Grannies, Moles And Childhood Development
I feel blessed to live in a neighborhood where there are lots of families with lots of young children. Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been an evolutionary change in our neighborhood. Before the pandemic, we almost never heard or saw these children. We infrequently saw mothers or fathers walking around the block with their little ones. But now, it’s completely normal to hear the sounds of little voices screaming delightedly in play, a loud, high-pitched, singular voice repeating its demand for an answer, or another asserting its sovereign right for differentiation yelling “No! No! No!” (or some other emphatic declaration) at the loving, patient parent walking this little, mini-me up the street and past our open windows. It’s a real delight that hearkens me back to a time in my own childhood where every second or third house on the block had someone to play with and my brothers and I were almost always outside playing, screaming, giggling and just being kids.
As I fondly recall my own childhood days of outdoor play, I am reminded of the innocence, the ready receptivity of a young brain that wants to explore, create, imagine. The world is new and there is so much to experience. The Latin term “tabula rasa” comes to mind. The literal translation of this term is “scraped tablet” and, according to the New World Encyclopedia, it’s a concept proposing that the human mind receives knowledge and then shapes and forms itself based on experience alone. It seems that this empiricist view may not be, in fact, true according to Dr. Gerry Leisman et al.
In Thinking, Walking, Talking: Integratory Motor and Cognitive Brain Function-1, Leisman and his colleagues posit that “neural connections are “prewired” in a genetically determined, species-specific fashion.” Further, they say that “[in] its ability to orientate, acquire knowledge, approach and withdraw, the infant is highly limited in a lawful way. The infant turns toward weak and away from strong stimuli.”
Here’s a memory that arose for me. Maybe you have your own archival example. I recently received a small lot of my father’s mementos which included a photo album my Dad left behind. Scanning through his history, I saw a photo of a dark-haired, full-busted, matronly woman that my grandfather married after my grandmother died. Seeing this photo, I was flooded with memories. I viscerally remembered reacting to this woman’s menacing approach to pinch my cheek. In the words of Leisman, this was a way-too-strong-stimuli for a young, diminutive child.
Did I have to “learn” that response? If Leisman’s proposition is accurate, I was somehow wired to respond. No learning required. A natural response to such a strong stimuli could have been bursting into tears, running away to the protection of Mommy or Daddy, or even gasping out loud or screaming. According to the research, unlearning a response would be the more challenging task for a child.
As I study Dr. Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and learn about the nervous system through my own, I am understanding how it responds to the gamut of incoming stimuli. I understand Leisman’s suggestions about the infant’s response to weak and strong stimuli. I see how, even today as a grown adult, I may shy away from a too-loud person, instead feeling safer with the more quiet, reserved one.
In the case of my step-grandmother, not crying, running away, or even cringing would have required that small child (me) to inhibit visceral (gut) responses to a situation that felt significantly threatening and wholly unpleasant.
1- Leisman g, Moustafa AA, Shafir T. Thinking, Walking Talking: Integratory Motor and Cognitive Brain Function. Front Public Health 2016; 6
Leisman tells us that “The developing infant becomes competent not by any expansion of the brain.” You might astutely note that this defies the basic idea of taking a blank slate and adding to it for a gradual expansion that builds as we generally expect, from the foundation up. Instead, they demonstrate, it’s the critical act of selective inhibition that is the force which allows the child to deviate from the pre-determined patterns that populate their newborn nervous system. “Behavioral diversity features the growing ability of the infant to deviate from predetermined patterns of input processing and output, and to represent and mentally manipulate information and action that are increasingly independent of overt postural change. Selective inhibition is critical in these respects. The ability to deviate from ‘pre-wired,’ highly probable responses is based on inhibiting them, so that less probable response can successfully compete for control of behavior.”
So that child, when approached by the too-strong stimuli, develops its brain by selectively inhibiting the natural, pre-wired reactions of crying (or running away) and instead, that act of cringing or imperceptibly withdrawing, shows that brain development was going on.
In my case, the unchosen responses would have been triggers of my Sympathetic nervous system. My alternative, cringing response was activation of the Dorsal Vagal nervous system. The body wanted to get me out of there, but something cognitive and inhibitory kicked in and I responded to my step-grandmother with the hairy mole, instead with some level of restraint. The salient factor, for me, may have been knowing this person is someone to whom I must show respect.
Leisman et al say: “The ability to detach attention from salient stimuli … depends on the ability to inhibit (or habituate) one’s attention to what is salient. …To stop a single movement, rather than let it continue, becomes achievable only in association with the maturation of the motor system.”
“It has been thought for sometime, as Goldstein commented that, ‘Movements continued to (their) extreme are simpler than those which must be stopped at a certain point.’ It is the inhibitory component that lets brain maturation contribute to behavior.”
Therefore, if I were an infant when this assault of loving gesture happened, I may not have had that inhibited response to the situation. A frightened infant might not have the cognitive intervention that the 3-year old’s system does, nor would the motor system have the discernment to halt the domino effect of interneuronal signaling leading to an inevitable action.
So the brain does not, in fact, start off as a blank slate that only develops itself through expansion. The brain begins with some basic pre-programming to which experience and learning add their input. Maturation and development of the brain is, at least partly, a process of learning to overcome some of those initial pre-programs.
I see this in so many ways in my adult clients and in myself as well. Much of what needs to occur in the therapeutic or rehabilitative process is to unlearn, to inhibit, to disallow the old, practiced, well-worn brain pattern and, in exchange, substitute a new, less familiar, less natural or even comfortable pattern. This can be a movement pattern, an emotional response pattern, a thinking pattern, an embedded belief ‘program.’ This is why my constant and eternal reminder to my clients is to focus attention on the new pattern that you want to adopt and gradually let go of the old feeling, the old idea, the old habit.
Yogic philosophy has taught this under a different title and from a different perspective. Neuroscience is lining the bookshelves with the research that reveals the physiological and biological mechanisms that underlie this truth.
From time to time we all need help and support with rehabbing a thought program, a movement program or a no-longer-useful belief. If you want to get support from me, reach out and schedule a session and let’s see how we can re-pattern what’s no longer working for you!