How My Neuroscience Degree Has Made Me a Better Mother

In one word, it's made me confident.

Here's why. I've learned how to read, understand, and critique research in the fast-growing field of neuroscience, which means that whenever I hear a piece of parenting advice, I know how to find out if that advice is actually good advice or bad advice. And then once I know that... well, then I can easily dismiss advice I know isn't supported by research. Or, when someone expresses doubts about my parenting style, I can confidently explain to them why I'm parenting the way I am. It's glorious.

For instance, you all know that Amelia had a month-long bout of colic, so I got tons of advice. One piece of advice I heard repeatedly was to put the baby in the crib and then let her cry it out until she falls asleep. Now, while this is certainly better than losing your cool, shaking the baby, and thus giving her a concussion, or worse, causing brain damage or even death... I know that if I'm emotionally, mentally, and physically able to, I should respond to Amelia's cries. Always, always, always!

Besides leaving your baby to cry alone so that you don't lose your sanity and hurt the little one, the biggest rationale I've heard for letting your baby "cry it out" is that this fosters independence.

Um, no. It doesn't. Here's what happening in baby's brain. Lots of stress hormones (the most notable of which is cortisol) are being released while baby is screaming, and your baby's brain is being bathed in them. It turns out that, contrary to popular opinion, babies are completely incapable of soothing themselves for the first few months of life. When a parent soothes a baby, a beautiful biochemical cascade happens to stop more stress hormones from being released and to help clear out some of the stress hormones already coursing through baby's body.

Here's the part that might seem counter-intuitive to someone without a background in neuroscience. Most people would guess that in order for a child to learn how to deal with stress, they need to practice dealing with it on their own. Not so! They aren't actually going to learn how to deal with stress very well unless you keep helping then calm down.

So, why does this make perfect sense from a neuroscience standpoint? Think brain cells, my friends.

Everyone is born with roughly 100 billion brain cells, also known as neurons. And then, guess what? As you develop, lots of them die off. Wait a minute, you say, wouldn't you get brain cells as you got smarter? Nope. It's the connections between the neurons that matter much more. Connections, connections, connections.

As your brain develops, the neurons you use make connections with each other. And the neurons you don't use... get murdered. The saying goes, "Use 'em or lose 'em!" This is certainly true with regards to neurons.

Back to why you should help your baby calm down as much as you can without driving yourself insane. When you trigger the calming cascade in your baby, the neurons in charge of dealing with stress are used, make more connections, and flourish. When you let your baby "cry it out", those cells don't really get used, and so they might remain weak and rarely used, or even die off. Sad!¹

Now, I hope I haven't scared everyone. It's not that easy to "ruin" your kid. The brain is plastic (meaning it's always changing). One event is really unlikely to give your child depression or destroy their ability to deal with stress forever. So yeah. Sometimes I am not able to calm Amelia, and I'm going bonkers, and I really don't think it's wise to hold the baby when I'm that far gone. If no one else is around to help out, that means I leave her alone to cry it out and eventually give up and pass out. I've done this a few times.

However, if I can, I do my best to be there for her. If I can't soothe her, and I'm not losing it completely, I just hold her the whole time she cries. This is biochemically a much better option than leaving her alone, because it turns out that even just holding a crying baby triggers a calming cascade... and even if that's not enough to make everything better and make her stop crying, it does help the baby to know that I am always there for her. I can't always fix the problem, but she can cry with me. I'm there.

So yeah. I feel great about parenting. And you know, I think even during the colic, I was fairly confident. You know, for a parent dealing with colic. I think it's impossible not to wonder if you're inadequate when your baby never stops crying, but it was nice to know that I was being a good mom.

You know, I so wish this information was around a hundred years ago. About a hundred years ago, they started telling parents to ignore all their instincts in childcare in the interest of fostering independence. Except it kind of backfired. A few decades ago, "experts" told moms to avoid holding their babies as much as possible, not to look at their babies while holding them, and to ignore their cries. "Experts" told parents to put their babies to sleep on their stomachs to foster earlier mobility (therefore earlier independence). Even worse, they advised putting baby to sleep alone in a crib in their own room. That's pretty much a baby's worst nightmare. Oh, and let's not forget the "experts" telling moms that their breastmilk was bad for their babies, and that they should instead feed them formula.

And you know what the worst part is? Most everyone just said, Oh yeah, of course that would help babies become independent. Nobody bothered to test out these hypotheses before accepting them as truth. Now, a few generations later, we figure out that this was all wrong.

So here I am, coming back to my bottom line: neuroscience makes me confident in my parenting abilities. It's made me realize that my instincts are pretty much spot on. My instinct is to hold the crying baby. That's right. My instinct is to keep her close to me at night. That is great for baby in pretty much every way--emotionally, mentally, physically, developmentally... And nursing² my baby is best thing ever. I love it so much. Baby loves it so much. Yeah. And I could go on. And maybe I will later, but James is making tasty empanadas.

Love and neurons,
Jenna and Amelia

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1 It's true, though, that letting baby cry it out will train your baby to stop crying. This is really scary, because the neuroscience research tells us these babies are just as stressed as (if not more than) babies who cry when stressed. They stopped crying, not because they're no longer stressed, but because they've essentially given up and don't think help will ever come. This means that they may never get that practice in dealing with stress with the help of a parent. Sad. So yeah. I want my baby to cry if she's stressed, because then I can help her out.^↩

2 Another thing I think is unfortunate. Our society is very anti-toddler-nursing. That's stupid. There are excellent reasons to wean a child, yes, but honestly? "Too old to nurse"? Why? Why are they too old to nurse? "If they can ask for it, they're too old?" Well, that's fine and dandy, but why in the heck is that true? It's awkward? ... Yeah. That's dumb. Biologically, our babies aren't designed to be completely weaned until the ages of 2.5 to 7 years. And they wean themselves when they're ready. Heck, I could write an entire post about nursing in today's society. But I'm not sure I should, because it makes me prickle with agitation. And it might be controversial. I don't like conflict. I should go hide under a bed and mutter to myself.^↩