As President of Eartheart Foundation, an organization that has studied child development, educational models and family living for the past 25 years based in research from the 70 Federal agencies as well as other leading scientific sources, the subject of early childhood intervention is significant to our work.
One of our colleagues, Dr. James Prescott, former Director of the NIH Child Research and Development Division, has contributed extensively to the understanding of violence, drug and alcohol abuse and anti-social deviant behavior. Through his 20-year study, Dr. Prescott found that separating the mother from the child at birth and during the first three years of life conclusively predetermined violence and anti-social behavior. Dr. Prescott’s research and Vitae are available here.
The Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California, another member of the Eartheart Consortium, has discovered that the emotional state of a child can dramatically affect early brain development and learning. The 1997 article “What New Research on the Heart and Brain Tell Us About Our Youngest Children” by eminent neuroscientist, Karl Pribrim, M.D. and Deborah Rozman, Ph.D. provides new information on how the heart communicates to the brain.
Additional research by our colleague Dr. Diane Watkins on the Regio Emilio Day Care’s of Italy, culminate a philosophy, methodology and framework for the recommendations made at the conclusion of this presentation.
Research Summary: National Institute of Health
Dr. Prescott’s documentary “Rock-A-Bye-Baby” produced by Time Life describes the influence of different practices in infant treatment and child rearing on emotional development, both in humans and monkeys. The contact of the child to the mother represents the first socio-emotional interaction the child experiences and lays the fundamentals for its later behaviors. The social animals isolated from their mothers and receiving no nurturing physical affection develop severe depression and can die from such deprivation. In addition, maternal-infant isolation that leads to sensory deprivation can cause developmental brain damage. These facts show that mother love has a neurobiological basis that is essential to life.
Dr. Harry Harlow’s experiments with surrogate mothers which have shown that monkeys raised alone in an environment without mother and peers prefer to be with a cloth-covered mother surrogate without milk bottle rather than with a wire-care surrogate mother that provides a milk bottle, even when hungry. They cling to their cloth-covered wooden dolls when they are frightened and they experience the same emotional stress other social animal’s experience when isolated from their surrogate mothers. These experiments show that the need for a loving relationship is stronger than the mere need for food even when hungry. Love-hunger is stronger than food-hunger.
The single greatest contribution to understanding Drs. William Mason and Gershol Berkson provided the mother-infant separation syndrome in their swinging mother surrogate experiments where the importance of body movement in mother-infant bonding was documented. Monkeys raised singly in cages with stationary cloth mother surrogates were compared to those raised with swinging cloth mother surrogates. The infant monkeys reared on the stationary mother surrogate developed all of the abnormalities which isolation-reared monkeys develop- depression, social withdrawal, aversion to touch, stereotypical rocking and chronic toe and penis anti-social behavior. The infant monkeys reared on swinging surrogate mother developed normally with only minor stimulus-seeking behaviors. Depression, social withdrawal and avoidance of touch were absent in the swinging mother surrogate mother reared infants.
There are good reasons why infants and children seek to be carried on the body of their mothers and fathers and love to be rocked to sleep. Dr. Prescott experiments examined the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the process. Brain-behavioral studies on the effects of loss of mother love on the structural and functional development of the brain were conducted. These studies documented both the structural abnormalities of brain cells and functional abnormalities.
Studies by Dr. Selma Fraiberg on congenitally blind children demonstrated that when these blind children received sufficient body contact and movement stimulation from their parents, they develop normal social-emotional behaviors. These effects are dramatically portrayed in the documentary s are the studies of Dr. Mary Neal who constructed a swinging bassinet for premature babies. The premature babies that were given this artificial body movement stimulation showed accelerated neuromaturation, as reflected in head movements, crawling, grasping and other reflexes. These infants gained weight faster, has less health problems, and were discharged earlier from the hospital than non-moved prematures.
The documentary also demonstrates how a retarded institutionalized infant of six months of age can have that retardation reversed when provided a loving substitute mother in an intense ‘one-to-one’ relationship. The longer the deprivation and the later the mother substitute is provided such infants, the less recovery from the damage is possible.
