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Best Beginnings is the podcast for everyone working in or caring about the early years. Hosted by George Looker, CEO of Babyzone, each episode brings together leading researchers, clinicians, practitioners, policymakers and parents to explore the evidence, ideas and innovations shaping how we support children and families in the UK.
From infant mental health and attachment to workforce challenges and systems change, Best Beginnings goes beyond the headlines to have the conversations that matter most in early childhood.
New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Best Beginnings is brought to you by Babyzone, a national charity operating free, evidence-based family hubs across England for families with children aged 0–5.
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:09:13
Unknown
what you should be saying to me is, you know, today your daughter did exactly the same things, exactly the same times as she did yesterday. And that, in turn, is exactly the same as the day before.
00:00:09:14 - 00:00:21:07
Unknown
Children's brains. Young children's brains don't learn best from a lot of stimulation. Young children's brains learn best from doing the same thing over and over again in a slow paced, predictable, repetitious way.
00:00:21:07 - 00:00:30:22
Unknown
So this idea that you more you stimulate young brain, the more they learn in a lot of ways, that's exactly the opposite of what the neuroscience is telling us.
00:00:30:24 - 00:00:56:13
Unknown
By the time a child turns to 80% of their brain, architecture is already in place. The connections that shape how they learn, how they regulate emotions, how they form relationships. Most of that is built before they can even speak. And yet, as a society, we invest the least in the years that matter most. 1 in 4 children start school without the skills they need to thrive, not because their parents failed them, but because the system did.
00:00:56:15 - 00:01:17:17
Unknown
What we at Baby Zone have learned from thousands of families visiting us is this. The early years are a time when many parents feel unsure or overwhelmed, even when things are going well. It doesn't always feel easy, but when families have the right support through play, through evidence, informed guidance, through someone simply saying what your child is doing is completely normal.
00:01:17:19 - 00:01:41:03
Unknown
Everything changes. I'm George and this is Best Beginnings, a podcast brought to you by babies. Learn about what happens in the first five years of life and why it shapes everything that comes after each week. I talk to the people who are thinking most deeply about how to give every child the best possible start. Researchers, practitioners, parents, and policymakers.
00:01:41:05 - 00:01:48:01
Unknown
Not to lecture you about what you should be doing, but to explore together what actually works and what gets in the way.
00:01:48:03 - 00:02:18:16
Unknown
Today's guest has spent his career trying to understand what's going on inside babies brains not in laboratories, but in kitchens, playgrounds and living rooms in the messy, real world conditions in which children actually develop. His research examines stress, attention and concentration developed during infancy and early childhood, and how the relationship between a parent and a child shapes the developing brain in ways that are both profound and, in the right conditions, deeply hopeful.
00:02:18:18 - 00:02:48:17
Unknown
He is professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of East London. Leader of the Institute of the science of the Early Years and the UCLA Baby Dev Lab. He has a first class degree from Oxford, a PhD from Birkbeck, and a postwar postdoctoral research at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge. You may also know him as one of the psychologists in Channel Four's multi-award winning series, The Secret Life of 4 or 5 and six year olds.
00:02:48:19 - 00:02:50:18
Unknown
Sam, welcome to Best
00:02:50:20 - 00:03:11:18
Unknown
I wanted to start somewhere, with you about your most current research and something that our families talk to us every week when we engage with them at Baby Zone. And that's about screen time. We know it's something that, people are looking for guidance. People are looking for help and support as to how to navigate this relatively new phenomenon with young families.
00:03:11:20 - 00:03:16:07
Unknown
What is your research showing here, and what are you looking to provide and by way of guidance?
00:03:16:10 - 00:03:38:16
Unknown
Yeah, so this is something we've been thinking about a lot. So we've got this evidence review at the moment coming in for the partner. Education is going to be issuing advisory or not to fives on what to do with screen time. So I together with other colleagues, have been, you know, really trawling carefully through the literature what is out there at the moment on evidence for how early screen exposure affects children feeding in, as you say, partly from my research that we're doing, which I talk about in a moment.
00:03:38:16 - 00:04:00:20
Unknown
But now it's a really big issue. We know that since iPhones, iPads, 2009, 2010, there's been massive changes in the amount of screen exposure. You know, every parent has, you know, you've got young kids, too. I've got three young kids under the age of six. And, you know, you will feel that urge. You know, you're sitting at a restaurant, waiting for food to come.
00:04:00:20 - 00:04:18:10
Unknown
Everyone's a bit hungry. You pull out your phone, put on Peppa Pig, and we know that there's a lot of evidence that the amount of screen exposure that young children have is really going through the roof. The average, two year old, which is two hours, 23 minutes a day, the top 20% of two year olds are watching five hours a day.
00:04:18:16 - 00:04:43:24
Unknown
So really quite high levels of exposure. What we've been talking about and debating about, and this is it's very, very hard to be sure. So there's a lot of correlation evidence coming out. So particularly for things like language and behavior and emotional dysregulation and particularly also links between kind of early screen exposure and later life, what we call particularly affective disorder.
00:04:43:24 - 00:05:09:15
Unknown
So anxiety and depression, that's coming out kind of most strongly in terms of these kind of longitudinal correlations. Very, very hard to be sure. What causes what what I personally been feeding in is the research that we're looking at. So we're looking at how young brains kind of learn differently and process sights and sounds differently. So now the young brain, to put it coarsely and I sometimes get criticized for saying it, but I just love children so much.
00:05:09:17 - 00:05:28:03
Unknown
It's not a criticism, but that their brains are basically a big kind of jumbled over connected mess. Yeah, we have the peak number of, synapses, which is connections between neurons in the brain. Sometime between about two and five, depending on where exactly in the brain you look. And, and this affects know how children learn in lots and lots of ways.
00:05:28:03 - 00:05:47:04
Unknown
It affects the ways in which they massively outstrip our adult grades in terms of sheer raw learning capacity, things like language learning, lots of other forms of learning which you can talk about more if you're interested later. But this fact that their brains are this big, jumbled, over connected mess also means that they process sights and sounds very differently.
