Clinton – co-regulation and the external brain

When babies are born and in the first couple of years of life, the baby is completely helpless and any emotion; babies have emotion, they absolutely do have emotion, and any emotion that they have, if it becomes overwhelming, they need to be co-regulated by that adult.  So the adult has to be like the external brain, as it were, of the child to soothe them.  So if we think of the brain as being comprised of billions of brain cells called neurons, they will be firing, the area, the emotional area of the brain when a baby is crying, is firing, firing, firing. They haven’t made the connection to the thinking part, or they don’t have procedures or memory, so they don’t know how to do it, to soothe themselves.  So they need the adult, someone who’s bigger, smarter and kinder to be coming in and helping soothe them.  That’s how we need to be responding.  So I very frequently in presentations talk about you cannot spoil a baby.  When a baby cries, they’re emitting to you the only way they know how and you need to be their big external brain and help support them.  You’re not spoiling them.  Babies who are picked up cry less, not more.