Dr. Prescott’s work now entitled “Somato-Sensory Affectional Deprivation Syndrome” demonstrates the importance of the vestibular-cerebellar sensory system in understanding the brain structures and processes involved in maternal-infant social deprivation syndrome. The sensory neurophysical processes that mediate the pathological behaviors resulting from the loss of mother love is critical to the motor regulatory system of healthy children.
Research Summary: Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA
Following in this work, another member of the Eartheart Consortium, The Institute of HeartMath in California for the last decade has studied the effects of love and affection on the seritonin level of the brain-mind responses. The last decade has also produced an abundance of new brain research that is making many adults rethink traditional approaches to teaching and the way children learn. Alongside this new breaking information is a much quieter but perhaps equally significant collection of research on the role of the heart in learning and intelligence. Biologically, emotionally, and metaphorically, the heart is now being seen as a major factor in how children process information, how the mechanism of their memory works, and even how enhanced cognitive function comes about. Published scientific research by the Institute of HeartMath (American Journal of Cardiology) documents how emotional states literally affect the order of heart rhythm. Positive emotions like appreciation or care, create ordered heart rhythms while unhealthy emotional states, especially prolonged ones, created disordered heart rhythms. This is significant because these rhythms of the heart travel back up to the brain and affect brain function. Called by researchers cortical facilitation or cortical inhibition, educators clearly see the link in the classroom because stressed or distraught students make poor students. HeartMath explains the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain, thereby influencing information processing, perception, emotions and health.
HeartMath concurs with Dr. Prescott’s finding in that love and affection at early stages of development support the development of healthy human adults, decrease the likelihood of violence and anti-social behaviors, AND can actually alter DNA encoding. HeartMath physicians from around the world have become formative in retraining adults in the process of ‘freeze-frame’ a methodology for reclaiming the brain-mind sensory connection.
Effects of Sensory Deprivation on Infants
Since medieval and ancient times, it has been known that deprivation of sensory stimuli like the mothers’ voice and vision in early time of human life will cause irreversible mental retardation in the child. Also, the prevention of child play, devoid of rules and standards, will cause intellectual deficits in the adult. But eyes, ears and the nose are not the only human sensory systems.
Additionally, there are the two body sensor systems, the ‘somatosensors’. One is the vestibular sensor for maintaining orientation and upright walk. The other one is the skin, for sensing touch. These neglected senses are of overwhelming importance for the development of social abilities for adult life. Its deprivation in childhood is a major cause for adult and teen violence.
Brain-Mind Research
Much of the work at Stanford University by Carl Pribrim today on the holographic brain specifically reflects that children who are deprived of love and affection in the early years, develop a split brain phenomena. That is, the primal brain activates flight and fright and the forebrain, the seat of intelligence, shuts down to a protective modality. Learning and fear do not exist in the same domain. If a child has emotional scarring from lack of a ‘safe’ environment, the child will not and cannot retain information and build neurons of the brain conducive to learning in the ‘fright’ modality.
Foreign Application of Research
In the late 1980’s, Swedish Pediatrics Associates became consumed with Dr. Prescott’s findings. Convincing legislators in that country of its significance, laws were mandated that mothers would be salaried to stay home and raise their children for the first year of the child’s life. Within a few years, studies conducted by the Pediatrics Associates concluded that the government was saving thousands of dollars with such a move, crime had diminished, as well as violence. The government then decided to extend the period to three years for a mother to stay home. The sayings to the government with this move were estimated to be $471,000 per youth offender ages 9-12. When American incarcerated youths are set in the equation, taxpayers pay $25,000- $28,000 per year per inmate. If only HALF of the inmates are deterred from this move, the savings in taxes would be staggering.
The following year, Sweden extended the law to fathers as well. neighboring countries- Holland, Denmark and others- witnessing the effects on this legislation all formulated legislation that enabled mothers to stay home with their children for the first three years of life.
