babies

                                                  

“At three or four months of age, if a child is well fed and safe, and a mother's emotional state is one of opennes and calm, when parent and child make eye contact they initiate a harmonic meeting of the minds. As they gaze into each other's eyes, the baby will radiate a compelling smile and the mother will automatically respond with a surge of emotion and verbal and bodily joyfulness – and smile back. … What's going on in the brain is even more amazing. As they lock eyes, both mother and child are synchronizing the neural activity in the right cortex of each brain. If we wired Mom and baby up to an electroencephalogram (EEG), you would see their brain currents are actually in sync. This is called “attunement”. Their brain rhythms are getting in tune, performing a kind of mind-meld that is a very pure form of intimacy. Fathers, too, experience this as they engage with babies, but traditionally this occurs most between mother and child.” Stuart Brown, p81-2 


A large body of literature points to the critical role of play in the development of brain and person in childhood. Brown, Play, 36-41


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