00:05:47:06 - 00:06:11:11
Unknown
And one of the things that we're looking at in the research is the speed of processing. Yeah. So there's I've got interest in this from a study that was done a few years ago that just looked at the fastest, kind of rate of change that you can see. So our adult brain, can see up to ten frame changes per second, and you do the same, exactly the same experiment with an 18 month old, and they can see up to one frame change per second.
00:06:11:11 - 00:06:24:16
Unknown
Yeah. And I've done this with my own kids, you know, just out of interest. My wife always told me it was a bit cool for doing it, but it used to make me smile that you kind of hold a ball up there. And then they'd be looking at the boobs and, oh, a ball. And then you'll drop it from one hand to another.
00:06:24:21 - 00:06:39:02
Unknown
And then the expression is incredibly clear on the expression. It's just like, oh, where did that go? Oh, there it is in daddy's hand. But they can't actually see it when it's moving, because anything that's less than a second they can't see. And and this affects lots of things. It affects a lot of how we communicate with children.
00:06:39:04 - 00:06:56:14
Unknown
You know, a lot of the time when you smile and actually in conversation that's been going on last in less than a second. And it's a real effort, you know, to keep a smile and hold out there for three seconds. Yeah. And but it also really affects screens. Yeah. So we know the screen content has been getting faster paced over time.
00:06:56:17 - 00:07:17:06
Unknown
Yeah. Lots of really, really good evidence. You know, since we've started making movies, Hollywood movies are getting more fast paced, definitely accelerated in recent years. Now 93%, I think of, 3 to 5 year olds watch YouTube kids, which is no, not just the light changes are happening faster. So there are more cuts, there's more movement happening on screen.
00:07:17:12 - 00:07:37:03
Unknown
There's more. The sound is happening faster. So people are talking faster. There's more overlapping talking, but there's also more plot points. So plot points happen faster. Yeah. So we've had this big change towards fast paced content. Yeah. And we're having a lot of young children watching it at a time when it's exactly the opposite of what their brains need.
00:07:37:03 - 00:08:05:17
Unknown
So their brains need slow paced, repetitious, predictable interactions because they're this big, jumbled, over connected mess. Yeah. So so we're looking at this idea of what happens in a child's brain when stuff is coming at them too fast for their brains to process. Yeah. Our brains are kind of prediction machines. So every word as I'm talking, your brain is constantly generating word by word, a prediction of what I'm going to say next.
00:08:05:17 - 00:08:28:06
Unknown
Yeah. And children's brains work the same way, but for screen content, we think a lot of this is just coming at them too fast. They can't keep up with the predictions. Yeah, and what we think happens when that happens is that that brain, a part of the brain called a brain stem, like the bottom spinal cord, with the spinal cord comes in to the rest of the brain and kind of registers that they're in this unpredictable situation.
00:08:28:11 - 00:08:45:22
Unknown
And this kind of evolutionary mechanism kicks in, whereby our brain is saying, okay, I can't predict what's going to happen next. So I bet it sends a signal to your body saying, I better be able to respond at a moment's notice. Yeah. And something called the fight or flight nervous system kicks in, which is about, you know, maximizing your body's ability to fight or flight.
00:08:45:22 - 00:09:03:17
Unknown
So your heart starts to beat faster. You get a lot of release, energy released to the muscles and that type of stuff. And it's basically a survival mechanism. I'm in an unpredictable situation, so this kind of inbuilt hardwired mechanism kicks in saying, okay, I need to be able to respond at a moment's notice. Yeah. Nowadays, of course, it's not useful at all anymore.
00:09:03:19 - 00:09:11:11
Unknown
It happens when children are sad, you know, at home on their sofas, watching television. But we know we've, we've got really, really good data that, you know,
00:09:11:15 - 00:09:19:02
Unknown
fast paced content puts children into fight or flight mode. Yep. Which is why now every parent will notice that children are ratty off the screens.
00:09:19:02 - 00:09:21:06
Unknown
Yeah, because they've got this big energy release.
00:09:21:06 - 00:09:42:22
Unknown
You know, they've gone into fight or flight mode. And we also think it might explain these links that I mentioned at the beginning, for these kind of long term, kind of mental health conditions. So, you know, things like anxiety and depression and spending a long period of time in this, you know, high alert, high arousal mode might contribute to these long term mental health conditions.
00:09:42:22 - 00:09:46:02
Unknown
So that's what we're specifically looking at at the moment for screens. Well,
00:09:46:05 - 00:09:57:05
Unknown
That's fascinating. And so the science backs up, as you say, what every parent has experienced. Do you take away an iPad or a phone or a device and suddenly you have a very different child to the one that you started with?
00:09:57:11 - 00:10:07:21
Unknown
And that that is why I always say screen time to green time is the best transition, because it's really, really good evidence that if you want to get a child out of this fight or flight mode, outdoors is the quickest way to do it.
00:10:07:21 - 00:10:18:06
Unknown
You know, throw open if you're lucky enough to have a garden in which only, you know, two thirds of families, in the UK do. But if you do, then throw open the doors, let them run out of, you know, quickest way just to get out of that
00:10:18:08 - 00:10:22:09
Unknown
mode. And we all know that to be true. We all know the struggle.
00:10:22:14 - 00:10:41:15
Unknown
Yeah, parents are tired. Parents are busy doing housework or cooking or trying to tidy up a burn, some bricks on the floor or whatever it might be, I guess. What's your guidance or advice for families that know this? But aren't necessarily able to do it on a daily basis when they're at
00:10:41:17 - 00:10:47:23
Unknown
Yeah, so this is really interesting because we're now we've now moved on from the kind of recommendation.
00:10:47:23 - 00:11:03:22
Unknown
Yeah. What what are we kind of recommending that we do on to how do we frame the recommendation. Very much not, you know, as you mentioned at the beginning, George, not on the thing of science says do this because that's definitely a high friction message. You know, as you say, screens are inbuilt into a lot of families routine.
00:11:03:22 - 00:11:19:16
Unknown
You know, you need screens, you know, how are you going to eat dinner? How are you going to clean the house otherwise. Yeah. And so it's not science has to do that because that's a way to, you know, get a lot of resistance. It's if you find that screens cause this in your house, here is some evidence based things that you can do to help.
