Slowly the baby opened her eyes and looked at him. He maintained for ever afterwards, against great scepticism, that for a full three minutes her great violet eyes were not unfocused, but looked straight in his. All his exhaustion and lethargy left him as he gazed down into those astonishing eyes.
Elizabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family, 1953.24
Attention and concentration skills begin in infancy. Parents have become very aware of their importance with the increasing incidence of attention deficit disorder, which is often highlighted in the mainstream press. Our children need to be able to switch the focus of their attention at will, to choose what they will attend to and illuminate with their attention. We all have a ‘spotlight’, and the important thing is the ability to direct it at will. But that skill is not of much use all by itself. We also need the ability to keep the spotlight in that place while drawing simultaneously from our inner knowledge to make sense of what we are seeing. This is concentration: the ability to persist for a span of time in switching back and forth between existing knowledge and information coming in from the outside world.
Babies have a long way to go in developing these skills. Your newborn can look only fleetingly at any one thing: her attention is pulled from one thing to the next by movement, by sound, by touch. It is hard work for your baby to learn to look and keep looking longer each time. But she does it. Within just days she is able to keep looking at your face: each glance seeming to be that bit stickier, more adhering, connecting ever more deeply through that brief shared gaze. In making these strides she needs your help to take control over the three different sets of brain circuitry that create our attention skills.
The first of these is the ‘emergency override’ switch called the startle or the Moro reflex. It forces your baby into a whole-body alerting response in the face of possible danger. And while most babies will never need it, it is part of our genetic endowment and every baby should have it at birth.
The startle reflex is an in-built alerting system which focuses a baby’s attention on a threat and helps her survive it. Just how sensitive your baby’s senses are is revealed by how easily she startles. Babies startle in response to movement, particularly a ‘dropping’ movement, or an unexpected sight or sound or pain. To the ‘fight-flight’ hormonal bath is added a violent, automatic physical response. Baby’s arms and legs make a clasping movement, baby breathes in and then screams.7, 25
In the first eight weeks to four months your baby learns that she has no need to startle at a door banging, or upon being laid down for her nappy change or at a sudden movement near her head. She is safe, she is loved, you are with her. As soon as something is unpleasant or upsetting, you are right there, your presence and care providing the reassurance her own brain cannot supply.
Every time you lovingly kiss her forehead or her hands and feet; every time you reassure her after a fright; every time your face says to her, ‘You are safe and I am here’, you make a new connection. Over time her startle reflex pathway is swamped and diluted by a mass of new connections; no longer simply a road in to the amygdala, but a road out to other parts of the brain. And, as we startle in response to sensory information coming through all of the different senses, the startle reflex helps link the different senses together even further.7
Imagine a piece of string, held tight, down which a drop of water can easily run. That is the startle reflex at birth, easily triggered as there is nothing to interfere with the ‘run’ from beginning to end. Now, imagine that string with many new connections tied on. The drop of water slows, is diverted and sent down a number of different bypaths. As your baby slowly ‘integrates’ her startle reflex, this is what is happening in her brain. The startle alarm system is still there throughout life, and we remain able to respond in the blink of an eye to such events as nearly stepping on a snake, but only when the trigger is a very large one.25, 26
At four months of age, when that the startle reflex is no longer dominating your baby’s alerting and attending control circuits, she begins to be able to direct her attention. And, because the startle reflex operates partly through the muscles of the neck, jerking baby’s head backwards, as it disappears your baby is able to begin working on the massive project of controlling her head. Because the startle reflex ensures baby is vigilant in looking for danger through her as yet not properly working eyes, as it resolves she is able to start attending to fine details. Not the broad outline of Mum’s face, but her eyes and eyelashes, her mouth and nose, the texture of her skin.27
Although the primitive startle reflex has effectively disappeared by the time we are four months old, enough of the system remains to create what is called ‘reflexive attention’. It is always operating, but we are unaware of it much of the time. Every now and then it will say to us, ‘Look at this, right now, it’s more important than anything else’.
The next piece of the puzzle
You might recall the brief snippet on the children who had left Mum and me so puzzled in Chapter 2. Without a clear explanation for just why these children’s eye development was so very delayed, Mum had begun to spend the occasional lunchtime watching them. One day she was watching a group of children playing a ball game. Her attention was caught by the odd behaviour of two of the little boys in the game.
