#345: Nurturing Babies’ Brains to Revolutionize Mental Health with Greer Kirshenbaum

The Mark Groves Podcast

Mark Groves

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.9 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I chat with Greer Kirshenbaum, an Author, Mother, Neuroscientist, Doula, and Infant and Family Sleep Specialist. We discuss the power of nurture and how understanding early nurturing experiences can shape our adult lives and parenting styles. Greer talks about the importance of gentleness and modeling foundational pillars like nervous system regulation and setting healthy boundaries with children. We also explore the history and long-term effects of sleep training methods. Join us on this thought-provoking journey into the transformative effects of nurturing and neuroscience. Greer Kirshenbaum PhD has combined her academic training with her experience as a doula and mother to lead The Nurture Revolution - A movement to nurture our babies’ brains to revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Greer wants families, professionals, and workplaces to understand how early caregiving experience can boost mental wellness and diminish depression, anxiety, and addiction in adulthood by shaping babies’ brains through simple intuitive enriching experiences in pregnancy, birth, and infancy. —Instagram @nurture_neuroscience_parenting: https://www.instagram.com/nurture_neuroscience_parenting —Website: www.nurture-neuroscience.com —Book: https://www.nurture-neuroscience.com/the-nurture-revolution If you want to dive deeper into Mark’s content, search through every episode, find specific topics we’ve covered, and ask him questions, go to his Dexa page: https://dexa.ai/markgroves Themes: Nurturing, Boundaries, Nervous System, Emotional Health, Belonging, Self-Worth, Self-Love, Health, Attachment Theory, Transformation, Parenting, Mental Health 0:00:00 Intro 0:05:30 The Cultural Conversation Around Parenting and Shame 0:08:39 Notable Differences in the Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Prefrontal Cortex 0:12:03 The Key Years for Emotional Brain Development 0:22:42 Epigenetics and the Legacy of Nurturing 0:27:14 The Dose-dependent Relationship of Time Spent with Babies 0:30:10 Breastfeeding and its Benefits for Brain Development 0:37:00 Allowing Toddlers to Explore Boundaries and Teach Healthy Boundaries 0:42:39 The Origins of Sleep Training: A Controversial Topic 0:46:50 Babies' Fight or Flight Response: Distress and Fear 0:47:25 The Intense Experience of Parenting and its Toll. 0:51:33 The Controversy of Sleep Training 0:54:57 The Effects of Chronic Cortisol on Children's Sleep 0:55:25 The Impact of Inconsistent Sleep Training 0:58:39 Exploring Different Therapeutic Tools for Stress Regulation 1:03:05 Reviewing and Teaching Emotional Regulation to Children 1:04:51 Four Questions 1:06:28 Showing Care and Love for Our Children This episode is sponsored by Organifi: Use code CREATETHELOVE for 20% off sitewide at http://www.organifi.com/createthelove Contact us at podcast@markgroves.com for sponsor product support, questions, comments, or just to say hello!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Transcript

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0:00.0	Infancy from zero to three is the biggest time for the emotional brain to form.
0:04.4	What is the impact of sleep training?
0:07.5	This book came out in 1910 where the way of treating a baby was taken under the hands of women and mothers and dictated to them by doctors.
0:17.6	Talk about patriarchy.
0:18.9	Yeah.
0:19.5	And it was based on no studies. Put the baby in the room at 7 p.m.,
0:23.6	close the door, and under no circumstances go back until 7 a.m. So the word cry it out comes from
0:30.0	that time. They're basically, in their mind, an abandoned baby in the wild. In a cave. In a cave,
0:36.7	exactly, with wolves around. and parents don't know.
0:40.1	They just don't know. This really puts a wedge in that relationship. The lack of trust now,
0:45.9	like when I need you, you're not actually potentially going to be here. Yeah. From an attachment
0:50.7	perspective, that probably pretty good groundwork for anxious, avoidant, disorganized.
0:56.4	Like if you had one or a few pieces of advice to give to parents that are the most important for nurture,
1:04.0	what would they be?
1:08.8	Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Groves podcast today. I'm joined by Dr. Greer Kirshenbaum. Hello.
1:15.2	Hello, Mark. Okay, I got to read out what you do so that people get some context to what we're about to dive into. So you're an author of the recent book, The Nurture Revolution, which I loved. That's why I reached out to you to come on because, damn, we're going to get into that.
1:29.8	Dr. Kirshenbaum is a neuroscientist, a doula, an infant and family sleep specialist,
1:35.2	a mother trained at U.S.T, Columbia, New York University, Yale.
1:39.4	Damn, do you want to go to any more universities?
1:42.2	You have combined your academic training with experience as
1:45.7	a doula and a mother to lead the nurture revolution. So I'm so excited to have you on. I honestly,
1:51.4	when I was reading your book, I read it before I reached out to you, and then I reread it so I could
	...

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