Amazing to the colleagues at Eartheart is the fact that the US government under the auspices of the NIH (National Institute of Health) conducted a twenty year study with the largest staff of any federal agency in the US yet other countries took advantage of the research. Carl Sagan, physicist and Director of Laboratory for Planetary Studies, in the last chapter in his book Cosmos, hailed Dr. Prescott as the “only living scientist whose work speaks for the earth”. Dr. Prescott theory of sensory deprivation of physical affection during the formative years of brain development- failure to develop affectional bonds- is the major cause of alienation, violence and substance abuse in our culture. His studies of pathologically violent juveniles and adults propose that the cerebellum is the master integrating and regulatory system of sensory, emotional and motor processes. The study of 49 primitive countries correctly predicted violence due to this lack of sensory development.
Bridging the Generation Gap in Child Care
Children MUST in the developmental years be raised in nurturing environments not the factory environment of day-care. In older European, Oriental and Eastern cultures, when the mother gave birth and returned to the fields, grandmother raised the child. Our children need loving environments with which to grow. If children must be left in day care, then loving surrogates must be employed. With the senior population about to double in the next five to ten years, with the need for mothers to work both economically and psychically, with the rise of divorce at an all time high of 50% (higher in major cities), what hinders the merger of these factors? We can create one-on-one situations for children by encouraging seniors and elderly to volunteer in day-care’s or stay with grandchildren.
International Response
In 1990, the World Health Organization and UNICEF recommended breast-feeding for ‘two years and beyond’ (Innocenti Declaration). For at least one full year, the American Academy of Pediatrics in their revised policy statement “Breast-feeding and the Use of Human Milk” (Pediatrics, December 1997) advises mothers to do the same. This action was initiated due to mounting evidence that indicated that traditional ‘institutionalized day care” which involves “stranger care” not only separates infants and very young children from their mothers and their nurturing love and affection, but also places them at ‘high-risk’ for abnormal brain-behavioral development. “Day Care” also impairs or prevents breast-feeding which is essential for normal immunological health and brain development. Breast-feeding is intimately linked to the child-care reform agenda. Yet, many newborns and infants are deprived of this best ‘head start’ because our socio-economic based child-care system discourages- if not prevents- women from being ‘nurturing mothers’ and from breast-feeding their infants for the time periods recommended by the WHO, UNISEF and the American Academy of Pediatrics. This dilemma is also recognized in breast cancer research that postulates that the inability for the mammalian glands to function normally in birthing mothers may clog and form growths leading to future breast cancer.
Of special interest is the loss of amino acid-tryptophan- necessary for brain serotonin development and other essential brain nutrients found only in breastmilk and absent in formula milk which pose special risks for abnormal brain development in formula fed infants. Deficients in brain serotonin have been well established in depressive, impulse dyscontrol and violent behaviors. The report that some 600,000 children and youth have been prescribed serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) to control depression is indicative of the magnitude of the problem. Prozac prescriptions alone have increased 46% from last year for those 13-18 years of age. It is highly unlikely that any of these children have been breast-fed for two years or beyond. Prevention is easy if only we had the courage and wisdom to act on the common sense and hard science before us.
In January 1988 edition of Pediatrics, Dr. Horwood and Fergusson from the Christchurch School of Medicine, New Zealand noted:
“Breast-feeding is associated with small but detectable increases in cognitive ability and educational achievement. These effects are 1) Pervasive being reflected in a range of measures including standardized tests, teacher ratings and academic outcomes in high school; and 2) relatively long-lived, extending throughout childhood into young adulthood.
Exceptions to the Rule: Regio Emilio of Italy
In the Regio Emilio Day Cares of Italy, the ability to care for children ages 3 to 6 far exceeds any model anywhere in the world. Out of the rubble of World War II, women impregnated by infiltrating soldiers ostracized by their community, formed and built a community day care. Eartheart specialist, Dr. Diane Watkins, has spent a lifetime studying these children. The single mothers after building the structure, lived, worked and played together form a unique community. The day care created through this environment is one of the greatest in the world providing the nurture and support of all children equivalent to that of the nuclear family. The children schooled in this environment produced works of art, craftsmanship and high intelligence. The exhibit “The Hundred Languages of Children” travels around the globe displaying the work of the children twice their age. It is this nurturing, loving environment which must be duplicated in American Day Care to grow healthy children.
