Feelings of shame and pride

     The age of self-awareness ad self-consciousness is also the age of the emergence of shame and pride. Parents have to be careful not to be too harsh in their punishment, since a two-year-old’s sense of self is still fragile: The child is likely to feel that the entire self is threatened, even if it’s just a specific misdeed that’s being punished.

     It may be particularly important to exercise restraint with children who are temperamentally “difficult, “   since harsh discipline may evoke yet more difficulty behavior in a self-rein-forcing negative cycle. An overemphasis on negative control alone can lead to even more defiance. Most developmental psychologists believe a certain balance of encouragement and control is healthy. Encouragement helps a child take an active role in learning new skills, and helps to develop a healthy self-esteem. Common-sense control, or “setting limits,” helps a young child avoid harsh reprimands from others. Like the confining rails of a playpen, setting limits may also allow the child to feel freer to explore his new capabilities without fear of straying too far into danger.

Understanding what seems obvious to adults

     All these developments are accompanied by indeed, depend on structural and biochemical changes in the young child’s brain during a period when new connections among the brain cells are growing by the hundreds of thousands every day. During the second year explosive growth of the brain’s to surface of cells, often called “gray matter” is taking place in areas of the prefrontal part of the cortex, the very front part located just above the eyes. The prefrontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of the human, and it is the last part to develop fully in childhood. As its connections grow, little by little, it endows a child with the ability to imagine time before and after the present. As this miracle of consciousness become possible, so does the ability to plan ahead. Up to, and even well past, puberty, the cells in the cortex continue to expand their connections allowing the growing child to control emotional impulses, feel empathy and appreciate the value of performing even unpleasant duties in the present because of their future benefit.

Emerge of self-consciousness

     By the age of two, a toddler begins to understand that other people can have needs and feelings that are different from his own. From that insight flows the awareness of possession or ownership. Before this age, the concept of theft doesn’t really even have any meaning. It isn’t until about age two that a young child is even capable of understanding the importance of respecting the belongings of other children.

     This is the age when self-awareness and self-consciousness arise. Around age tow, children begin to experiment with the difference between their own and their parents’ will and identity. They become conscious not just of the independence of others, but of a sense of how things “should be,” and they begin to feel frustration if something doesn’t work right or if they can’t do something doesn’t work right or if they can’t do something they’re told or expected to do. If you want to get a two-year-old upset, do something in front of him that you know he can’t do, and which what happens when he tries to imitate you. Along with self-awareness come the beginnings of empathy: Two-year-olds approach others who are in distress and try to comfort them, instead of just becoming distressed themselves as an infant will do.

Self-consciousness

     In many cultures around the world, there are creation myths that parallel the Old Testament’s story about the Garden of Eden. At first, people are innocent and at one with their surroundings. Then, a special kind of knowledge arises that destroys this paradise. In Genesis, it’s the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. With that knowledge comes self-awareness, and self-consciousness. Adam and Eve look down and see that they’re naked, and understand what it means to be embarrassed. For the first time, they feel separate from the rest of creation. Paradise is over. They’ve become fully human, as we know humans to be, and we’re paying for it still with all the pain and neurosis that self-awareness entails: guilt, shame, frustration, alienation. As compensation, we know that it’s up to us to choose to do good rather than evil, and we can help others and take pride in our ethics and accomplishments.

Brain causes and responds to stress

     One of the best-studied areas in the brain and body’s stress response system is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The first two organs of the brain are directly responsible for releasing the adrenaline hormone into the blood. In the HPA system, the perception of a threat triggers the body’s release of stress hormones that end up acting on receptors in the brain. Stress hormones known as glucocorticoids trigger the amygdala, the brain’s threat-detecting center, into high alert so it can tell the body to fight or flee. But this is far from an optimal brain state for learning. Short-term, stimulating the amygdala into a fight-or-flight response also entails shutting down other brain systems, including those responsible for learning and memory. Long-term, stress hormones can do permanent damage to those systems.

     Some researchers believe that childhood stress might lead to learning problems in other ways as well. When the brain attempts to cope with stress, it raises the levels of dopamine, one of the brain’s own natural chemicals for transmitting signals between cells that also imparts a feeling of satisfaction and well-being. But high dopamine levels interfere with the proper function of the prefrontal cortex. This area in the very upper front of the brain is responsible for many of the kinds of behavior children are supposed to be in the process of trying to learn planning, organizing, focusing, and tuning out distractions. Not coincidentally, perhaps, many researchers believe Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is linked to an imbalance in the brain’s dopamine system. Therefore, chronic stress early in life might lead, or at least contribute, or the development of a learning of a learning disability. 

Insecurity of neglect and abuse affects the developing brain

     In some ways, neglect and violent abuse can be very similar as far as an infant’s brain is concerned. Neglect isn’t just a matter of boredom or insufficient input for proper learning. Neglect is stressful for an infant. Animal studies have shown that separating a newborn from its mother instantly raises its stress hormone levels. Human infants need the attention of a loving caregiver, too. In nine-month-old babies, levels of stress hormones, measured in a simple saliva test, rise in response to a cold and distant caregiver, but not a friendly and playful one.

     The importance of paying attention to an infant goes beyond momentary discomfort. Being paid attention to equals a sense of security in a helpless infant’s mind. In fact, a wise teacher of child psychology once advised first-time parents that they can commit all the other mistakes of child rearing as long as they make the child sure of three things: That they love each other, that they want to pay attention to the child, ant that food is always available. For an infant and young child, those three constants signal security.