00:11:19:18 - 00:11:43:16
Unknown
And you know, we're working on this. We work on this idea of screen swaps. You know, what can we be using at those moments where you need something that keeps the children entertained? Yeah. But also. And that's kind of a practical thing, you know, packaging out kind of different parts of toys. You know, if you've got a little zip bag full of toys that you can take out to a restaurant to kill, that, you know, 50 minutes of hangry when you're waiting for your food to come, and lots and lots of different practical things that we can do.
00:11:43:18 - 00:12:09:20
Unknown
I think that's from the parents point of view. I think the interesting thing from a child's point of view, and this is something I'm thinking a lot about at the moment, is one of the things that we know we miss out on from screens is a screen is very passive. Yeah. So I always think about this because in my kids we're quite limited on screens, but they get exactly 44 minutes of screen time per day and they work out in advance.
00:12:09:20 - 00:12:28:15
Unknown
How many episodes are allowed to watch for that 44 minutes? But expression of just joy and excitement on their face when they're, you know, I always do a game where I stand in front of the telly and say, hello, kids like that got away, daddy. But the expression of joy in their face and I always curious, you know, why is it it's such an intense time?
00:12:28:15 - 00:12:49:13
Unknown
And one of the things that I think about a lot is the so basically are all kind of all voluntary controls, or we could have our executive control of our behavior. Yeah. So your ability to choose what you do when. Yeah. Comes from a part of brain called the frontal cortex under here. Yeah. And you know, for a child, you know, for 12 months, her child reaching out to, you know, press a button to make a toy pop up.
00:12:49:13 - 00:13:10:17
Unknown
Yeah. First of all, they have the ID, so it comes from their frontal cortex, and then they do it. Yeah. And all of the time, you know, when you're acting on the world, you're using this control, this voluntary control over your behaviors here. Screens are very different because screens are very, very passive. Yeah. So we have normally, you know, when you're reading a book or something like that.
00:13:10:17 - 00:13:27:13
Unknown
Yeah. There's nothing kind of moving or flashing to pull your attention from one way to next. So every single eye movie that you make and we actually measure this, we measure the brain control over individual eye movements in my lab. Yeah. Every single only movement that you make, you're in control. So you're choosing when to move your eyes.
00:13:27:13 - 00:13:47:23
Unknown
When to end. Yeah. So that's one way that we pay attention. And that is this kind of frontal cortex way. But there's another route to paying attention. Yeah. Which is this kind of wherever there's movement in our visual field. Yeah. Automatic warning signal goes off in our brains to say, pay attention to this movement. Yeah. And again, we think we've evolved like that for evolutionary reasons.
00:13:47:23 - 00:14:04:10
Unknown
You know, back in the day, you know, a thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago, our environments were pretty dangerous. Yeah. There were predators out there that wanted to eat us. So it's an advantage to me if, you know, I'm sitting outside my cave cooking my dinner and there's movement in my visual field. It's a warning signal goes off saying, pay attention to this.
00:14:04:10 - 00:14:23:11
Unknown
Yeah. Nowadays, again, it's not useful anymore. Yeah, but it's hardwired into our brain. This tendency to pay attention to movement. So this is how we pay attention when we watch TV? Yeah. TV is always moving. Yes. Screens are always moving. Yeah. There's always something controlling our attention. And, you know, children's TV is designed. We've done some research looking at this.
00:14:23:13 - 00:14:41:21
Unknown
It's even that tells you guide you where within a frame to look. Just follow the movement. Yeah. So I think the reason that you know, my kids love TV is because most of the time they're having to use their frontal cortex to control their own behaviors. Yeah. And screens are a time when they don't have to do that.
00:14:41:23 - 00:15:00:02
Unknown
Yeah. You're just really, really passive. Yeah. Just this, you know, again, it's right down at the bottom of the brain, a part of the brain called the superior colliculus here that just automatically draws our attention to movement. So, so it's a break for children. Yeah. So as well as thinking about how to frame this screen time advisory around the times when parents need a break.
00:15:00:07 - 00:15:16:22
Unknown
Yeah, I think it's also really, really important to be thinking about the times when children need a break. Yeah, you're having to control your behavior. You're learning to control your behavior using this frontal cortex, which incidentally, is the slowest part of the brain to develop. Yeah. And this is tiring for children just being in control the whole time.
00:15:16:22 - 00:15:28:10
Unknown
Yeah. So it's that moment of just sitting, relaxing and letting everything wash over you that I think is one of the reasons why kids love screens. So when we're thinking about screen squats, we need to be thinking about the kid's point of view as well as the parents.
00:15:28:13 - 00:15:40:19
Unknown
Absolutely. That's such a good, good framing of it. And something that probably I hadn't thought of is that why do they delight? And it's just being able just to let me stay calm. There's not much to me, not terribly much calmness in my household.
00:15:40:19 - 00:16:00:13
Unknown
But when you do put the screen on for a little bit of time, you do sort of see that and the brain is able to relax. The child's able to, be calm for a moment. Then maybe that is, if part of the conversation we need to have with parents and the conversation we need to have as we inform ourselves and think about this as a challenge that we
00:16:00:15 - 00:16:15:12
Unknown
yeah. Just on that word calm nature. Because it's interesting to know. So there's two things. And this is something I'm super interested in I'm looking a lot about in the research. So from a from an external out. Yeah.
00:16:15:14 - 00:16:39:23
Unknown
You lose movement. Yeah. And you lose a motion from your face. So some of the stuff I've been reading for this Department of Education review has been that positive emotions and negative emotions go from your face. Yeah. When you're watching a screen and and your external movement goes, yeah. So a lot of children will go from being what we call hyperkinetic, you know, constantly moving around to be completely motionless from the time that the screens on.
00:16:40:00 - 00:16:59:03
Unknown
But there's some really interesting research. So part of the research is doing the type of stuff that we do where you measure their fight or flight system. Yeah. And at a time when their body is completely still, their heart is going fast. Yeah. And they're getting a big release to the muscles. Yeah. And which is exactly the opposite of calm, even though it looks from the outside that they are calm.
