Jack Shonkoff from Harvard talks about Toxic Stress and Early Child Development
Early Child Development
Social Cultural Evolution.
100,000 years ago we did not know how to read or write, we probably didnt speak either. We now read and write, we use language to communicate effectively, we have changed our family structure from the village life where everyone is helps in child rearing to the nuclear family. All of these changes form part of our social cultural evolution.
We have some gifts that we have not been using to the utmost of their potential.
The relationships that we form, our capacity to form relationships within big groups, making groups, living peacefully within groups, being in a tribe. Without a group we will not have been able to survive and thrive as a species. The person is not a person without a tribe.
Our brain is primed and functions correctly within a group setting.
Few People in Our Lives
We are creating online communities instead of real face to face connections.
Your internal wiring, all of the interconnected systems that you have in your body like the stress response network ,how your immune system works, correct organ function,
We are born with the capabilities to be empathic moral, good people, but this depends on the way we relate to people.
“We are all a product of our developmental history.
“One of the times when we are most susceptible to the influences of our surrounding environment is when we are developing as a foetus”1
Pampa Sarkar
The Project
This project starts as the result of the ACE study from 1998. The ACE study was done by an organization with 15,000 employees and a $7billion annual budget.
The ACE study showed that most of what ails society has the roots in adverse circumstances in childhood. So I wondered if these ACEs can be eliminated completely in a polulation, then its possible to eliminate all the resulting health and social impediments that are a disadvantage to society.
If a polulation of 0 to 1 ACEs had indeed no prisioners and no domestic violence. I this same polulation would have massively reduced cases of heart dicease, diabetes and other health problems. Because if the answer is yes then the whole of society needs to refocus its research, capital and other efforts to a comprehensive program that eliminates ACEs.
I started looking at different sucessful programs like NFP and CYW. These 2 programs are very successful at preventing ACEs and its damaging effects. But they are not implemented in a large scale. The only other similar program is in Sweden.
The individual family, the community, the workplace and thw government must come together to support the mother or couple who because of the faulty idea of the nuclear family are now struggling to give the attention necessary for healthy child development.
So the goal of my project is to gather all the data, all of the research regading early childhood intervention and other programs and synthesised into a tight evidence based program that shows that preventing ACEs is the ultimate solution to humanity’s major challenges.
Then communicate the results to the people and organizations who will implement the results.
Programs like End Violence only target the result of ACEs, they are the band-aid to the problem of Violence. While programmes like NFP prevent violence from ever raising its head. NFP prevents the seed of violence from ever being planted.
The project is born out of the data that indicates that 100% of violent criminals also have a score of 4 or more with 80% scoring 8 or more ACEs.
I had many questions, I wanted to know what happens to a population with 0 or 1 or 2 ACEs.? ..
I wanted to know if school bullying was a result of ACEs being too high.?
I started to connect the dots, and what I saw amazed me:
Most of what ails the world is a direct result of high ACEs and Toxic Stress!
ACE study videos
Personal and Parental Reflections on ACEs…:
The single largest public health threat faced by the world today is ACEs.
Excellent 20 minute presentation by Dr Anda, co presenter of the original ACE study.
This short video was instrumental in the writing on my first poem about the wounds created by emotional pain.