Understanding Your Child’s Brain - Part 2

This is the second article in a four-part series exploring brain development and children’s behaviour. Together, we’ll look at some of the brain systems involved in survival, emotions, thinking and self-regulation, and how understanding them can help us respond to children with greater empathy and more realistic expectations.

REPTILE → MAMMAL → HUMAN → INTEGRATION

PART 2 OF 4 — THE MAMMAL BRAIN: THE BRAIN THAT FEELS

🐾 MAMMAL — EMOTION & EMOTIONAL LEARNING

→ Amygdala

→ Hippocampus

→ Limbic-related networks

→ Emotional and memory networks involved in emotion, motivation and learning

A NOTE BEFORE WE BEGIN

The terms “reptile brain,” “mammal brain” and “human brain” are sometimes used as a simple way of explaining different brain systems and their functions. Modern neuroscience tells us that the brain is much more interconnected than this, and these systems do not work as three separate brains. They communicate and influence one another constantly.

In this series, I will use these terms as a simple framework for understanding some of the major systems involved in children’s behaviour, while drawing on contemporary neuroscience to explain what is actually happening.

So, let’s move from the systems that help keep us safe to the systems that help us feel, connect, remember and make emotional sense of our experiences.

FROM SURVIVAL TO FEELING

In Part 1, we explored systems involved in survival, automatic regulation and protective responses.

But children aren’t only responding to whether something feels safe or unsafe.

They are also experiencing something much more complex: EMOTION.

Your child can feel excitement, joy, frustration, sadness, fear, disappointment, jealousy, affection and embarrassment. These feelings influence attention, memory, relationships and behaviour.

This is where our “Mammal Brain” framework becomes useful.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY THE “MAMMAL BRAIN”?

The term “Mammal Brain” is a simplified way of thinking about some of the brain networks involved in emotion, motivation, learning, memory and social connection.

You may also have heard the terms “limbic system” or “emotional brain.” These are commonly used, but modern neuroscience tells us there isn’t one neat, self-contained emotional brain. The structures traditionally grouped into the limbic system have different functions and communicate extensively with other brain networks.

For this article, we’ll focus particularly on the amygdala and hippocampus.

THE AMYGDALA: THE EMOTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE DETECTOR

You may have heard that the amygdala is the brain’s “alarm system.”

That’s useful as a starting point, but the amygdala does more than detect danger.

It helps the brain learn about the emotional significance of experiences:

Is this important?

Should I pay attention?

Does this feel familiar?

Is this rewarding, frightening, exciting or potentially threatening?

The amygdala responds to both negative and positive emotional information and plays an important role in emotional learning. Its basic architecture is present at birth, although its connections and functioning continue to change throughout development.

This matters enormously for children because they are constantly learning:

What is safe?

Who can I trust?

What happens when I cry?

What happens when Mum leaves?

What happens when someone says no?

These experiences aren’t stored simply as facts. They are experienced emotionally.

EMOTION AND MEMORY ARE CLOSELY CONNECTED

Think about your own childhood. You may remember the excitement of a birthday, the embarrassment of something at school, the fear of getting lost, or the feeling of being comforted.

Emotion and memory are deeply connected. The amygdala interacts with the hippocampus and other brain networks to influence how emotionally significant experiences are encoded and consolidated into memory. Emotionally arousing experiences are often more likely to be remembered than neutral ones.

So your child isn’t just remembering what happened. They may also be learning how that experience felt.

A child who repeatedly experiences support when distressed may gradually learn:

“When I’m upset, someone helps me.”

A child who repeatedly experiences humiliation when making mistakes may develop a very different expectation:

“Making mistakes is dangerous.”

The experience, emotion and relationship can become connected.

THE HIPPOCAMPUS: HELPING US MAKE SENSE OF EXPERIENCE

The hippocampus is particularly important for memory and for connecting experiences with context, helping us remember where something happened, what happened and how different parts of an experience relate to one another.

It works closely with the amygdala when we form emotionally significant memories.

Imagine your child was frightened by a dog.

They may not simply remember:

“A brown dog barked loudly.”

They may also learn:

“Dogs can be scary.”

When they see another dog later, their previous emotional learning may influence their response before they have carefully considered whether this particular dog is safe.

This is one reason past experiences matter so much to children’s behaviour.

YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN IS LEARNING THROUGH EXPERIENCE

Children constantly build associations.

A childcare room can become associated with safety and belonging or separation and distress.

A teacher can become associated with encouragement or fear of making mistakes.

A sibling can become associated with fun and connection or competition and conflict.

A parent can become associated with comfort and safety. In the context of frightening or traumatic experiences, relationships can also become associated with unpredictability.

This doesn’t mean one difficult experience permanently determines a child’s response. The brain is plastic, and experiences and relationships continue to influence developing emotional and regulatory networks.

WHY YOUR CHILD’S FEELINGS CAN SEEM SO BIG

Imagine your five-year-old has been happily playing for half an hour and you say:

“It’s time to pack up.”

Suddenly:

“NO!”

They scream, cry and throw themselves on the floor.

From an adult perspective, it may seem like a small request.

But your child isn’t simply processing “Dad asked me to put the toys away.”

They may be experiencing disappointment, losing something enjoyable, a difficult transition and a rapidly intensifying emotional state, while their ability to regulate those emotions is still developing.

So the size of the behaviour isn’t necessarily a measure of the size of the event.

Sometimes it tells us something about the size of the feeling.

EMOTIONS ARE NOT THE ENEMY

We sometimes respond to emotions as though they are the problem:

“Don’t be angry.”

“Stop crying.”

“You’re fine.”

But emotions are information.

Fear can tell us something feels unsafe.

