Welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting podcast, the Simplicity Diaries, with me Kim John Payne. This week a question came in about the stimulation that we give to babies and a question about, is this crossing a line? Are we culturally overemphasizing this need for stimulation of babies and essentially, you know, are we giving them enough time to soothe and just to be? The parent who was speaking about this was talking about her concern that some of her friends are saying, you know, I think your baby might not be getting enough stimulation and other friends saying perhaps there's too much stimulation and, you know, you know, the parent was commenting that she feels she's doing fine, that a lot of what she's doing is just having babies roll and having her new baby roll and stretch, but she does worry, she was commenting, that she's starting to feel like an entertainer and then in reading the Filtering Out the Adult World chapter in the Simplicity Parenting book, it was there that she caught her eye, that I was talking about being very careful not to become a newscaster parent where we're commenting on every last thing a child does and she was wondering if she was crossing a line and that this was unnecessary and that perhaps she was, as she put it, setting up a kind of an unnecessary habit that could sneakily continue into future parenting, whether it would become, whether that speaking to a baby would become then a habit that would develop and go on into the future years where there would be this sportscasting, newscasting, commenting on everything a child did and having very little quiet or very little peace around a child. I thought it was a really good question, of course.
It left me, the overall, the impression it left me with as I was walking around thinking about it this week was it's not so much a question of stimulation but a question of connection. That was one point and I'll come back to that and it also left me thinking about this balance in the beautifully developing nervous system of a little child. Now we all know that there's stimulation, right? We all know that a child needs that kind of connection and we'll come back to that as I mentioned but the some of us, some of you might be aware of the term the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems and I've mentioned that once or twice before in these podcasts.
So even when a child is little they need a balance between the sympathetic nervous system, which is all about stimulation actually, isn't it? And then the parasympathetic which is all about calming and soothing. So the answer is not am I stimulating enough? Is there a balance between stimulation, arousal, excitement? Is there a balance between that and the parasympathetic which is calming, soothing and crucially digesting the sensory world? Just having a baby, be able just to be as well. And so that balance is something absolutely if you're a mom or a dad or a grandmother, grandfather, guardian of a very little one, it's this balance so that we aren't in this falling into this trap of feeling that we're edutainers, feeling like that we're always needing to stimulate.
This mom talked about, commented that she felt that the danger was that sometimes she basically felt like she was becoming an entertainer. Another parent commented to me a little while ago that she thought she was an edutainer, education entertainer, an edutainer, that she was stimulating her baby all the time because she wanted, well this was an infant now, a toddler, that she wanted to educate and she wanted to entertain and wanted the child to always be on the up, always be busy, and that she realized through reading Simplicity Parenting and listening to these podcasts that that might not be all there was to it and indeed it's not. The balance of the parasympathetic nervous system is crucial to build up in the nervous system of a child when they're little.
Otherwise there's a danger that we will set them up biochemically to always be expecting stimulation and will develop their sympathetic nervous system at the expense of their parasympathetic and the parasympathetic is that ability to calm oneself, that ability to come back, be balanced, be soothed, because if we set children off on a course in their lives that it's all about the sympathetic nervous system, it's all about adrenaline, cortisol, go, go, go, then we're actually setting a child up to always be bored, always coming to you saying, mom, dad, I'm bored, there's nothing to do, there's nothing to do, because right from the early years we've actually almost biochemically, forgive the term, but programmed them to be that way and that's the part of them that they've had developed and the other part that is digesting, the ability just to be with themselves, to if they indeed they are bored and there's nothing to do, to be able to be okay where there's nothing to do at the moment and just sit within themselves until something comes up, which it always does, right, because the sympathetic nervous system will be looking for something and they'll walk around and they'll be ranging about and they'll find something and then deep creative play rather than always looking to go for the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, that's one major point. The other point that I thought of that I mentioned earlier was the not just a question of stimulation but a question of connection and attachment. Stimulation doesn't necessarily equate to attachment and connection.
It doesn't preclude it when we're stimulating a child, we're connecting with them if we're gently doing it and going about it in a way that we're not getting in a child's face, we're not being a clown, an edutainer, an entertainer, because that is going to actually bring up a mild startle reflex, the morrow reflex, that it's too much, it's too loud, it's too much stimulation. That actually starts to trigger a child to not get close to us but to move away from us. I remember seeing once a little child, a baby, an infant with a very elaborate and sparkly mobile hanging above their crib that was actually battery operated and the thing was moving and sparkling and lights were coming off it, it had its own little light show and the baby was trying to bat it away, it was scared by it.
Now the grandparent who'd given this gift, you know, with the very best of intent said, look, look, look, he's smiling and I actually said to this grandma, I actually think he's grimacing, his eyes are wide, he was scared and I think that needs to be turned off, let's just see, because I didn't want to be judgmental, so we turned off the battery and I said, watch his eyes, let's just see and his eyes softened, his body relaxed, his grandma then got in closer, he gave her a genuine smile and she said, oh, that was, he was scared, wasn't he? And I said, yeah, but it's hard because society is telling us that we've always got to be doing this. The connection, the genuine connection can come through gentle stimulation and it can come through that gentle calming and both are done out of this font, out of this well of deep connection and attachment and not done just in the name of stimulating a child, that is, that is secondary to a deep enduring connection whereby a child can actually open their heart to you and as Eric Erickson said, the first questions an infant through their first year of life or so asks is, am I safe or am I not safe? Can I trust? Can I not trust? And when we focus more on connection and less on just the one-sided stimulation, then what we're doing is that we're developing that deep answer of yes for a baby, yes, I am safe, yes, I can trust this person, this person is warm, is kind, sees to my needs and is not just continually for many hours a day talking and commenting on what I'm doing and stimulating me. Of course, there's that lovely little playing, playing of all the little, this little piggy went to market games.
Of course, there's the gentle rubbing of shoulders and tummy, of course, but fewer words, more connection. And this balance will yield a child that has, that has this resiliency within, within the nervous system when they're, and they'll grow to be able to be resilient and, and, and malleable and be able to, when the inevitable moments in life come up where they need just to center themselves, they'll have that deep imprint in the early years of that connection we make. Mm hmm.
Oh, good question. Hey, and thank you. Thank you for listening in this week.
And I sure hope that was helpful. Bye bye for now.