00:16:59:03 - 00:17:27:04
Unknown
Yeah. So that's one of the things that's really interesting. And then the other thing that I think is interesting is that they, some colleagues of mine in the States do did some research about, people, parents, using screens to regulate toddler tantrums. Yeah. Genevieve and Heather Cochrane and Rachel Barr, some very close and colleagues of mine, and they found this really interesting thing, which is the minute you give a tantrum ING toddler a screen.
00:17:27:04 - 00:17:46:11
Unknown
Yeah, the tension just disappears off their face. Yeah. And it looks like they've calmed down, but they found not only that, if you're in a bad mood before the screen, the binary disappears for the time of the screen. But then the minute you take away the screen, the screen comes back. Yeah, but also the bad mood was accentuated over time for these reasons.
00:17:46:11 - 00:18:06:17
Unknown
So I've been explaining that screens put us into this high physiological stress state. Yeah. But then they also found, for reasons I couldn't really explain, but they did definitely found it. And they found it in a couple of studies actually, that the more you use screens to tame toddler tantrums, the worse the behavioral dysregulation gets over time. So they find this kind of long term association.
00:18:06:17 - 00:18:10:08
Unknown
So so this appearance of calm I think can be an illusion.
00:18:10:09 - 00:18:37:07
Unknown
Yeah. Fascinating. And I guess which flip the coin a little bit and think about okay, so what should parents of what could parents be doing instead of a screen. And obviously baby zone we encourage, you know, parent or carer to bond with their child to play with that child. And there are some research over the weekend, that sort of spoke about how only half of parents with under sixes play with them every day, and that's down from three quarters in 2019.
00:18:37:09 - 00:18:52:19
Unknown
You know, there is that gravitational pull between families and children, aligning heart rates as you sort of talk about and creating a shared space for parents to bond with their children. What are those families losing if they're not playing with their children as frequently?
00:18:52:21 - 00:19:07:12
Unknown
Yeah. So this is really interesting. So, so in the earlier sector. So I get sent a lot of petitions asking me to sign up to the importance of play in early childhood. Yeah. And I always, you know, I'm a bit of a contrarian and I'm always a bit in my head.
00:19:07:12 - 00:19:24:02
Unknown
I always I normally sign up, but I think in my head kind of a bit, I'm kind of yeah, but yeah. And the yeah. But on that play is if you look at the evidence for the long term effects of play on child development, it's not for, it's actually not for, you know, here's a pile of toys.
00:19:24:02 - 00:19:42:04
Unknown
Just play with it on your own. Yeah. Just as it's not for, you know, his you sit still and I'm going to teach you something. Yeah. What? The evidence base for for play. So pull round to Donny and the professor. Play? The Pedro Center in Cambridge. I was talking about this with him recently. He was. I saw him actually presenting this study that he's done looking.
00:19:42:05 - 00:20:05:23
Unknown
It's very specifically about this structured, joined together play. Yeah. Patch child leads, adult follows and supports. Yeah. And I guess so. We do a lot of work, you know, looking at the neural mechanisms for why. What is it specifically about this idea of shared engagement? Yeah. It's not just, you know, children getting to, you know, relax and have fun.
00:20:05:23 - 00:20:30:18
Unknown
Yeah. And it's definitely not children sitting and getting told what to do by their parents. It's this idea of shared engagement that is particularly important. Yeah. And I guess there's a couple of things I'd say about that. So one is I don't know, this isn't something from research. This is just my own experience of parenting. My own children and talking to lots of other people similar ages, parenting their own children.
00:20:30:18 - 00:20:45:07
Unknown
But now with a lot of the time you hear just the I yeah, I'd love to do it, but I don't have time. Yeah, I'd love to get down on the floor and sit and do this. And, you know, part of me always wants to say people like that, you know, it doesn't really doesn't take very much time.
00:20:45:07 - 00:21:00:10
Unknown
Yeah. It, you know, it's five minutes, you know, in the morning you're getting dressed, you're thinking through the meetings you've got coming out that day, you know. But I really force myself to do that. You know, I get down on the floor and I spend five minutes viewing the world from the perspective of my four year old daughter.
00:21:00:13 - 00:21:16:23
Unknown
Yeah. And and, you know, incidentally, for me, it has definitely has really good mental health benefits. You know, all of this stuff that's been stressing you out just goes out the window. Yeah. I've got a we've got a five month old at home too. And with her particularly, it's because her brain so much slower. Yeah. That's what I was saying earlier.
00:21:16:23 - 00:21:36:16
Unknown
And you sit and I force myself to be really, really still and interact. And it's just it's just like a two minute meditation, just staring into her eyes and getting my state into my brain. My full six year old working adult brain into the state of her five month old, you know, sitting, just having like, that incredibly powerful short meditation.
00:21:36:19 - 00:22:01:17
Unknown
You know, from my point of view, from the child's point of view, I think, you know, it's this idea of being God. Yeah. Being understood is one of the things that's important. But we also do a lot of research looking at how you kind of adapt, kind of what you're doing and how you interact with the child dependent on their own state through kind of shared play.
00:22:01:20 - 00:22:31:10
Unknown
Yeah. So one of the things that we know is really important for a child's ability to direct concentration on their own. Yeah. For self-directed concentration probably. You know, the thing that's most predictive of that, of everything is how much time you spend in shared engagement with your parent early on. Yeah. I did my PhD and I did my postdoc at Cambridge, designing a lot of other techniques, to try and train children's concentration ability.
00:22:31:11 - 00:22:49:12
Unknown
Yeah, we trained lots and lots of different things for high risk children, their children at risk of ADHD. That type of stuff. Early interventions to try to improve kind of concentration. Yeah. And you know, having spent a lot of, you know, taxpayers research money on that, we came to the conclusion that, in fact, those types of approaches aren't nearly as effective as just simple shared parent child engagement.
00:22:49:12 - 00:23:13:18
Unknown
Yeah. But why from a brain perspective, why is it and we think it all comes down to this idea that when I'm playing together with a child, yeah, I'm making it easier for them to sustain attention. So I'm, you know, constantly adapting how I speak. Yeah. So if my child starts to lose attention or, you know, make myself more interesting to try to pull their attention back.
