Stuart Shanker:
“You get these behavioral patterns developing of how a child deals with stress. By around the age of two, those are starting to get entrenched.
The terms we use to describe their temperament when they’re two, there’s a high likelihood we use the same terms when they’re six, ten, etc.
But these are fundamentally ways of dealing with stress. (…)
Kids that would be identified as “bad babies” had low vagal tone, “good babies” had high vagal tone. What does that mean in English?
The sympathetic system burns energy. The parasympathetic system recovers, restores energy, repairs.
Every time an infant has a stress, it triggers the sympathetic nervous system. Now the parasympathetic has to recover, restore.
If the infant’s stress load is too great, the parasympathetic nervous system loses its elasticity, its capacity to bounce back. (…)
If you dramatically reduce the physical stressors in the environment of premature babies — turn off the light, get rid of all the alarms, speak quietly, etc. — what you find is that these babies were burning way too much energy trying to cope with all the stressors.
The baby now has more energy for growth, metabolism. So you cut the hospital stay in half. Babies grow better, faster, are healthier.
Temperament is really a reflection of how much stress that kid’s been under and how they deal with that stress.
Why do we say that temperament is something that could in principle be changed?
Through the five steps of self-regulation, we’re trying to give the child the tools for managing their own stress in a constructive, growth way. (…)
When I was a child, I would shy away from social interaction when I was overstressed.
Today, when I am really calm and in a rounded state, I love social interaction, I like a party or a crowded restaurant, I get a certain kind of energy from it.
But when I’m overstressed, I can’t handle it, I’ll run away from the party.
What we want with kids is deepen their understanding of these temperamental traits, so that they can recognize that it’s not the time for them to go to a crowded restaurant.”
Source: Converging Dialogues: #94 - The Neuroscientific and Philosophical Landscape of Self-Regulation: A Dialogue with Stuart Shanker
