The Evolved Nest is a breakthrough concept that integrates findings across fields that bear on child development, child raising and adult behavior.  The Evolved Nest promotes optimal health and wellbeing, cooperation, and receptive and sociomoral intelligences. Societal moves away from providing the Evolved Nest have contributed to the ill being and dysregulation we see in one another and society. Learn how to nest your children and re-nest yourself. 

This video addresses one of the nine components of the Evolved Nest. Visit the website for more resources and information: www.evolvednest.org

RESPONSIVENESS TO NEEDS AND CUES
What to do:

•  Learn the cues your baby gives to signal needs. Skin-to-skin contact is especially good for this in the early hours, days and months of life.
•  Learn to move in with a response before your baby cries—in order to keep baby in optimal arousal. Otherwise your baby will practice becoming distressed as part of his personality. 

Why?

After nine months of gestational synchrony, human mothers and neonates under natural conditions typically move into an interactional synchrony of sound and movement within the first hours after birth (e.g., Condon & Sander, 1974; Papousek & Papousek, 1992). Caregivers act as external regulators of psychological and biological development (Hofer, 1994; Schore, 2001). Optimal human development is thus rooted in social synchrony with others who help the child maintain optimal arousal levels (Reddy, 2008; Schore, 1994; Trevarthen, 2005). 

In early life, the brain is forming its emotional circuitry and structures in collaboration with caregivers (for reviews, see Schore, 1994; 2001). Responsive caregivers, in mutual co-regulation, shape the infant brain for self-regulation within and across multiple sensory systems (e.g., respiratory, hormonal), influencing multiple levels of functioning (Hofer, 1994) and establishing emotional patterns that promote confidence and mental health. 

For example, responsive care with co-regulated communication patterns is related to good vagal tone, which is critical for well functioning digestive, cardiac, respiratory, and immune as well as emotional systems (e.g., Donzella et al., 2000; Propper et al 2008; Stam et al., 1997). Non-responsive parenting leads to poor vagal tone (e.g., Calkins, Smith, Gill & Johnson, 1998; Porter, 2003). Other systems are also affected negatively. For example, having a depressed mother (whose nurturing responses are limited) alters the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA; e.g., Beatson & Taryan, 2003; see Dawson, Ashman & Carver, 2000, for a review). 

See the website for more: https://evolvednest.org/evolved-nest-components

Evolved Nest Explained: Companionship, Responsiveness, Attachment

The Evolved Nest is a breakthrough concept that integrates findings across fields that bear on child development, child raising and adult behavior.  The Evolved Nest promotes optimal health and wellbeing, cooperation, and receptive and sociomoral intelligences. Societal moves away from providing the Evolved Nest have contributed to the ill being and dysregulation we see in one another and society. Learn how to nest your children and re-nest yourself.

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