00:23:13:18 - 00:23:38:16
Unknown
Yeah. I'll be monitoring their state closely. So we do a lot of research where we measure the brain activity in the parent and the child at the same time. Yeah. And we can see that the parent is starting to anticipate, you know, children's brains are very noisy. Sometimes they're ready to pay attention, sometimes they're not. And parents brains are tracking the child's brain in massive detail and anticipating those moments where, you know, the child is about to, you know, lose attention and giving them new information to draw them back in.
00:23:38:17 - 00:23:54:03
Unknown
Yeah. Feeding out what we call multimodal attention. Yeah. So, you know, I'll pick up something if a child's looking at it, which makes it easier for the child to pay attention to because I'm moving around. Yeah. I'll put a verbal label on this object that the child is looking at. I'll say this is a green piece of Lego.
00:23:54:03 - 00:24:18:10
Unknown
Yeah. At the time. And the child is looking at it. And because I'm tracking this engagement, I'm really good at giving that verbal label at a time when the child is ready to receive that. So they learn. Yeah. So this type of kind of learning, this type of shared engagement between parents and children, is just by far the most effective way of making sure that bits of information reach their brain at the time when their brain is ready for it.
00:24:18:13 - 00:24:35:23
Unknown
Yeah. And this is why we learn better from face to face than from screens. Yes, screens. Just give us the prerecorded information. Yeah, a child's brain. Sometimes it's ready, sometimes it's not. Sometimes they're distracted, sometimes they're not. But the screen doesn't know. It just gives it in a predetermined player. Yeah. Whereas as an adult you're continually adapting what you say and how you say it.
00:24:35:23 - 00:24:48:17
Unknown
Depending on the state of the child, which is by far the most effective way of driving their attention and understanding, which in turn is by far the most effective way of driving their concentration. So that in the short answers, my ten years of research on total concentration.
00:24:48:17 - 00:25:00:05
Unknown
That's fascinating. And it I sort of resonated with the story over the weekend. I was sort of pretending to be an Italian waiter and made my son much more likely to eat his pasta and sort of make a game out of it. And you said, yeah.
00:25:00:07 - 00:25:22:18
Unknown
And, and I guess it's, it's it playing and it's trying to see the world from that perspective. Yeah. Some you spoke about the brain and obviously the child's brain is fascinating. What about for the parent what's going on in the parents brain as you're having those I guess serve and return moments or those moments of, playfulness. You described it as meditation, which I love, but I think, you know, what are you observing as well?
00:25:22:18 - 00:25:28:06
Unknown
Because you often observe both the parent and the child's brain simultaneously. Yeah. So I guess
00:25:28:08 - 00:25:31:04
Unknown
so a lot of the time it's space.
00:25:31:04 - 00:25:48:03
Unknown
So, so a lot of the time it is this your your matching, you know, your own state to that of the child. Yeah. You know, as I was talking about you matching what you say and what you say depending on what they're looking at. Yeah. And but we've also done a lot of work looking at the kind of physiological responses.
00:25:48:03 - 00:26:04:03
Unknown
Yeah. So we do a lot of work where we put a little kind of child wound, kind of like fit stress monitors, my heart rate monitors, that type of stuff on a parent and a child. Yeah. And we see the same pattern of, you know, the child's kind of stress patterns kind of get echoed by the parent.
00:26:04:03 - 00:26:22:19
Unknown
Yeah. And it's the same in earlier settings. And I know I present this a lot to earliest practitioners. And they're often quite surprised because you get used to this idea that if a child, you know, in my setting is getting stressed, I need to be really, really calm to set a good example. Yeah. Whereas in fact, what we see is to some degree the opposite of that.
00:26:22:19 - 00:26:37:23
Unknown
Yeah. If my child gets just I have a little peak in my own stress. Yeah. You know, with a baby, you know, if you try and soothe a calming, a crying baby, you know, you'll have found this out yourself, George. But, you know, people have done studies to look at it. You can't see that calming baby very well.
00:26:37:23 - 00:26:51:10
Unknown
You know, when you're sat, it helps if you move. Get your own heart rate up. Yeah. I used to walk my my son up and down. We lived in a very tall, narrow house. Four flights of stairs to calm him down. And my heart was going really, really fast. After half an hour walking from the bottom floor to the top.
00:26:51:15 - 00:27:12:07
Unknown
But he finds that very soothing because it's matching. You know, my heart states, my heart beat starts to get to the point where it's matching his and then it calms down. So. So these kind of transient moments of kind of matching. Yeah. Whether it's the micro level, you know, the attention state or the, you know, large scale mood states is really, really crucial.
00:27:12:08 - 00:27:41:16
Unknown
And for, you know, making sure that children get what they need at the time they need. Yeah. If I'm matching my state to my child, you know, it helps me to deliver that content. Yeah. One of the things I think it's important to caveat with that is now your ability to do that. Yeah. Just as, you know, my ability to stare into my five month olds eyes and, you know, think at her timescale of, you know, 20 times slower than my timescale, but also, you know, my four year old stubs her toe.
00:27:41:17 - 00:27:56:02
Unknown
Yeah. And my ability to see this from her point of view. Yeah. As ouch. That must have been really so. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, you're making a big dinner at a time. We need to be getting ready for school, that type of stuff. Yeah. That very much comes and goes depending on my own mood state. Yeah.
00:27:56:05 - 00:28:14:14
Unknown
If I'm calm and relaxed, then I can see things and someone else's point of view. If I'm anxious or depressed or stressed, then my brain loses that ability. You know, it's really, really remarkable that you find it much, much harder to reconfigure your brain into kind of the brain state of someone else, which is how our brains empathize.
00:28:14:14 - 00:28:31:14
Unknown
So, so this ability, you know, to follow a child and match them, match your state to that is very much comes and goes dependent on our own state in a way that's really out of our control. You can't force an anxious person to empathize. It's just the brain just doesn't work that way. So know it's just something to be aware of.
00:28:31:15 - 00:28:43:13
Unknown
You know, in families, you know, my wife tells me when I'm a bit stressed and I'm more likely to tell my child that they can't be upset now because it's inconvenient for me. And you know, you just try and help each other out, you know, by recognizing each other's moods.
00:28:43:19 - 00:28:54:13
Unknown
Yeah, I'm familiar with that stress. Just as we're trying to leave at 725 in the morning to put shoes on, and we all have a little bit of anxiety as to how quickly that's going to take, how long, how long that's going to take and how quickly we can get out.
