I’ve never met a parent who didn’t want to give their child a head start, they just may not know how, yet. But I can't help but notice a feeling of helplessness. I wondered where that came from.
Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence as a backdrop in their lives, based on MRI scans, have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing.
Poverty and the conditions that often accompany it—violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs—can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.
Two recent influential reports cracked open a public conversation on the matter. In one, researchers found that impoverished children had less gray matter—brain tissue that supports information processing and executive behavior—in their hippocampus (involved in memory), frontal lobe (involved in decision making, problem solving, impulse control, judgment, and social and emotional behavior) and temporal lobe (involved in language, visual and auditory processing and self-awareness). Working together, these brain areas are crucial for following instructions, paying attention and overall learning—some of the keys to academic success.
We can't be put in a constant state "Fight of Flight." You don’t need to see anyone take a bullet to the chest to be affected by violence. When all of this turmoil is in the background, it tells your biology you are in a scary social world. It’s a dangerous, mean place where anything can happen. You can’t trust that other people are good. In such a stressful state, brain structures shift. Neural synapses are altered, and your neurons fire differently. The stress hormones that permeate your brain go into overdrive.
How much money a child’s parents make is just one piece of the puzzle. You have kids living in poverty whose brains are perfectly fine.
That’s because poverty is on the one hand just a measure of income. It alone does not equate to a neurological life crippled by the stress of violence or abuse. Certain kids in impoverished neighborhoods ruled by gangs can still grow up feeling safe, because their parents shielded them and emotionally prepared them to handle adversity.
Through relationships with parents, teachers and other adults who make them feel secure and teach them coping mechanisms so their fight-or-flight systems are not constantly keyed up, these children are able to develop resilience “buffers” that protect their brains from adversity.
It’s about getting that stress system down to baseline and building a capacity to deal with burdens of violence or poverty.
Why are we allowing so many Americans to start their lives in poverty, knowing that it likely will do them significant long-term damage, as well as limit our growth as a nation? It is a blow to our nation’s dedication to equal opportunity.
If brain development (and inequality, for that matter) begins at birth, then so, too, should education — for both children and their parents.
We need to teach kids who grow up poor to deal with stress from an early age. Even if your neural foundation is weak because of adversity early on, “it’s never too late. The brain continues to develop. Neural circuits are open to being shaped by environmental influence. The brain’s neuroplasticity—its ability to modify its own structure—is highest around birth and early childhood, and it decreases over time but never to zero. And between the ages of 15 and 30, the brain undergoes a second spurt of increased plasticity, which means that adolescents and young adults, with coaching and practice, are primed to adapt.
You have the power to give yourself support and break the cycle for your children!
Breaking the cycle begins with you. Reach out, create a trusted network. You help care for children in your community when you're not working, and have them help to do the same. Educate yourself. READ to your children. Think long short term, but also think long term. Create goals you'd like for yourself, then create goals you wish for your children. Learn effective collaborative communication. We are not here to dominate or demean another human being, be it your child or someone else. You're here to be their guide, their support, but don't forget, that means you let them lead. You listen to them, you learn who they are, you learn how to help them achieve their needs, then their goals, then their wants.
Take a few minutes each day and pretend this world has no problems at all. The world exists for you. Sing at the top of your lungs, laugh the days laughter, cry when you need to cry, learn from that pain, don't do your hardships an injustice by not learning from them..
This is your time to make a difference.