What every parent should know for an emotionally happy child - Guest Blog by Virginie of Clan Wellness

Did you know a baby isn't born into the world fully equipped for her to regulate her emotional state? It takes up to a year for an infant to develop the part of her nervous system responsible for the "safe and social" state. But parents can do a great deal to help nature along the way.

Let's discuss how!

The vagus nerve: role and development in babies

The vagus nerve is the longest of the twelve paired cranial nerves and plays a role in many bodily functions, including digestion, heart rate, speech, and even emotions. It is part of the autonomous nervous system, or the autopilot as I call it.

There are 2 branches of this nerve: a more primitive dorsal branch that develops first in a fetus, and the ventral branch which starts developing during the third trimester of pregnancy and continues to do so up to a year of an infant's life.

The latter is critical to the ability of humans and mammals to regulate their emotional state and interact with the world around them.

The vagus nerve is 80% afferent- which means that 80% of its activity is about feeding back messages from the body to the brain. The ventral branch feeds back from the organs above and including the diaphragm, such as also the heart, voice box, and inner ear.

When stimulated, the message sent to the brain is one of safety- deactivating the threat centre, re-enabling emotional control and giving us back access to our pre-frontal cortexes for analytical thinking, planning and socialising (this last part is true to older children and adults as this part is not yet developed in newborns).

At birth, babies only have a limited ability to regulate their emotional state due to their incompletely developed nervous system. It takes up to a year for the ventral branch of the vagus nerve to fully develop, allowing them to transition from a "fight-or-flight" response into a "safe and social" state.

How parents and care-givers can help

Parents can help foster their baby's development in several ways.

Touch

First, providing consistent physical contact such as skin-to-skin and belly massage helps stimulate this nerve by sending calming signals to the brain.

Stroking of the forehead and around the eyes especially helps to stimulate facial nerves in close relation to the vagus ventral branch.

Face

Second, giving cues of safety by engaging in positive interactions through facial expressions, especially from the top part of the face.

We humans, through "mirror neurons" can impact each other's feelings and emotions by mimicking others. This is why we reciprocally smile without thinking when someone smiles at us, and why it makes us feel good!

This in turn helps the baby to recognise facial expressions that communicate safety and build trust.

Tone of voice

Stimulation to the ventral branch of the vagus nerve contracts the stapedius muscle, a tiny inner ear muscle that changes the way we process sound: we become more sensitive to lower frequency sound, enabling us to hear human voices better and for background noise to fade. Therefore, using a calming, melodious and soft tone of voice, like the one of a mother singing a lullaby, helps the baby relax and feel secure.

Food

It is now well-known that our gut microbiome can influence our moods. The vagus nerve has some 100 000 nerve endings in the gut, which sometimes gets referred to as the "gut brain".

The type of bacteria and microbiome are defined in the first few years of our lives. If we're allowed to play in the dirt, if we grew up with pets...

But more critical is the health of our microbiome. Serotonin is a molecule that needs to be available to our brain to help us feel happy and content- and 80% of it is made in the gut.

When your baby moves onto solid, it is important to introduce food rich in tryptophan such as cheese, chicken, egg whites, fish, and milk.

Probiotics also help keep our gut happy. And a healthy gut microbiome will stimulate the vagus appropriately!

Being aware of your own state

There are several ways that human broadcast their emotional state- the face is one, as mentioned above, but also our heart. Let me explain...

Have you ever picked up on someone's mood as they entered a room? Of course you have- we are attuned to others' energy, specifically the electromagnetic energy that is emanating from the activity of the heart.

Through the work of the HeartMath Institute, we know that emotions affect our heartbeats, more specifically our heart rate patterns. Through the vagus nerve, the heart communicates to the brain signalling either threat or safety, depending on the emotions and the heart activity.

This activity is broadcasted around us in our electromagnetic field, which is detectable with today's instruments up to 3 feet around a person, the "vibe" we can feel.

What's more, is that HeartMath studies have shown that our heart can entrain somebody else's- meaning that we can influence the heartbeat of another person to match our own pattern.

Therefore it is critical that, as mothers, fathers and carers we are aware of our own emotional state and what we are broadcasting.

If we feel negative emotions and are triggered into fight, flight or freeze ourselves, our face and heart will communicate it. Our own state will influence if a baby's ventral vagus is stimulated into safety or if she will be triggered into the threat response.

Pausing to note how we are feeling and staying calm when challenged through breathwork or heart coherence techniques, such as the strategies I teach my coaching clients, will ensure that we keep stimulating our babies and children's ventral branch for safety and self-regulation.

As your baby and child grow, include them in these practices: when your baby is showing signs of distress, use calming strategies such as taking slow deep breaths together or singing a gentle lullaby. This will teach your baby how to self-soothe when she's feeling overwhelmed or distressed.

This is particularly useful at bedtimes, as our nervous system needs to be in “safe” mode for us to fall asleep. If the nervous system is aroused into “threat” mode, your baby won’t be able to drift off.

Conclusion

The development and stimulation of the ventral branch of the vagus nerve is critical for babies to regulate their emotional state and interact with the world around them.

Parents and carers can help foster their baby's development by providing consistent physical contact, giving cues of safety through facial expressions, using a calming tone of voice, food and being aware of their own emotional state and self-regulate.

By doing so, parents and carers can ensure that their child's nervous system allows them to interact with their environment in a safe and social way, and be trained to deal with the emotional and mental challenges that will inevitably come their way.

But most of all, we can achieve every parents' dream of having a healthy and happy child 💜.

A little about Virginie

Virginie Ferguson is a Mental and Emotional Resilience coach and yoga teacher specialising in overwhelm, stress and anxiety management.

As you've just learned, being able to self-regulate your emotions is critical to the wellbeing of your child. As a busy parent though, it can be difficult to have the capacity to do so, but it helps to know where to start!

Virginie is showing just that in this short 10 minutes video training "How to control emotions and avoid feeling drained".

No email required, just "click and watch: https://resilienceformodernlife.com/control-emotions

You can find more about Virginie and her amazing work at www.clanwellness.com.