00:28:54:16 - 00:29:13:04
Unknown
Yeah. I'm sure that resonate with all the parents that, are listening. And I guess, as well, we sort of spoken about, modern childhood a little bit and sort of the evolution and parents being busy and screen time. And what is your thoughts around modern childhood at the moment? How is that, changing?
00:29:13:09 - 00:29:30:08
Unknown
So there's a couple of things actually, which go to this idea that come back to this idea that we talked about in the context of screen time, about the idea that, you know, young brains need these kind of slow paced, kind of predictable interactions, you know, their brains of this big kind of jumbled over connected mess.
00:29:30:10 - 00:29:50:08
Unknown
And they work much, much slower than adult brains do. Yeah. So, you know, I talked about this idea of screens being really, really fast paced and dense and complex at times, and they don't necessarily need it. Yeah, but there are other changes, other ways in which the modern world is changing like that too. And one of them is city life.
00:29:50:10 - 00:30:09:19
Unknown
Yeah. So we've done quite a lot of research. So we're based the reason that, kind of I'm based out in East London is it's one of the most interesting, you know, demographic melting pots from a research point of view in the world. Yeah, it's one of the, you know, the kind of the suburbs of big cities is some of the most, you know, demographically mixed areas, you know, 19% of the population of Stratford come and go in a single year.
00:30:09:20 - 00:30:33:07
Unknown
You know, it's this fascinating kind of melting pot. Yeah. City life, you know, is fast and complex. Yeah. The know when I'm talking about this in talks, I, I started out doing the, you know, on the spot of our labs in Stratford. Now, imagine a child, two year old child set a thousand years ago. Yeah. She's on the outskirts of London.
00:30:33:07 - 00:30:53:11
Unknown
She's looking at the salt marshes of the Thames estuary. You know, there's nothing moving in her field of view. Yeah. Few curlews floating up in the sky, diving down to catch crabs. Crabs? She could sit there all day and there's just a big, wide kind of green expanse. Yeah. Compared to, you know, even a hundred years ago, you know, before screens when the city had come up.
00:30:53:11 - 00:31:17:17
Unknown
Yeah. And the same trolls in exactly the same spot, you know, just sitting, just watching kind of the world go by. Yeah. And in a city, just the amount of stuff, buildings, people, stuff that's happening. Yeah, is massively higher. Yeah. So there's two ways in which this affects the developing brain. Firstly, you know, the number of different kind of units of identity that we have to track.
00:31:17:17 - 00:31:41:11
Unknown
So basically, you know, low down in our brains, we're just tracking kind of light and sound fluctuations then higher up in our brains, you know, we're tracking different objects and identities. Yeah. So, you know, a child sitting there watching a city street. Yeah. The number of different kind of things that they have to track because they might be relevant to them compared to if I'm sitting, you know, staring at the screen, open space and then but another way to think about it is the number of events that happen.
00:31:41:11 - 00:31:53:19
Unknown
Yeah. So you know this girl, you know, you can imagine her a thousand years ago sitting at this big wide open event. You could sit there all day. You could ask her, at the end of the day, what happened, what did you see happening? And she probably would tell you, you know, probably tell you in, you know, 30s.
00:31:53:19 - 00:32:15:04
Unknown
Whereas if I sat, you know, on a city street and said, tell me everything that happened that day, you know, it's massively much more. Yeah. So this is happening, you know, to children around the world. Yeah. 20, 200 years ago, 5% of the world's children were born in cities. By 2050 would be 70%. And these changes are very, very similar to what's been happening in terms of screens.
00:32:15:07 - 00:32:45:18
Unknown
Everything is about, you know, childhood getting faster paced and more, more unpredictable. Yeah. At a time in life. Yeah. When this is exactly the opposite of what we need. Yeah. Cities are more fast paced, densely packed, unpredictable. Their screens are even more densely packed, even faster paced, even more unpredictable, you know, and I think this is contributing in a lot of ways to, you know, a lot of the, you know, problems that we're seeing and things like school readiness and that type of seeing increased diagnosis rates of send, the modern world is giving is exactly the opposite of what we need.
00:32:45:18 - 00:33:08:12
Unknown
Yeah. And then there's one other aspect to this, which again is a similar idea, which is kind of coming at it, you know, from a different perspective, but it's exactly the same idea, which is about relations. Yeah. So relationships now also really, really crucial that we have, you know, slow paced, predictable relationships. Yeah. Young brains, big gents, big dense, jumbled mess.
00:33:08:12 - 00:33:26:23
Unknown
Yeah. They need to make predictions. Yeah. They crave predictability. Yeah. They crave predictable interactions. Yeah. So, you know, you you're feeding a 12 month old and they not accidentally knocked their spoon on the floor, and they notice that you bend down to pick it up and put it down on the table. What are they going to do next?
00:33:27:01 - 00:33:47:08
Unknown
Absolutely uninteresting. Guaranteed. First. Next thing they do is deliberately knock it off again. Yeah, they crave predictability, predictable interactions from everybody. I spend a lot of time going to nurseries. Yeah. And young children, particularly if they're new, and not quite comfortable, will always gravitate to an adult before another child. Yeah. And it's because they find adults more predictable.
00:33:47:08 - 00:34:11:02
Unknown
Adults are very, you know, predictable in how they respond to other children, a very unpredictable. So children, young children often prefer adult company to your other children. Yeah. The company of other children for that reason. So we need predictable interactions from everything, but particularly from our carers during early life. Yeah. So we live at a time when adults are behaving much less predictably towards children because of techno.
00:34:11:02 - 00:34:30:08
Unknown
Ference. Yeah, because we have this very powerful thing that, you know, my phone flashes or it beeps or it words in my pocket, and it's incredibly a powerful magnet to pull my attention. Yeah. And, you know, my child can be looking at something or asking me a question or, you know, wanting help in a particular emotional support in a particular situation.
00:34:30:08 - 00:34:47:10
Unknown
But this magnet that I have, pulling my attention away from my child, yeah, is incredibly strong. And from a child's point of you, they don't know. They've got no idea what you're looking at. They can't see the screen. They're right down at the floor. But all they know is that they, you know, their parent has become non-responsive.