Every time a bird flew overhead or a car went past or a voice called out they would be distracted from the ball and the game. And Mum was riveted because, first of all, this is hardly a normal way for little boys to behave and, secondly, because she knew these two children very well. Both had every single one of the behavioural problems reported by teachers and every single one of the physical delays we had found in these children.
What Mum found so unusual about their behaviour during the ball game was that it looked as though it was involuntary. It looked reflexive. And that is what it turned out to be — the same startle reflex that a newborn has usually resolved by four months of age.
So these children were not able to direct their attention as they wished. They were still involuntarily ‘startling’ in response to sound and movement and touch like newborns. Why?
It is feeling safe that allows a baby to resolve the ‘override emergency switch’ of the startle reflex. But these children lived in overcrowded houses where alcohol and other drug abuse was common, and feuding and family violence happened regularly. Of course, the children who experience abuse and neglect are affected more adversely than other children — they know for sure they are not safe — but all babies growing up in such a setting will find it harder to integrate their startle reflex. The same finding has been made in war zones and after natural disasters.28, 29, 30
But this is not the whole story. Babies are made to feel safe by their mothers, when the attachment is both secure and organised. Although the mothers of these boys loved their children, they were not able to express that love in a way that created a secure and organised attachment. Of course, this comes from that chaotic, impoverished environment, and from not having had that secure, organised attachment themselves as children.
In the body of this chapter is a description of how integrating the startle reflex means that the child is no longer forced to look at the broad outlines of shapes to detect potential threat. Now fine details such as Mum’s eyelashes and smile lines can be pored over intently by the fascinated baby. When the time comes for reading, the fine differences between letters such as ‘p’ and ‘q’ can be detected. The very reverse is true for highly stressed children.
The two little boys Mum had been observing were simply not able to pick up fine details. So these two little boys were among the most severely affected and were not able to learn to read. Other children, less severely affected, were definitely on the pathway to reading. With the teachers we began to track the impact of trouble in the community upon reading skills. After an outbreak of violence or feuding whole classes would be unable to read on Monday as they had on Friday. The primitive startle reflex is ‘potentiated’ (in other words, the neurons are ‘primed’ to fire) by emotion — distress, fear, anger — and it is far easier to trigger afterwards. As a result, whole groups of children distressed by an event would have their primitive startle ‘retriggered’ and be unable to focus on the small details that we need to be aware of in reading.
Children need to be safe. They need to be free of fear. If they are not, then they will continue to need the ‘override emergency switch’ of the startle on a regular basis — and the need for survival overrides the need for optimum development.
If your baby is studying the details of your face, you know that she has begun to develop the second part of attention: the ability to orientate to particular information. In other words, to choose the things she wants to attend to and to wield her attention like a spotlight upon the things she wants to illuminate and magnify and explore. You will also note that her eyes are now ‘yoked’ together, rather than crossing and diverging. Her eye movements match. This has happened as you gently rock your baby while her eyes are fixed upon the ever-fascinating details of your face.
And finally she must develop her concentration span, that part of us which allows us to maintain our attention on a task, despite the ‘reflexive’ part of our attention saying, ‘But look over here, a fluttering leaf, and, say, aren’t you hot, and what about that niggle in your back?’
It is those children who have ‘long play sessions’ with Mum and Dad who have the longest attention spans. There is some evidence that babies who begin life temperamentally difficult, like Katie’s little Alexis, end up with the best deal here. In doing everything they can to keep a difficult child happy, their mothers play with them for longer. In the process they build better language skills, better play skills, and better attention skills. There is a belief that children are difficult because they are clever but perhaps difficult children become clever as a result of all that extra play! The human brain is frequently described as a ‘use dependent organ’ in the neuroscience research — and by this researchers mean that the brain is shaped by the uses it is put to.30 If a baby spends more time stretching their concentration span in joyful play, their brain will grow a longer concentration span.31
What if my baby is still startling after four months?
