The Invisible Toolbox. Kim Jocelyn Dickson

the grave, the evidence is in that the deepest human desire, after life itself, is the longing to connect. We enter the world seeking it and, if we leave this world with regrets, it is primarily because we did not love well or deeply. The blueprint for connection is written in our cells from the very beginning, and our understanding of this has enormous implications for the way we parent.

      For many years of human history, babies were considered tiny bundles of relatively oblivious humanity requiring little more than nourishment, sleep, swaddling, nappy changes, and, in more recent times, regular visits to the pediatrician. Twenty-first-century findings in neuroscience, however, reveal a much more complex picture. Brain research now shows that infants are far more receptive and cognitively active than we previously thought and that learning—the physical work of the brain in forging pathways between brain cells—actually begins in the womb. Infants, as it turns out, require much more than physical care. The neural connections that begin to form in utero set about building an internal infrastructure that is the foundation of a child’s future social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Their inborn drive to connect means that they not only desire our touch, they also want to hear from us.

      Developmental psychologists have long understood the importance of bonding in healthy child development. Harry Harlow’s pioneering 1930s studies with rhesus monkeys raised in isolation from their mothers and Rene Spitz’s work with children orphaned in World War II revealed that emotional deprivation in the first year of life causes irreparable psychic and physical damage. Our understanding of the importance of nurturing contact has only increased with advances in neuroscience that reveal touch—which, of all our senses, has the largest sense organ—develops very early in utero. According to pediatrician Alan Greene, “At less than eight weeks, when the fetus is less than an inch long, the sense of touch is already highly developed—before there are eyes or ears.”4 An infant experiences the womb’s pulsing of amniotic fluid and the contraction and expansion of its walls as a constant state of massage.5 An infant, accustomed to this sensation of being touched and held in the womb, greatly benefits from the continuation of this experience, as touch reduces the child’s level of the stress hormone cortisol. While infant massage has long been practiced worldwide, we in the United States have only recently caught on to its importance.

      Hearing is another sense that develops long before birth. According to Susan Brink, author of The Fourth Trimester: Understanding, Nurturing, and Protecting an Infant Through the First Three Months, the newborn, already accustomed to the sounds of the muffled maternal voice, recognizes and responds to a mother’s voice first. Aside from this, the sounds of a baby’s world are a meaningless din. But here is where the real learning begins:

      …lest anyone think these undifferentiated noises are useless, think again. With an innate skill that would be the envy of a statistics student, newborns are keeping track of probabilities; setting up neural connections in response to the patterns of the words they hear. They are learning where one word ends and another begins before they utter their first da-da.6

      Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist and leading expert on speech development at the University of Washington, has discovered that babies are born with the ability to hear the sound distinctions of every language that exists, but by ten months of age—maybe sooner—that ability is lost, “pruned away by a brain eager to cultivate what will be needed and get rid of what won’t.”7 Human babies arrive in this world poised to learn. At birth, Brink claims, babies possess:

      billions of brain cells, or neurons, but little in the way of an internal communication network. Immediately, every interaction with the world—each touch, word, smell, look—helps the baby lay down an infrastructure of dendrites, the branched projections that receive and send signals between neurons.8

      The science that enables us to understand that infants begin learning immediately at birth, or even before, is clear, and its implications are profound.

      But perhaps even more profound than how soon learning begins is the beautiful metaphor that the brain cell reveals to us, for it organically demonstrates a truth about what it means to be human. The work of the brain at birth is to begin making connections that enable the child to make sense of the outside world, preparing them for their ultimate purpose, to love. As parents, it is important for us to understand that learning is a drive organically rooted in a child’s physical being, and its ultimate aim is to create a meaningful life. When we speak, sing, and read to our child from birth, this loving way of engaging builds neural pathways in the brain that become the physical infrastructure for all future learning and loving. Learning, therefore, is connection, rooted in relationship.

      Major religions throughout history have proclaimed a life of love as the highest human calling, and the observations of those who work in hospice care are equally compelling. Paradoxically, death often illuminates what is most important in life, and those who accompany the dying in life’s final stage are privileged to bear witness to their reflections as they look back over their lives. Social worker Grace Bluerock wrote,

      For six years, I had the amazing gift of being able to experience with people their final days and weeks. For most, these last days and weeks were spent looking back over their lives in deep contemplation. Many regrets were expressed, and many tears were shed. As a hospice social worker, I got a front row seat into the lives of those precious souls as they attempted to come to terms with how they spent their time on this earth. Everyone’s story was different, but each held common threads and similar regrets.9

      The number one regret Bluerock observed in the dying during her years of service is that people wished they had loved more deeply. No one dies wishing they had made more money or worked harder. Ironically, at the moment of our departure from life, we are perhaps most conscious of the instinct that existed as an unconscious urge from the very beginning—the longing to connect.

      Our very purpose is imbedded in the work of our brain cells as we enter the world, and its function is a metaphor for what we as humans are destined to do. A child’s drive to connect with their parents is important to understand, as it is the foundation for all learning. From birth on, babies are at work making connections and building the mental and emotional infrastructure that will make sense of the world and carry them into life. As parents of a newborn, we are that world, and the primary responsibility to nurture this process is ours. Speaking, singing, and reading aloud honor our infant’s drive to bond with us and nurture the emerging internal infrastructure that will carry them into future learning and life.

Chapter Three

Kindergarten and the Invisible Toolbox Discovering the Tools Inside

      The first day of kindergarten may be one of the most emotional days in the life of a parent. Even if a child has had preschool experience, day one of kindergarten is different because it represents a child’s first real launch into the wider world of school and life beyond you. It is a day marked with the ritual of new clothes, new shoes, a new lunchbox, and a first-day-of-school picture.

      My son’s kindergarten picture was taken at the front door of our house. Today I look at this photo of him—with his brand-spanking-new clothes and sneakers, Winnie-the-Pooh lunchbox in hand, a bright, expectant smile on his face, and one foot raised, as if poised to take a step forward—and still get a lump in my throat. I also remember my underlying anxiety that day: Is he ready? Will his teacher be kind? Will he make friends?

      As parents, we know this is a significant day and for good reason. The launch of our child’s school career that will span thirteen years has arrived, and all of the hopes, dreams, and expectations that we have for our child are wrapped up in it. As we watch them walk away from us, up the path to the kindergarten gate to their welcoming teacher, we pray that they are ready, that the experience will be wonderful, and that this day will be the first of a long and successful school career. I would venture to say that all well-meaning parents