Show Notes
What is fast-paced screen content actually doing to your child's brain? And why does every parent recognise the mood their child comes off a screen in? Professor Sam Wass is Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of East London, leader of the Baby Dev Lab, and one of the psychologists from Channel 4's multi-award winning series The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds. In this episode we talk about why fast-paced content puts children into fight or flight mode, why using screens to calm toddler tantrums can make behaviour worse over time, what your phone is doing to your child's sense of security without you realising and why the thing most parents believe helps children learn is actually the opposite of what the neuroscience is telling us. Best Beginnings is the podcast from Babyzone about what happens in the first five years of life and why it shapes everything that comes after. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.
More from Best Beginnings
Dr Dan Wuori, founder of Early Childhood Policy Solutions and author of the Grawemeyer Award-nominated book The Daycare Myth, joins Best Beginnings to make the case that separating childcare from education is a century-old myth that has cost children, families, and taxpayers an extraordinary amount. The conversation covers the neuroscience of when learning begins, what the UK's childcare expansion risks getting wrong, how to assess a childcare setting, and why we are already paying for the system children need, just in all the wrong ways.
Dr. Stephanie Culler, co-founder and CEO of Persephone Bioscience, joins George to share the findings from the My Baby Biome study, one of the largest examinations of the infant gut microbiome ever conducted in the United States. They discuss how antibiotics, C-section births and modern diet have disrupted the bacterial ecosystems babies need to develop healthy immune systems, and why even breastfed babies can be affected. Stephanie also explains what the science says parents and practitioners can actually do during the first thousand days of a child's life. Chapters:
Christian Guy, Executive Director of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, joins Best Beginnings to talk about what it actually takes to shift a society around the earliest years of life. The conversation covers the Shaping Us framework, the ADB infant observation scale, what a visit to Reggio Emilia revealed about genuine long-term investment, why early childhood needs the urgency of climate change, and what parents most need to hear.
Professor Linda Mayes, Director of the Yale Child Study Center, joins George to explore what it really takes to change a child's story. They discuss the neuroscience of parenting, why stress overwhelms the reward of caring for a baby, how addiction co-opts the brain's reward system, and what the Minding the Baby intervention has shown about the limits and possibilities of early support. Linda also shares what decades of longitudinal research have taught her about the one thing she would bet a fortune on for every child.
Anxiety disorders are more common than depression in the perinatal period, but most parents and most clinicians still don't know it. In this episode, George speaks with Dr. Fiona Challacombe, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, on perinatal OCD, the misdiagnosis crisis, what attachment research shows about the parent-infant bond, and what effective treatment looks like.