This is a developmental milestone you need to watch out for. Some children are still startling later if Mum and Dad have noticed the startle and decided to eliminate all the things that make the baby startle. If the door bangs, they stop it. If it is the noise of other siblings, then they are told to be quiet. In fact, this approach prevents babies learning they are safe, so let the door bang and reassure the baby every time. Do vacuum, do let siblings play in normal voices, because baby needs to learn that none of these noises presents a threat. Startling for longer and more frequently is also a marker of the highly susceptible child.
Remember the first part of this book. Make sure that you or another person involved with the baby are not frightening her. It is important that play with your baby is gentle and sensitive and that she is in charge. Don’t let people loom in at your baby or put their fingers around the baby’s neck — you will see this kind of behaviour sometimes in other children for a number of reasons. Always reassure your baby after startling and remember that the reflex feels like the very big fright you would get if you pulled back a lounge chair and found a large snake on your carpet.
One of the biggest surprises for me in the parenting literature was the importance of ‘low intensity’ activities for good attention and concentration. Reading, completing a jigsaw, walking, listening to a story or nursery rhymes, warm baths, being sung to, just talking with Mum and snuggling up, all of these are low intensity pleasures. The children who enjoy low intensity experiences are more likely to show strong self-regulation skills as toddlers and as school-age children.32 It’s obviously terrifically important, but just why is not so clear.
I believe that it has to do with the fact that a low intensity activity does not compel a child’s interest. Television, computer games and exciting physical games compel our attention. Low intensity activities require us to attend more to get something out of them. They are rewarding only when we bring our attention to bear upon them.
For parents of newborns and young babies the message is that you need a range of play. There should be some of the high octane tickling and chasing games and playing peek-a-boo, but there should also be singing nursery rhymes and talking and just being together quietly. Some babies need to be intrigued by your high intensity manner into the low intensity pleasures initially, but over time you can decrease the ‘hook’ into the activity. For example, with a little baby you begin reading in a ‘highly intense manner’: when you encounter a duck in a book you will quack like a duck. You might jump off the chair and be a duck. You might go get the toy duck from the bathroom. Next time you see a duck with your baby you will say, ‘Like your book, a duck!’ You will probably quack some more. Over time a lot less intensity is required to engage your child in the book because her own motivation is supplying it. You are steadily hooking your child into one of the best value low intensity pleasures to be had. When she is eight years old you can mumble your way dog-tired through story books, and your child will be utterly riveted despite your low energy manner.
Perceptual sensitivity refers to how well your child detects changes in the world around him. And it requires not just ‘working senses’ but the ability to combine new impressions with those taken and stored earlier, and work out what is happening in the world around him.
Perceptual sensitivity is a key link in learning and also a ‘self-regulation’ skill. When our senses provide just the right amount of information, neither too little nor too much, we can navigate with skill. Too little information and we miss vital information. Too much and we are unable to distinguish what is really important in the barrage.
The best start for your children’s sensory skills is a secure attachment to you. But there are some securely attached children who still have sensory difficulties as part of their temperament. For some babies the world is brighter, louder, busier, harder, sharper, steeper and smellier. These are the ‘sensorily defensive’ babies who research is now linking to the ‘highly susceptible’ group of children.
Recognising your newborn’s sensory sensitivities — how much he reacts to things and what he likes and dislikes — is a very important part of getting to know him.
We tend to focus very much on faces in our culture, but our babies are not yet fully ‘enculturated’ and so they have more diverse ways of expressing themselves. So watch your baby’s expressions but also check his skin colour changes, movement quality and movement frequency and listen to his voice tone. For example, some babies begin a blurry hum when they are tired, others may pull at their ears, others will get a little pale, and their movements may become less deliberate and more fidgety.
Observe your baby with the dedication of a naturalist, learn his habits, compare notes with your partner and with older children, who can be brilliant interpreters of younger siblings’ signs. It’s worth doing, as these cues tend to remain in place throughout life. The teenagers of habitually observant parents are often convinced that ‘the folks have a sixth sense’.
When your baby is hungry his suck and rooting reflexes grow more pronounced, if he is sucking a finger or blanket when he is hungry. The hands and mouth are on the same ‘neurological loop’, so if the palm curling around your finger seems to be tighter and ‘grabbier’, consider that baby might be hungry.
People often think that a whingeing baby simply needs to go to sleep. I believe that many babies need to relate a little, to play a little, to actually get tired before they are expected to go to sleep. So how can you tell when baby wants to play?
