optimal Brain Growth. From this framework, we will discuss ways to alleviate the challenges in order to better survive this time, and support our children’s long-term wellbeing and success. Doing this together--with support and guidance--we can predict two outcomes: 1) less pressure on us now, because of a shift in mindset about what our children really do need from us (and what they don’t) at this moment, and 2) more confidence and calm about the future, because the approaches we take now will shape our children’s abilities to cope with hardship, and still thrive in their own optimal functioning.
Since this will be a series of articles, and I want you to commit to reading them, I’ll give you a spoiler alert: the antidotes that I’ll propose to these challenges we face, which we will break down one by one, are 1) autonomy, 2) courage in vulnerability, and 3) connection. And yes, each of those depends on an optimally functioning brain. This first article in the series addresses the first challenge.
So, how do we keep our children engaged and learning (and out of our hair)? This very real challenge speaks to one of the major pillars of Optimal Brain Growth: autonomy. The idea of autonomy is that the child is operating out of self-direction: they are choosing their activity (on their own if they’re capable, or for younger children, from a limited set), they are engaging in it of their own volition (not because they are being directed to), and they are not asking for much input from adults (they’re doing the activity for its own inherent reward; not for our approval). When the child has autonomy, they have enough independence to be able to engage in meaningful work, with the minimum supervision necessary. (The form this “work” takes will also be very different depending on the child’s age, but one sign you can count on to know that they’re doing work is that they’re in a state of quiet, deep concentration--and not needing you).
Why does the growing brain need autonomy? Because from the moment children are born, they are on a journey towards independence--that is, a long, slow separation from YOU, the adult caretaker. (Painful? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely). Children need to develop their OWN brains and bodies, and build the skills that will sustain them for their entire lives. This is of course true of all animals, not just the human animal. Yet never in human evolution have children had less opportunity to develop autonomy--due to such an abundance of attention and direction (read: interference) by parents and other adults--than they do now. So in some ways, our life and culture of abundance have posed a limitation on one of the major needs for Optimal Brain Growth.
Now, here we are in a situation that demands of our children an increased ability for autonomy, and demands of us as adults that we resist the temptations to interfere with the development of that ability.
Take advantage of this. To the degree possible (and I know there are constraints), help your child to set up activities that they can then carry out on their own. For this, I highly recommend manual activities--things that require them to use their hands. This can be drawing or painting, knitting or sewing, cutting paper with safe scissors or making elaborate collage art with magazines and glue, building with clay or legos, beading or weaving, cooking or baking, sanding or oiling pieces of wood. Make it something with a high degree of repetition (hence the cutting and gluing, sanding and oiling).
How do these activities engage the brain optimally? In several ways, but there are two main aspects that I want to emphasize for now. First, because of the refined use of the hands, which is extremely important for giving input to the brain, these activities quickly facilitate a state of deep concentration. The state of concentration activates the brain’s ‘attention network’, which is a set of regions including the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for directing and managing our attention--including orienting and sustaining attention, filtering out unimportant or distracting information, inhibiting impulses, and following through to completion of a task. This is part of a huge set of skills that are called executive functioning skills, and the practice of these skills is known to be one of the greatest predictors not only of academic and artistic success, but of life success.
Second, by focusing on an activity that is chosen and carried out by the child alone, for the reward inherent in the work, they engage the brain’s reward system, which is a network of brain regions responsible for the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine and subsequent feelings of pleasure, joy and pride. It is the internal experience of reward that makes us desire to work (as many adults know who are passionate about their work, whether professional or child rearing), and that makes us persist in our work despite obstacles. The feeling of satisfaction from challenging work well done--of nourishment for the brain--is not only rewarding; it is as vital to our wellbeing as nourishment from food.
The experiences of healthy attention management, and of internal reward, are among the most natural, and most crucial experiences for the growing brain (ours included). And, they are arguably among the abilities that are most threatened due to the abundance of control and interference from adults in children’s lives. These experiences must be lived in order for children to practice and strengthen the cognitive abilities necessary to develop autonomy.
Building autonomy in brain and behavior is certainly a long-term process, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a process to be put off until “later” in the child’s development (a notion I frequently hear from or observe in parents who, with the best of intentions, interpret their main role as providing things for their children rather than supporting the children’s desire and ability to provide for themselves).
Autonomy develops when we put its underlying skills (via the brain) into practice now, in every little way possible. And here we are, many of us with a huge opportunity to support our children daily by working on these skills, so that we can start to see the effects of them right now. If we embrace this opportunity, we will help our children learn to effectively engage in meaningful work activities for longer bouts of time (so that we can accomplish more, too), and we will be setting them up for greater success in the future.
Next up: how the brain processes anxiety, and what we can do now to soothe our children’s fears, and our own.
Dr. Jessica Phillips-Silver is a cognitive neuroscientist, musician, and mother, and the founder and CEO of Growing Brains: A brain-based approach to raising children and communities (follow @Growing_Brains). She is an associate researcher in music neuroscience at Georgetown University, and holds research collaborations in the US and Europe. Jessica’s work has examined how music shapes the brain, and why brain-body integration is the key to learning and wellbeing. Jessica consults with professional organizations in the arts, education and healthcare in Washington DC, and serves as a brain development expert and private coach for families that dream big. She is the creator and director of the upcoming theater production, Finding Rhythm: A Journey Through the Musical Brain, to be presented at Dance Place in DC.