RECOMMENDATIONS
National Health Policies MUST be in alignment with the latest research in cognitive development. Therefore, we suggest the following:
1) Create a program to support mothers being nurturing mothers, which includes affectional bonding and breast-feeding for ‘two years of age and beyond’ as recommended by WHO and UNICEF.
2) Create breastmilk banks in day care facilities where nursing mothers who are compelled to be in the workforce can store it.
3) As pharmacological immunizations of infants and children are required, so should every effort be made to provide “natural immunization’ through breast-feeding particularly infants exposed to ‘high risk’ environments of institutionalized care. This one step alone optimizes a child’s immunological health and brain development as well as life long benefits for child and mother.
4) Amend the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 to:
a) exempt nursing mothers
b) exempt mothers and families with children under three or younger
c) Provide monetary incentives to support mothers breast-feeding their children at home who would match those planned monetary incentives for entities and corporations providing ‘day-care’ for these infants.
d) Establish “Parent-Child Development Centers” that would provide training and education to welfare parents in infant and child development replacing institutionalized day care. Welfare Funds would replace Scholarship Funds and lead to Infant/ Child Development Practitioners advising and assisting parents in prevention.
e) Eliminate public funding subsidizing infant formula companies and use of public funds to support mothers breast-feeding except for ‘medical necessity’.
f) Set aside funds to track children who have been displaced from welfare funds elimination.
5) Provide monetary support to enable mothers to nurture and breast-feed their children at home matching monetary incentives to day-care operators.
a) Provide for an ‘environmental impact statement’ which establishes a cost/benefit analysis that justifies the total costs incurred in compelling a mother with infants into the workforce compared to costs incurred supporting mothers nurture at home.
b) Provide for an ‘environmental impact statement’ which establishes criteria for evaluating ‘benefits’ and/or ‘injury’ to infants and children placed in institutionalized day-care and other placed ‘at-risk children’.
c) Provide protection for mothers’ breast feeding in public against harassment.
d) Eliminate time-limitations on aid to families with a history of violence, addiction and/or mental health problems like depression.
6) Establish and “Economic Human Development Council” that would:
a) Quantify the human costs to families and children associated with the increasing disparity of wealth in our society and provide economic legislative alternatives for a more equitable distribution of this nation’s capital wealth among investors, corporate producers and workers where comparable and proportionate economic gains and benefits would be experienced by all in the economic growth of the nation.
b) Establish a study to identify those historical factors that led to the change of social-economic conditions where the income of a single adult is now no longer capable of supporting a family of four.
7) Develop programs for senior citizens to volunteer in day care facilities through reimbursement funding and incentives.
8) Last but not least, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution allows for women the right to vote. However, it does not legislate equality for women in the form of equal representation. Women hold the best interest of children in mind, have by nature nurturing characteristics and have qualities necessary to make legislation equitable for children, mothers and families. Therefore, we are recommending that an amendment be passed for equal representation for women in the legislative branch of the government. When voting, there is a ballot for one female and one male senator. When voting, there is a ballot for one male and one female Congressperson. This will mean adding additional members to the House. However, this is the only way women will have true equality in matters of law, legislation and government affecting children and families everywhere.
CONCLUSION
Without an affectionate and nurturing family, it will not be possible to reverse or eliminate the escalating domestic and social violence that is destroying the very fabric of our democratic society. We must organize reform necessary that would give equal value to the American Family with the American Corporation.
Therefore, we must conclude, the longer a child is exposed to the love, caring and physical stimulation of the mother, the more intelligent, social and able to respond or respond-ability to life’s challenges it will be. Let us learn from our European friends the impact to our culture, economy and environment infant-mother bonding with physical touch, exposure and movement to significant other is critical to healthy human beings for tomorrow.