The little face is open and alert, the big eyes bright and expressive. Take time to note the exact expression in those eyes. A very little baby may look mischievous or delighted or bashful or amused or just about anything else, and often it is an early indication of an aspect of their character. There is a ‘waiting for action’ quality to the arm and leg movements. Vocalisations will be pitched directly to you. Baby is inviting you to play. And you play until baby has had enough. Babies will differ here too in their signs. There are some babies who want to keep playing even though they are getting too excited and go from excitement to screaming all at once. Parents soon learn to put an end to the game before this happens, although it is just about impossible for the non-parent to spot the flashpoint. Other babies will look away, grimace, stretch, flush or get pale. And that’s it, baby needs to be soothed and calmed.
Start thinking in terms of rhythms. Some babies have stronger biological rhythms than others, but they all do have some kind of pattern to their sleeping, playing and waking. Knowing your baby’s rhythms gives you a big headstart in reading the cues.
There are a couple of constants in playing with babies. The first is imitation, or back and forth. The other is anticipating a surprise. From very early in life (as early as three days) babies begin to respond with decreases in heart rate variability when they are trying to invite more surprises from the adult with whom they are playing. Babies enjoy surprises.
Surprise games with newborns are very gentle, and have a stop-start or a ‘pause-burst’. It takes baby a remarkably short time to see the pattern, and at that point the surprise comes when you vary it just a little. Wait until your baby is staring alertly up at you, his body movements are ‘quiet’ and his little face is bright, then try playing some of these games.
Sing a nursery rhyme one time the whole way through, and on the second time pause before singing the last line:
‘Round and ’round the cobbler’s bench
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey stopped to pick up his socks
POP goes the weasel.
Can you spot a reaction? Does baby begin to suck in rhythm? You might also like to notice how you are singing. There is a measurable difference in the way we sing to infants. It is more emotional and you will find that you take a breath in different places. Every baby is likely to show a reaction to singing, even if it is simply a change in heart rate.
Now try swinging your head in and out of baby’s field of view in a rhythmic pattern, and then pausing for a moment, and then doing it again. Is the reaction more or less than the one garnered by the paused nursery rhyme?
Another game is placing a cloth — velvet or silk — on baby’s forehead and gently rubbing it back and forward. Stop the movement to see if baby reacts, or even tries to turn his head a little to recapture the sensation.
Pick up your little one and gently rock him. What happens when you stop rocking him?
The other great game is copycat. It’s well known that newborns can copy facial expressions, and, later on, arm movements and so on. Just why this is so has been the subject of dispute for many years. In recent times many researchers have come to accept the existence of ‘mirror neurons’. Their opinion is that a newborn baby’s ability to instantly read a face and body (and an adult’s ability for that matter) is created by the magic of the ‘mirror system’ or ‘mirror neurons’. Effectively, this system causes a ‘mirror’ effect in your brain when you are watching someone. The neurons that are fired when the other person moves also go off in your brain. So, if you are watching a tennis player on television belt the ball to the back of the court, the same parts of the brain are busy in both you and the player, courtesy of the mirror system.33
Just what this means is still disputed. Some researchers feel it is simply automatic and means nothing. Other researchers see it as one of the foundations for empathy. The viewpoint which fits best with the rest of the neuroscience is that baby is born ready to communicate with another person.34 If baby is born ready to communicate in this way, parents are more likely to see their baby as a person. And when parents see their babies as people right from the beginning, they are going to care for them more sensitively. Being ready to connect and communicate is a powerful survival strategy.
When we are imitated it tells us that ‘here is another being just like me’. It warms us through and through. This is why the salespeople who are best at mirroring are also the salespeople best at selling.
Baby copying you is just one half of the game. The full game occurs when you copy baby … and he knows you are copying him. As baby learns that he can cause you to do something, he is becoming aware that he has a self and you have a self. How early does this particular penny drop? Certainly by two months of age.35
So copy your baby. If he yawns, yawn exaggeratedly yourself. If he is looking at you, look back and widen your eyes and smile. If you feel that your newborn is demonstrating an awareness of himself and you as different selves, you are hardly alone. Parents for generations have thought this, and while some scientists remain sceptical, many more believe this too.
