External Regulation

External Regulation

Exchanges between mom/caregiver happen thousands of times a day. With each opportunity mommy is learning about her baby’s signals, and baby is learning about mommy’s responses. Through this the dyad carefully becomes in sync with each other and develops attunement.

When a baby is attuned to (responded to positively and accurately) it creates a positive emotional experience in the mom. When attuned, the face to face, eye to eye, mutual gaze “catches the mother’s heart”. In other words, it fires up her limbic system. The mothers excited limbic system is super charged and creates a strong neural connections as she is lost in the moment with her baby. This attuned response provides an experience of external regulation for the baby.

This emotionally charged gaze cannot be maintained forever and at times a baby needs to avert away from the attuned interaction. Aversion of gaze may occur when a child becomes over-stimulated or emotionally overwhelmed by the engagement with the mother. By turning their head away it gives the baby a chance to calm and for the brain to process the interaction before the returning to a mutual gaze. During this dance, mother and baby are actually synchronizing their right hemispheres and in this attunement and the baby is learning how to regulate its own experience.

Mother’s brains are changing during this time as well. While a new mother often feels like she has lost her mind because she has difficulty completing a sentence, her mind is actually reorganizing itself so she can become better able to multi-task. This reorganization will make her more attuned to emotional states (empathy) and better at problem solving. Dads who are able to spend significant time in a role of caregiver show reduction of testosterone and in increase in oxytocin.

When a baby experiences poor attunement, the baby stays distressed. This creates a state of chronic stress that leads to a flooding of the stress hormone, cortisol. Consistent flooding of this hormone becomes toxic to the developing brain and results in a defensive reaction, causing parts of the brain to be shut down. This will be discussed in more detail in Module 4.

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