🧠 THE 3 BRAINS: WHY KNOWING ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN WILL HELP WITH YOUR PARENTING 🧠

What? 3 brains? Where?

Yes, all humans are born with three brains that are in charge of different things, and knowing what each one does, will help you understand why your kids do the things they do at certain ages and how you can manage challenging infant situations.

When you learn about the functions of the brain you will better understand your child’s actions and emotions. As a result, it will become much easier for you to have empathy for your child when their behaviour does not meet your expectations. You will understand why it is so important to use positive parenting/discipline.

The three brains are: reptilian brain, emotional brain and intellectual brain.

Babies born with these three brains, and the only one that is developed at that stage is the reptilian brain. The rest are not fully developed, which means that they can fully use them like an adult does yet.

REPTILIAN BRAIN (brain stem)

The reptilian brain controls the baby’s survival functions. This brain tends to be rigid and compulsive.

It’s the brain that all vertebrates share (reptiles, birds, mammals, etc):

Basic functions:

• Survival mode
• Hunger
• Avoid too much cold or heat
• Sleep when tired
• Alert to threats

This is the only brain that our new borns have activated, which explains why babies needs are just very basic. The other brains are yet to fully develop. Our babies only care about basic stuff and because they don’t have any language available yet, they will cry when one of those things are happening: crying when they are hungry, when they are cold, hot, when they are in pain, etc… Imagine that the only resource that you have to express yourself is crying, wouldn’t you be crying all day long?

So, for instance when kids startled by a loud noise or are hungry, their reptilian brain is activated.

This means that we can’t get angry at our babies when they constantly cry because what they are experiencing is absolutely developmentally normal and we should help them and nurture them so they grow healthy.

So if you are tired or frustrated, it’s totally understandable, so try to take care of yourself properly so you can take care of your children properly too.

EMOTIONAL BRAIN (limbic system)

It’s the second brain to develop. It can record memories of behaviours that produced agreeable and disagreeable experiences, and it is responsible for what are called emotions in human beings. It’s the one that all mammals have (not reptiles or birds anymore).

Basic functions:

• Motivate us to do more of what we like
• Makes us avoid what we don’t like or what doesn’t make us feel good

At around 10 months, children already show a range of what are considered basic emotions: happiness, irritation, sadness, disgust, surprise and fear, but they are of course not aware of them.

The two first brains start establishing numerous interconnections through which they influence one another and a small part of our emotional brain called amygdala let kids react almost instantaneously to the presence of a danger.

If something that they experience is threatening, then the amygdala is informed and produces the appropriate emotional responses. So for instance when a toddler (2 years old approximately) gets angry and hits someone, their emotional brain kicks in.

This means that we can’t get angry at our kids when they react this way because what they are experiencing is absolutely developmentally normal BUT that doesn’t mean we should allow that behaviour at all. In fact, this is the moment where our kids needs us the most, as they don’t have the emotional resources we have (calm down strategies, recognising emotions, etc). It’s the moment to model how we behave in challenging situations. It’s not a time for lecturing, punishing, shaming our kids.

So kids are not bad, there’s no bad and intentional behaviours, kids just don’t know how to do it right. They need us to learn how to behave in life: in the supermarket, at a friend’s house, at the doctors, in the street, at the park, at home… and because adults tend to react to these misbehaviours as their reptilian and emotional brains activates too, it’s important that the adult cools down before reacting negatively and after a cool down period, we can teach them how to regulate their emotions or problem solve with them (if they are around 4 years old), depending on the maturity of the child really.

It’s the moment for them to start developing healthily their emotional brain with our help!

3. RATIONAL BRAIN (Cortex and specifically the prefrontal cortex)

Finally, we have the rational brain, which contains really important tools and it’s in charge of:

• Language
• Planning
• Creativity
• Frustration tolerance
• Self-control
• Imagination
• Logic
• Problem solving
• Attention

The development of these more complex skills is established year after year, and that with greater stimuli, challenges, support and opportunities, the evolution in these cognitive abilities in our children will be more than optimal.

Kids struggle with these abilities because the brain finishes developing when we are about 25 years old… which explains a lot of undesirable behaviours that kids, teenagers and young adults still have!

Adults need to teach kids how to use their rational brains when hard situations arise, we must not get carried away by our reptile brain and emotional brains. Crocodile mum’s sometimes eat their babies, because they can’t think, they make wrong impulsive and instinctive decisions, but we have the possibility to choose as intelligent adults.

And guess what?

Do you know what are the best moments to teach our kids these abilities?

Yes, those frustrating moments of tantrums or conflict with our children!

Yes! Parents are the best and the biggest influence in kids learning, so it is impossible children to have self-control, if at home we do not promote self-control or if parents say: DON’T YELL! while they’re yelling… Because there’s something called “mirror neurones” which are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action. I yawn, you yawn (you get me?)

So try to model good behaviour when hard situations and tantrums arise, model manners and values at all times. And remember, if you lose it of do the wrong thing (which is normal) just apologise and learn from it, which will be the perfect moment to teach your kids those fantastic life skills.

HAND MODEL OF THE BRAIN

Daniel Siegel, a very renown American doctor and psychiatric, came up with this cool representation of the brain that parents and children can understand easily in order to know more about their behaviours.

He said:

“Name it so you can tame it”.

He knew that when we see something clearly is easier to understand.

So, let’s imagine that the lower part of the hand is the reptilian brain, the thumb is the emotional brain and the fingers (lid) are the rational brain.

Now, kids normally go like this in life (which their lid flipped), with the emotional brain not covered by the rational one (because is not developed yet):

And through getting life skills and experiences and creating neuronal connexions, kids will start covering that emotional brain little by little with their rational brain (lid), being able to make decisions, control their emotions, etc…

Adults are able to and normally use their rational brain, BUT what happens when we are in the same place that our kids are, when our mirror neurones start feeling the same emotions?

But once we are really frustrated, tired and angry, we use the same emotional brain… We are all flipped now!

Here is when we need to remember that the focus of Positive Discipline is on us, on the adult: we need to connect with ourselves first. To help the child calm down we need to be calm ourselves first :)

Depending on age:

• Calm yourself if needed (breath, countdown, walk)
• Tell the kid calmly and firmly “I won’t let you do that”. Remember that when kids are in fight-or-flight mode they won’t listen to lengthy explanations. Explanations come later, when the child is calmer.
• Sit with them and support them. Let them know that it’s ok to cry, to be angry or frustrated…
• Once calm is time to explain why what they did was wrong and ask them about alternative ways they could behave next time (if old enough to verbalise that)

The sooner we start talking about emotions the better!

📙 I wrote a book called “Ellie, The Youngest Owner” for kids that introduces kids to emotional intelligence and how to recognise their big emotions. Feel free to have a look at it! 📙

I also recommend to watch this video on how to teach kids about their brain in a fun way!

Will you look at your hand and at your child the same way after reading this? 🧠 🙎

I hope not :)

I hope you found this post useful and if you have any questions or an opinion, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!

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Website: vita-education.co.uk