Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
even very brief separations are
stressful to infants and young children
our sympathetic nervous system kicks in
and impels us to try to cope with this
separation by calling for the parent
crying getting upset signaling that we
need the parent back to be our source of
security and safety and regulation
[Music]
it begins to damage brain cells
hippocampal cells will die that's our
memory center the electrical activity in
the brain is being reduced by these more
prolonged separations the other thing
that's affected in the brain is the
amygdala
it's the fight-or-flight center so when
you've got this really overactive
amygdala the ability to be able to
evaluate risk make good decisions is
compromised not only does it affect the
architecture of the brain but long-term
it affects health and early death
[Music]
here's the foundation on which we build
our exploration and our autonomy and our
generosity and the cognitive skills with
which we're going to negotiate the world
it's a very fundamental system to
protect and it's foundational to many of
the child's developmental achievements
time is very important when you're
dealing with very young children because
you begin to see this deterioration
fairly quickly the idea that you're
going to hold a young child away from
the parent for a week or two weeks or
three weeks is an enormity of time for a
young child they just know that the
parent is absent and that can be
equivalent to the parent basically being
dead or having abandoned them
[Music]
one of the things we see in children
reared in institutions in the first two
years of life is that the attachment
system goes badly awry
ultimately that relationship with the
caregiver predicts the kind of
interpersonal relationships that the
child will have as they get older
[Music]
it's very important if we want to
prevent later very problematic outcomes
for these kids but younger the child the
more urgent it is recovery is certainly
possible but I think the prognosis for
most of these children is they're not
going to be okay
you