00:34:47:10 - 00:35:08:03
Unknown
Yeah. We used to do, to look at in the lab one way that, you know, we historically within, you know, child psychology research to measure your reaction to a multi stressful event. Yeah. With something called the still face protocol, where, you'd ask a parent and a child to interact across a table, then a secret signal.
00:35:08:07 - 00:35:29:19
Unknown
Yeah. The parent would just freeze and become non-responsive. Yeah. And then you'd measure the stress response in the child. Yeah. Because, children have a stress response from my parents and, you know, responsive. Yeah. And you look at the individual differences, who's more reactive, who's less reactive. Yeah. We can't do that now. Guess why? Because that mildly stressful experience for every child has become a constant part of their life.
00:35:29:19 - 00:35:55:13
Unknown
Yeah. Your mum gets a mobile phone message. Her still face is there for as long as possible. Yeah. So that's one thing that's really important, you know, about how modern Child is, is giving children the opposite of what they need? Yeah, but there is another element to this too, which is, so let's talk about this a lot with the, Louise Livingston, I think it says who runs the Maria montessori Institute.
00:35:55:13 - 00:36:18:23
Unknown
Yeah. And we were talking about, how in a lot of ways, Montessori came up with these insights that have been supported to a remarkable degree by neuroscience. Later on. Yeah, she was really, really, really ahead of her time in terms of, you know, her insights into how children's brains work. But one thing she doesn't talk about is this the importance of getting down to a child's speed.
00:36:18:23 - 00:36:37:12
Unknown
What we were talking about earlier. Yeah, she really doesn't mention there's a couple of quotes, but she really doesn't talk about that much yet. And I think the reason why is because when she was writing 100 years ago, it wasn't nearly so much of an effort. Yeah, it wasn't something that needed to be emphasized as it does now, because 100 years ago, no adult had ever had screens.
00:36:37:12 - 00:36:57:08
Unknown
So this process that we're on of, we consume more and more faster paced content. Our brains start to go faster and faster. So by the time I'm, you know, a grown up and I've got my own kids, I've had, you know, 30 or 40 years of getting sped up and sped up by the modern world. So by the time my daughter comes out with the same brain DNA as she's always had, she hasn't been sped up.
00:36:57:11 - 00:37:12:04
Unknown
But the gap between us is so much greater than it was. You know, even 100 years ago before adults had use screens. Yeah. So this asset of, kind of slowing down, this effort of slowing down is just so much more for adults nowadays than it was back in the day. Yeah, fascinating
00:37:12:08 - 00:37:29:17
Unknown
And like I said, you touched on school readiness in your previous examples of the challenge that you described with modern parenting, modern childhood, growing up. And we see in the levels of what we describe as a good level of development and the pressure that parents feel and, to make sure that their children are on track.
00:37:29:17 - 00:37:44:11
Unknown
And again, we hear it from hundreds of parents the whole time. Is my child normal? Are we doing the right things compared to its peers and everything else? What do you think is driving differences and divergences in terms of school readiness that we're seeing at the moment?
00:37:44:13 - 00:37:55:05
Unknown
So it's partly that we're diagnosing things more readily. So there's really good quality evidence that, you know, with a given level of symptoms, it's easier to get a diagnosis nowadays, which now I think most people would say is a good thing.
00:37:55:05 - 00:38:14:20
Unknown
Yeah. If a child benefits from support, then it's right that they should get access to that support. But there is also no really, really good quality evidence as symptoms themselves are going up over time. So there are some, you know, questionnaires and measures that we've been giving in exactly the same way for, you know, 5100 years that are showing is that symptoms themselves are going off over time.
00:38:14:22 - 00:38:33:01
Unknown
You know, almost 10 to 10 people. Why you get ten different answers. And, you know, just talking to Felicity Gillespie from Kindred Squared and, you know, she's talking a lot about the structural stuff to do with how how early childhood is structured. You know, my answer would be what we've been talking about, how the modern world is changing.
00:38:33:03 - 00:38:55:00
Unknown
Urbanization screens techno ference. Yeah, in ways that make the modern world more fast paced and more unpredictable. From a young child's point of view, at a time when that is exactly the opposite of what their brains need. Young brains need slow paced, predictable, repetitious interactions, and the modern focus is exactly the opposite of that. So that would be my answer.
00:38:55:02 - 00:38:57:18
Unknown
Fascinating. Yeah, I think it's it's a problem.
00:38:57:18 - 00:39:18:15
Unknown
And it's only going to get heightened with AI and all of the new advances in technology that we're seeing. I guess I'll ask you a few kind of rapid fire questions towards the end here. I want to start, you mentioned your own children and some of the experiments or observations that you've had. How has being a father informed your research?
00:39:18:15 - 00:39:23:09
Unknown
And sometimes, what's the gap between your research and what goes on at home?
00:39:23:11 - 00:39:38:23
Unknown
So I think a lot about shared mood states. We're all quite high energy, quite wired in my family. And we do a lot of research into stress contagion. So how bad moods can spread themselves amongst the family?
00:39:39:00 - 00:40:03:10
Unknown
So we do a lot of work in that. And then now I guess maybe the other way it's informed my parenting in different ways. So my son, when he was two, just two when his little sister was born and he loved her so much, and he would just sit there adoring her, doting her and he would put her chubby little arm into his mouth just to give her a big kiss, because he just loved her so much.
00:40:03:10 - 00:40:20:12
Unknown
Then he just couldn't resist the urge to take a big bite like this. So it really did come from affection, but he just the emotions he experienced so much. And then he got into this kind of biting, I know I spent a long time thinking, know what do we do? How do we stop this? And, and I actually looked at some computational modeling.
00:40:20:12 - 00:40:40:16
Unknown
So and so these people build these, kind of computer models to try to kind of simulate how different their kind of parts of, and kind of children's brains kind of learn to control behavior, very kind of complex models. And it's this idea of just it's really, really hard. Not to pay a lot of attention to a boy when he's biting his babies.
00:40:40:16 - 00:41:01:06
Unknown
Sisters. Yeah. But the attention in a lot of brain ways reinforces the behavior. Yeah. So if he does something, he immediately gets a lot of attention from. And daddy and children don't differentiate between positive and negative attention. Yeah. So they'll do something that will reliably get, you know, a big response. Yeah. Whether it's a good response to a bad response, they're much more sensitive to attention than positive or negative.