Watch your baby closely for some kind of response. Your baby will show you the kind of games he likes by turning his head, sucking harder, grasping, opening his mouth, sticking out his tongue, making a noise, looking at you more intensely or even smiling a little, kicking his feet or waving. He might also signal that he’s had enough by looking away, moving uncomfortably, arching his back, grimacing, yawning or fidgeting agitatedly. Babies are only too willing to give their parents some feedback.
This is also a good time to observe how your newborn is reacting to hospital and the world in general. People differ greatly in how intensely they experience things. Life in the hospital is overstimulating for some babies. Watch and see how your baby copes with all the bangs and rumbles, the bright lights, the hospital smells, the sudden movements of those around him. If he is fretful, startling often and changing colour frequently, it is likely that he is highly sensitive to the world around him. If either you or your partner is highly sensitive to sensory information, consider that your baby is likely to be the same. Even if you were not considering rooming-in for all the advantages it confers in terms of attachment, consider it as a matter of kindness to your sensitive baby.
Conversely, a newborn who remains completely placid no matter what happens may well be under-responsive to sensory information. He may need special help ‘wakening’ his senses, just as the hypersensitive child will for sensory overload. You will find more about these issues and ideas to help in Appendix IV.
The role of Mum is so vital, and compared to dads, mothers seem overwhelmingly more important to newborns. But researchers are uncovering more all the time about the importance of that early social play with Dad, and also the enormous importance of babies having both a man and a woman in their lives.36
When Dad is interacting with his baby son, the degree of synchrony is that little bit higher than baby achieves with Mum; and it is the same for mothers and daughters. The natural biological rhythms of each sex are just that little bit different, allowing a closer match with the same sex parent. Baby boys find it easier to ‘get into sync’ with their dads, and the benefits to them are enormous.37
But the different kind of play that both Dad and Mum bring to the equation for both baby girls and boys is also valuable. Researchers have found that a father’s play is more physical than a mother’s, and often also involves a physical object. What this means is that baby learns there is more than one kind of relationship possible in this world: this doesn’t just help in relating to others, but also becomes important in the development of thinking skills.35
If you are a dad and feeling a bit lost when it comes to interacting with your new baby, check through your memories of your own father. Look for one where he was comfortable with your vulnerability, where you felt trust and admiration for this much bigger and stronger person. If you are lacking such a memory, try to find another memory with the same kind of emotional feeling.
Keep that memory in mind: once you were the vulnerable one, now you are the big, strong, wise person. Martin’s tip is that it is easier to do this when you remember that the baby desperately wants to be picked up by you, to hear you talk and sing, to look at your face.
Spend time watching your baby and you will begin to notice movements he makes in response to your face. Baby will look at the broad outlines of your face, and his little arms will wave with just a bit more excitement. Coupled with an alert expression, this means ‘pick me up’. You need to respond to this. Pick up your baby, supporting his neck. Then start talking and watch for any movements (wriggles, kicks and waves) that correlate to the pitch and length of your words. I think that babies respond more physically to dads from the get-go. See what you think, see if the wriggles of arms and legs are larger in a conversation with you. You will, of course, see the most movement from a baby before a feed.
Look for those beckoning movements and then add a little movement in return for your baby to digest. It’s the same kind of give and take, reading the play, adding your bit and watching for a lead that occurs in any social interaction or even in a sporting game. Until a baby is four or five months old he can’t grab things, so the give and take of social exchange is all he has.
Consider that you want your child, particularly your son, to develop all his emotional competencies. If you want him to be resilient, this is achieved not by withholding comfort but by giving comfort. If you want him to be independent in his thinking, neither a bully nor a victim, comfort him when he cries. What’s the link? By withholding comfort as a parent you are actually being a bully and placing him in the role of victim, giving him one of two pathways to follow later. But by comforting him, you are teaching him to regulate his own emotions, to become his own ‘man’, neither requiring him to gain more energy and power by bullying another nor creating in him that need for outside reassurance.
I have tended to refer throughout to mums — I am one, after all — but a very involved dad as well as a mum adds another dimension to development again. Baby has two brains to grow from rather than one, conferring life-long advantages. If you are a single parent, the message is to ensure your baby regularly interacts with another adult who loves them.