Mirror Neurons Part II: Self-Regulation
In Mirror Neurons Part I, I talked about the way mirror neurons create a neurological correlate of whatever we observe in others. Through these internal recording devices, everything we notice in another person – from facial expressions to body language to vocal inflection – is replicated in our own brainwaves and muscles. Through mirror neurons, we literally become what we experience others to be.
But the way we experience others to be is not necessarily the way they experience themselves! Affect, movement, tone can be transmitted through the muscles, but these things may mean something completely different to the observer than to the actor! The meanings we make are affected by our culture, our life experience, the state of our own physiological “equipment” – and, not least, our developmental age.
What something means to an adult is rarely the same thing it means to a child – particularly a young child. And yet, we often assume that children are seeing life through the same kinds of lenses that filter our own perceptions.
Breakdown of Meaning. As I entered the waiting room for my office, a four year-old boy jumped on me in delight. Their mother gasped and said, “That is so rude! That is unacceptable behavior! You really hurt Granny the last time you did that!”
I looked at the child’s face, and read complete incomprehension.
From the mother’s point of view, I was an authority figure, and the boy hadn’t asked my permission to catch him, and what if I had fallen down like poor Granny? As an adult, the mother understood things like impulse control and social appropriateness, and she was mortified that her child seemed not to.
But, in a very real way, a three year-old’s mind is his sensorimotor system. Three year-old’s can’t abstract an action like “jumping on people” and relate it to different circumstances. He saw me, he jumped. Granny never entered his mind.
Piaget calls this stage of development the “pre-operational” stage. According to Piaget, before the age of five, children are not able to imagine the “what-ifs.” That requires holding an idea of the action that is separate from the action itself. Adult minds are (theoretically) able to separate the behavior itself from the person exhibiting the behavior. But this is a sophisticated bit of cognition that doesn’t really begin to develop until adolescence.
For a three year-old, jumping on me now, and jumping on Grammy in some distant unremembered past, are like chalk and cheese – one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. All he can hear is that somehow, his joyful inner impulse is bad. He is being told that the instinctive bond he felt with me was wrong. Meanwhile, his mirror neurons are mimicking his mother’s stress and anger, fighting with his original joyful impulse.
What is his educational take-away from this experience? Practical ways to be socially appropriate? Or to mistrust his own sense of rightness, connection with others, and his impulse to act?
This is when mirror neurons, for us as adults, can become a terrifying responsibility.
What Do We Do?Of course, it’s not OK for kids to knock people over. How can we speak to them in a developmentally appropriate language that they will understand? Here are some rules of thumb:
1. We don’t get angry. As soon as the children register that we are, and it is somehow their fault, their systems immediately go into fight, flight or freeze. New learning is not a possibility for them at this time.
2. If we do get angry, our first job is to calm ourselves. If we want our children to self-regulate, they need to experience us regulating ourselves.
3. We keep it positive and concrete and in the now. “I can see that you’re happy to see Eve, but we don’t jump on people without asking. So ask Eve, ‘May I jump on you?’” Then, I can say, “Thank you for asking, I would love you to jump on me,” or, “Now isn’t the best time, let’s just have a hug instead.”
As adults, it doesn’t always occur to us to try to see an interaction the way the child may be seeing it. It can be hard for us to drop our assumptions and our judgments, particularly when we get triggered. But mirror neurons teach us that our mind/body systems operate in a WYSIWYG world. What You See Is What You Get.
And, when working with children, that’s a pretty good modus operandi.
Marcia Humpal Oct 29, 2011
Great explanation of a very “current” topic!