Anger can signal that something feels unfair.

Sadness can accompany loss.

Disappointment tells us reality is different from what we hoped for.

The goal isn’t to teach children not to feel.

It is to gradually help them learn:

“I can feel this feeling and still be safe.”

“I can have a big feeling without hurting someone.”

“I can be disappointed and recover.”

And that is a developmental process.

CHILDREN LEARN EMOTIONAL REGULATION THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS

A two-year-old doesn’t learn regulation because we give them an explanation about regulation.

They become upset.

An adult comes close.

The adult stays calm.

The adult names what is happening.

The child gradually settles.

Through hundreds of experiences like this, children can begin to build an internal understanding:

“I can survive this feeling.”

“Someone can help me when I’m overwhelmed.”

“Feelings come and go.”

This is why co-regulation matters.

The Harvard Center on the Developing Child describes emotional development as emerging through the interaction of developing neural circuits and children’s social and emotional environments. Sensitive, responsive caregiving contributes to emotional development during infancy and early childhood.

Australian research has also followed emotional regulation and attachment from infancy, demonstrating individual differences in how very young children respond to emotionally challenging situations.

EMOTIONS DEVELOP — BUT THEY DON’T ALL ARRIVE AT ONCE

Children are capable of experiencing emotional states from very early in life, but emotional development doesn’t finish in the first few years.

Different emotional capacities emerge and become increasingly differentiated over time.

Young children can experience fear, anger, joy, sadness and frustration very early. As self-awareness and social understanding develop, more complex self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride become increasingly meaningful.

Research suggests these emotions depend on developing self-awareness and understanding social standards, becoming more frequent and complex as social-cognitive abilities mature.

So when your five-year-old becomes devastated because they think they did something wrong, you’re seeing increasingly sophisticated emotional and social understanding, but their ability to manage those emotions is still developing.

Experiencing an emotion is not the same as being able to regulate it.

WHEN EMOTION TAKES OVER

Sometimes your child becomes so upset that they seem unable to listen.

You explain.

They scream.

You offer choices.

They refuse.

You ask what’s wrong.

They can’t tell you.

Sometimes, emotional arousal becomes so intense that complex reasoning and regulation become much harder.

The emotional brain doesn’t operate separately from the thinking brain. These systems communicate constantly. But when emotional arousal is high, the balance between them can change.

This is why:

“Just calm down and think about it.” isn’t always helpful when your child is already overwhelmed.

They may need help regulating first.

Then they can think.

Then they can learn.

Then they can problem-solve.

We’ll explore the thinking brain much more in Part 3.

RELATIONSHIPS HELP SHAPE EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Children don’t develop their emotional systems in isolation.

They develop them in relationships.

When your child is frightened and you move closer, you are showing them that they don’t have to face that feeling alone.

When your child is disappointed and you acknowledge it, you are showing them that their feelings are safe to express and that disappointment can be managed.

When your child is angry and you hold a boundary without shaming them, you are showing them that anger is okay, but hurting others is not.

When they make a mistake and you remain connected, you are showing them that making mistakes doesn’t mean losing connection or being loved.

Over time, these experiences contribute to children’s developing expectations about themselves, other people and the world.

This is one reason the Circle of Security approach places such emphasis on being bigger, stronger, wiser and kind, supporting children’s need for both connection and boundaries.

Your child doesn’t need you to remove every difficult emotion.

They need to experience difficult emotions with a safe adult beside them.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR PARENTS AND EDUCATORS?

When your child has a big emotional reaction, before asking:

“How do I make this behaviour stop?”

Instead, try asking:

“What feeling is underneath this behaviour?”

“What might this experience mean to my child?”

“Do they need help regulating before they can listen?”

Sometimes the answer is simply:

“They’re four. They’re disappointed. And they don’t yet have the skills to manage that disappointment consistently.”

That’s not permissiveness.

It’s developmentally informed parenting and education.

We can acknowledge the feeling and hold the boundary:

“You’re really angry. I’m here. I’m not going to let you hit.”

Then, once the emotional storm has passed, we can help your child learn what they can do differently next time.

WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM PART 2

Your child’s emotional brain isn’t something that needs to be “fixed”.

It is something that is developing through experience.

Their emotions influence what they notice, what they remember, what feels important and how they respond. Relationships and experiences help shape the developing systems involved in emotion, memory and regulation.

The feeling is real, even when the reaction seems bigger than the situation.

Our job isn’t to make the feeling disappear.

It’s to help children learn that they can feel it, survive it, understand it and eventually regulate it.

And this is only the beginning.

NEXT IN THE SERIES

PART 3 — THE HUMAN BRAIN: THE BRAIN THAT THINKS

We’ve explored survival.

We’ve explored emotion and emotional learning.

Next, we’ll explore the developing brain systems that help children plan, inhibit impulses, hold information in mind, think flexibly, solve problems and regulate their behaviour.

And this is where we start to understand one of the biggest challenges of childhood:

Your child may know what they should do, but still not yet be able to do it consistently.

That is where the developing prefrontal and other cortical networks become so important.

REFERENCES — PART 2

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2004). Children’s Emotional Development Is Built into the Architecture of Their Brains: Working Paper No. 2. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University.

Tottenham, N. (2017). The developing amygdala: A student of the world and a teacher of the cortex. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 55–60.

Gee, D. G., et al. (2013). Early developmental emergence of human amygdala–prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2010). Early Experiences Can Alter Gene Expression and Affect Long-Term Development: Working Paper No. 10. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University.

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Serve and Return: Back-and-Forth Exchanges.

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Three Principles to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families.

Emotional learning, stress, and development: An ever-changing landscape shaped by early-life experience. (2017). Developmental Psychobiology.