Epigenetics and Love in PARENTING

DR. KARISHMA STRETTON is a doctor and medical educator who has focused her attention on parenting. In part 2 of her interview with ELIZABETH DENLEY, she speaks about the psychological development of children, and the role of epigenetics and love.

- ELIZABETH DENLEY

Q: Can you talk about the psychological development of a child? It's not just at the physical, but also at the more subtle levels of consciousness and subconscious levels that we connect with our children.

Are we calm and loving, stressed and anxious, or are we struggling? You've read Bruce Lipton's work on how the subconscious mind is far more important in determining our behavior and responses to the world than the conscious mind, which is a thin film between the subconscious and the superconscious. What can we do as parents apart from bonding and meeting biological expectations? How do we move into healthy psychological development?

It's beautiful describing the way you're it, Elizabeth. The conscious and the subconscious mind and the different ways it comes out in the way we behave. Our physiology and psychology, even. The brain of the baby undergoes such rapid development in the first seven years of life. This period in a child's development is of enormous potential, but also requires great care as it represents a time of almost super-charged hardwiring of the brain. Those who have primary contact with the child in these early years are effectively engineering the mind of the child.

In the early years, the human brain undergoes a phenomenal rapid download. It is not only a download of skill sets, like how to physically survive in this world, but also a program of beliefs how to fit into society, where to fit into the scheme of things. In order to understand how this rapid programming takes place, it is best to think of the mind as the duality of the conscious and subconscious mind. The conscious mind is rational, and through it we exercise free will. The subconscious mind dwells below the level of consciousness, and together with the unconscious mind, is largely responsible for our beliefs, habits, and behaviors.