00:41:01:08 - 00:41:16:06
Unknown
So I spent a long time and in the end, you know, came up with something that felt very counterintuitive, which was you did nothing. Yeah. You said you're not supposed to do that without very careful not to change the tone of your voice at all. Yeah, we've talked about that. You know, you're not supposed to do that, and then you just distract them.
00:41:16:06 - 00:41:32:21
Unknown
Yeah. So you reinforce it as little as possible. So those are the types of things that you see. Another parent, another parent sees you responding to your son biting his baby sister in that way. And you get the weirdest looks. And I always had to say this, and I've really thought about this carefully. I've spent a long time reading the literature.
00:41:32:21 - 00:41:37:08
Unknown
How do I get my son to stop biting as quickly as possible? So. So it does go back and forth sometimes.
00:41:37:13 - 00:41:47:22
Unknown
Fascinating. And I guess, what's the biggest myth that you would like to bust? Is there something is that a commonly held perception or something that, you know, you see, parents, is not wanting to intervene.
00:41:47:22 - 00:41:54:23
Unknown
Obviously every time you go into the supermarket or, do you pick up from nursery? But what's the biggest myth that you'd like to bust around parenting? I
00:41:54:23 - 00:42:11:20
Unknown
mean, I guess the idea that young brains do better with stimulation when they have a lot of stuff coming at them. Yeah. When I picked up my daughter from her nursery, you'd get the handover at the end of every day, and it'd be like, today we did this, we did this, we did this.
00:42:11:22 - 00:42:17:00
Unknown
And what I always wanted to say, I never did because I'm not sure they knew what to do for a job. So they probably thought it was really weird, was
00:42:17:02 - 00:42:26:10
Unknown
what you should be saying to me is, you know, today your daughter did exactly the same things, exactly the same times as she did yesterday. And that, in turn, is exactly the same as the day before.
00:42:26:10 - 00:42:48:23
Unknown
Yeah, we've got really, really good evidence now. Children's brains. Young children's brains don't learn best from a lot of stimulation. Young children's brains learn best from doing the same thing over and over again in a slow paced, predictable, repetitious way. Yeah. So this idea that you more you stimulate young brain, the more they learn in a lot of ways, that's exactly the opposite of what the neuroscience is telling
00:42:48:23 - 00:42:49:00
Unknown
us.
00:42:49:00 - 00:42:50:14
Unknown
So. So that would be my number one choice.
00:42:50:19 - 00:43:03:20
Unknown
That's interesting. That's also something we hear from parents. They struggle with routines and trying to create that similarity. And yeah, I think you talked about modern life perfectly. It's difficult. Every hour, every minute things change.
00:43:03:20 - 00:43:10:05
Unknown
So how can we put in place a routine so that a child feels familiar as well as a parent feeding
00:43:10:07 - 00:43:31:02
Unknown
Yeah, I think about this a lot in the school holidays. So, we do a lot of work looking at how children's bodies and trained to the rhythms of the school day. Yeah. And they love this stability. Yeah. So rhythms help them to stay stable. And my own children can't surely you be the only ones who just lose it often during the school holidays because their rhythms are taken out?
00:43:31:02 - 00:43:45:17
Unknown
Like all the predictability you've got, you wake up, you got no idea what's going to be happening in the course of the day, so your body can't prepare for it. So you just go into this kind of free food like that, but it's really hard to get any sort of rhythms to the day, any type of predictability due to the school holidays.
00:43:45:17 - 00:43:49:18
Unknown
So yeah, it's tough if anyone's got an answer to that, then let me know.
00:43:49:20 - 00:43:57:00
Unknown
Sam, thank you so much for joining. And also, thank you so much for visiting Baby Zone earlier and joining us on a tour around Hammersmith and Fulham.
00:43:57:02 - 00:44:00:16
Unknown
It was brilliant to have you seeing the children and engaging with families
00:44:00:18 - 00:44:13:07
Unknown
and yeah, and it's such fantastic work that you guys are doing and I'm really, really, really happy to support it in any way I can because it's a really strong evidence based, you know, and, you know, there's a million studies that I could, you know, point to, to support the work that you're doing.
00:44:13:07 - 00:44:28:06
Unknown
It makes a big difference. It's economically worthwhile. And but exactly the type of, you know, 1 to 1 attention, you know, access to support that type of stuff really, really important and makes a massive difference to a lot of young children's lives. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you so much, everyone for listening.
00:44:28:08 - 00:44:49:17
Unknown
So what I'm taking from this conversation is something I think every parent deserves to hear. The science isn't there to make you feel guilty. It's there to tell you what you can do in those early years. The way you respond to your baby, the way you manage your own stress, the consistency and warmth you bring to even the small, ordinary moments.
00:44:49:19 - 00:45:32:21
Unknown
It's not just good parenting, it's brain architecture. It's genuinely shaping who your child becomes. Baby zone. We meet families every day who are doing this under enormous pressure with very little support. What Sam's research makes clear is those families aren't failing. The system is failing them, and the families aren't being given what's needed to thrive. Science is compelling the case for investment in those early years in supporting parents in creating the conditions for co regulation and connection has never been stronger, and I believe it is possible for every child to have a best beginning.
00:45:33:01 - 00:45:42:07
Unknown
If you remember one thing, a parent's relationship with their baby is not just emotional, it's neurological. It's building the architecture of a brain,
00:45:42:09 - 00:45:51:18
Unknown
and that is the most powerful thing a parent can know. And the strongest possible argument for giving every family the support they need to provide it.
00:45:51:20 - 00:45:53:03
Unknown
thank you for listening.
00:45:53:06 - 00:46:01:11
Unknown
To Best Beginnings A Baby's Own podcast. For more evidence informed support on babies and the early years, subscribe to this channel.
00:46:01:12 - 00:46:05:04
Unknown
If you found this helpful. Share it with someone you think might need it.
00:46:05:06 - 00:46:06:15
Unknown
See you next time. I.
00:46:06:17 - 00:46:06:24
Unknown
We.