Remember your first health class and that powerful image of a little monkey clinging to its wire-mesh mother for all he was worth? This picture really is worth a thousand words, because it symbolizes who we are as a species. You depend on your biological need for attachment to survive. We are born helpless and in need of empathic, compassionate, and dare I say, loving caretakers.
There is a huge trust that develops between the bonds of your child and his primary caretaker. In fact, everything your child learns about the outer world and those who live in it, as well as how he views himself and his outer world, comes directly from those early interactions with you. His sense of security, self-esteem, frustration, anxiety, fear, and anger are all connected to his early exposure to bonding.
When your child is separated from you, he is stressed, and the stress hormone cortisol is released into his brain. When that stress is consistent, and there's no secondary, stable and loving substitute for you as compensation, then that elevated cortisol floods the brain, changing both brain architecture and impulse control forevermore. Furthermore, your child will automatically experience stress simply by being around other children for long periods. It's not too different than your spending long hours away from home, socializing other people. These kinds of stresses cause elevating cortisol levels in the brain and manifest by impacting anxiety, memory, executive functioning and the cognitive ability to learn and process information.
Remember, not too long ago, we were foraging for food and living in small colonies of 25 or 30 people. Children from our evolutionary past didn't play with other children, but rather were socialized through the experiences that they had with their primary family and a few others.
We are the only species born with an undeveloped brain, which continues to grow through adolescence, so you can imagine how destructive a day care fight club can be to your young child.
- A caretaker is supposed to keep your child safe, well-bonded, and supported, so that he can reach his full potential. But when that secondary caretaker places your child in jeopardy, all that cortisol floods his brain like battery fluid, creating stress-related behavioral problems. And, it is a huge betrayal of the trust between your child and his secondary caretaker, which can impact the way your child's brain develops.
So what can you do about it?
- Find a safe and secure child care center for your child with a large enough space to play, and small enough classrooms to learn, with five teachers per every 15 children.
In the final analysis, you are your child's best teacher and he is best socialized by you. However, if your child is socialized by his peer-group, with fighting, aggression and rage as his lessons, you will be dealing with an aggressive, insecure, and anxious child, who may never reach his full potential, for the rest of your life.