Behaviour Problems Begin in Infancy

Neglect During a Child’s Early Years Produces a Cycle of Abuse

Sep 15, 2009

Children who suffer neglect and abuse during the first three years of life are likely to grow up into adults involved in antisocial behaviour, violence and crime.

There is strong evidence that the first three years of a child’s life represent a critical stage in brain development. Neuroscientists have seen that certain areas of the brain grow rapidly during specific "windows" of time in a child’s development. The human qualities of emotional sensitivity and empathy are established in the first 18 months of life and are directly influenced by interactions with the mother or primary carer.

Healthy Child Development is Dependent on Parenting Skill

"Attunement" is the term used to describe the healthy bond created between parent and child through sensitive and empathic parenting. When there are problems with attunement the damage to the baby’s emotional development can become "hardwired" into the neural pathways of the brain. Such children are likely to grow up into adults with mental health problems who have failed to develop the capacity for empathy.

In many families the attunement process is disrupted by stresses such as domestic violence or post-natal depression. Attunement does not come naturally to parents who never received it in their own childhood. Parents from abusive backgrounds need support to learn sensitive infant communication skills that might seem instinctive to others.

High Quality Parenting Programmes can be Effective in Reducing Crime

In "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", a report for WAVE (Worldwide Alternatives to Violence), author George Hosking gives examples from various nations, where long term studies have shown that good parenting programmes are effective in reducing levels of crime. The best programmes use trained nurses, health visitors and social workers who spend significant amounts of time and build meaningful relationships with at-risk families. Hosking quotes a programme from Colorado where the nurses’ visits to families last 75 -90 minutes and each nurse has a case load of around 25 families. In the UK, health visitors can have caseloads of up to 240 families and their visits last only 20 – 30 minutes!

Poverty, one of the Greatest Causes of Family Stress

One of the greatest stresses on a young family is poverty. Even well-to-do families notice the restrictions children make on their spending power. In low-income, often one-parent families the stresses of poverty can be terrifying and extremely likely to have a negative impact on mother child attunement. In the UK about 30% of children live beneath the breadline. This must be one of the most serious and intractable problems facing our society.

Time to Invest in Effective Support for Young Families

In the UK the Home Office estimates that overall crime costs the nation a staggering £60 billion a year.

It is time for government to see that putting serious funding and research into creating effective support for young families is the best way to halve the nation’s future crime budget.

Native American Wisdom on Children, the Family and the Community

In June 1996 a around 2,000 Native American men, representing 115 tribes, gathered in Colorado to create guidelines for Indian men on their journey through life. From the wisdom of the Elders they drew up a credo of Seven Philosophies. Among their commitments were the following statements:

In our world, too many parents are effectively abandoned by society - stressed, suffering from mental health problems, often poverty-stricken and alone. As long as this situation persists, generation after generation of children will be trapped in the cycle of abuse. Finding solutions to the problem is not easy, but the first step is the recognition that in a decent society, every adult knows their responsibility towards the children of today and the grandchildren of tomorrow. "The pain of one is the pain of all."

The copyright of the article Behaviour Problems Begin in Infancy in Early Childhood Development is owned by Rebekah Hirsch. Permission to republish Behaviour Problems Begin in Infancy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.