I am fascinated by the neuroplastic young brain and it has inspired me to create this blog. This blog was also inspired by my need to create. I have been a pediatrician since before my son was born. He is off to college now and part of my inspiration for this are the memories of his childhood years. Of late, I spend many mind-numbing hours dedicated to clicking and entering data in the electronic medical record. It is a big factor in the continued rise in burnout among physicians. Expressive writing, along with other creative pursuits, have been known to help people heal. My work leaves me no room to create anything. I wanted a place to heal from the numbness of “high tech” medicine. I wanted a way to focus my mind. I was initially going for watercolor painting, but I have decided to put it off for another time. So this is what I have decided to do. Our brains, in whatever stage of life it is in, needs continual nurturing, more so in the first years of life when it is growing rapidly. When I hear the word nurture, I think of babies, so I called it “Dear Baby Brain”.
The WHO defines health as: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Given that perspective, ill health is not just a matter of an agent or pathogen causing a disease but the world surrounding that person has as much to do with the causation, the course, and the aftermath of a disease or health condition. I went into pediatrics because I wanted to treat childhood illnesses. Nowadays, most of the illnesses that we see in the outpatient clinic are self-limited and only require reassurance and observation. I now see more “well” children in different stages of development and have become more interested in childhood development. I work in a clinic that cares for the under-served segment of the population and those who cannot afford health insurance. I am astounded to find a large number of children with language delay. Although there are genetic factors that influence the development of language, the environment has a huge effect specially during the rapid growth and development of the brain in the first three years of life. There is so much that can be done to nurture development in early childhood. I now see my job in general pediatrics as a partner of nurturers. Who are nurturers of that child? At least in this western capitalist society, nurturing the brains of our children seems to be thought of as the job of parents and teachers. Tom Weisner, a professor of anthropology and psychiatry at UCLA asked the question:
What is the most important influence for child development?
The most important thing you could do would be to decide, or think about: “where in the world is that child growing up?” All the things that we think of about the child depend on the context in which the child and its family are living: what family, what neighborhood, what community, what nation-state.
Weisner, Thomas S. 2016. “What is the most importance influence on child development?”. TEDx UCLA talk.
He goes on to say that unlike western industrialized democratic societies, in many societies around the globe:
Kids are raised by a lot of different people. Care is socially distributed. Children are very securely attached, but they’re attached to a social setting, a family and other members that help take care of them.
The minuscule time that I have with patients and their families barely touches their lives. Although I educate families and try to help as much as I can by connecting them to available resources, there are various limitations in this one-on-one physician-patient relationship because essentially, health is tied to so many different aspects of our environment and our society. Recently, I saw a 2-year-old child with speech delay. I learned that both parents were working. The parents tag team; the father works at night and the mother works in the day. When they are home, they are too exhausted to engage their child so for six hours a day the child was watching videos in the smart phone. Why do both parents need to work? Why can’t they afford daycare? Why is this child without health insurance? What is the educational background of his parents? Why don’t they have books in their house? What resources does this family have? In this part of the world, it seems to me that families are more and more isolated. As families leave the places they grew up in to find better jobs and safer places to live in, they lose the kinship of extended families. If that family was in another part of the world, he would be part of a community or an extended family and he would be attached to other adults and will be playing with other children and interacting with other adults and observing his social milieu instead of playing with a smart phone for 6 hours a day. He was born in a part of the world where you pay for childcare and where you schedule play dates.
We look up to parents and educators as the obvious group that influence child development but we all eventually find ourselves in contact with children. We all create the environment where baby brains are nurtured (or not) and we all have a stake in ensuring the proper development of all children. Hence, we are all nurturers of the developing brain. We are all in a position to contribute and benefit, directly or indirectly, in whatever role we find ourselves–an aunt or uncle, a grandparent, a business owner, a public servant, a neighbor, a church member, a concerned citizen.
Setting aside my selfish reasons in creating this, I hope you can get something out of it. Maybe I can connect with like-minded people through this blog. Maybe I can get you thinking about your nephew, a child next door, and about the bigger picture that directly or indirectly affect the children around you. Maybe it may make you pick up a book and read to a child at home or in the public library. Maybe you might do some things differently as a parent. Maybe you might think about supporting an organization that promote child development. The more I delve into this, the more I realize that there is so much to learn. There is so much information out there. You can shrink it to the level of brain molecules or expand it to a whole society or continent where children live. All of it about nurturing the developing brain. This is a journey. I am constantly learning, and I hope you can learn with me as well.
I wish you all good thoughts!
RootsToWingsJourney 