On April 11, 2008, most of us were shocked to see news showing a video where teenaged girls beat another girl in front of a camera and then posted it on the internet. Two boys stood guard outside.

Lay wisdom that violence begets violence is insight that most movie makers, TV producers and Nintendo producers want to deny. I went on line and found hundreds of postings by teens that had to do with violence. Shocking? Yes. Understandable? Maybe.

Sadly our country has become a culture where physical stuff is more important than kids’ physical and emotional health. Our infants are being placed in Day Care at 6 weeks of age, never having bonded properly to their mothers and certainly not able to bond with the Day Care Workers. Most infants are not breastfed and those who are, average 3 to 6 weeks. The World Health Organization says children need a minimum of 2 ½ years of breastfeeding to be healthy physically and mentally.

Yes it is possible to raise kids who are peaceful and caring children and teenagers. But we must change! Since 1970s research has shown that how we raise our children has vital impact on who they become. How we treat our infants and kids seriously effects even their brain development.

Essential Benefits for Human Brain Health Starts Before Birth

When Mother is feeling safe, cared for during pregnancy birth and when her infant is young, she is able to care for her baby in a way that creates normal brain health. Breast feeding is essential for optimal brain health. Among the many perfectly designed, essential for human babies, ingredients in human mother’s milk, is Tryptophan. It is one of the many crucial elements that are absent in formula milk. Tryptophan is an amino acid which is a precursor of brain serotonin. Serotonin is essential for healthy brain function. Since human babies have brains that grow enormously fast in the first two years of life, and calves (goats, sheep [soybeans?!] etc) do not, (their clove- hoof- bodies need milk to create the ability to stand immediately after birth, walk within the first hour of birth and soon run from predators) it makes sense that human milk should be fed to human babies unless there is no human milk available.

James Prescott PhD, Neuro-Psychologist, formerly with The National Institute of Child Health and Human Services in Washington DC, well known for his cutting edge studies on human bonding and breastfeeding, researched violence among over 50 of the world’s cultures over thirty years ago. Dr Prescott tells us that in major studies, it is now well known that a Serotonin deficit creates problems in human subjects. Depression and violence is present when mother love, mother bonding and breastfeeding are absent. The damage to human children is done in the first weeks, months and years if there is lack of what they need most.

Prescott says that the human brain needs what breast milk contains along with the breastfeeding experience of holding, movement and what we call love does, to assist the brain to be healthy. Children who are breastfed and lovingly carried and held close to mother’s body for the usual two plus years for the most part become adults who are calm, and peaceful. Breastfeeding, positive sensory stimulation, and physical affectional bonding, insures normal brain development, Prescott tells us.

Babies who do not get what they need often become depressed and more alarming, violent. Prescott thinks that this explains the epidemic of deprived infants who grow up to become children who kill children without remorse or feeling. By not supporting mothers to stay home and nurture their babies our culture is creating more psychopaths and sociopaths, who do heinous acts without consciousness he believes.

Nurturing our mothers to feel safe, stay home, be taken care of will enable them to raise healthy children who become healthy adults. Working to change rules so mothers and fathers can stay at home with their young children must become one of the top a priorities in out nation.

For Mother’s Day get involved! Practice no tolerance for complacency. Work toward legislature that supports leave for at least one year for each parent to stay home with babies. Give up a new car or house and stay home with your baby. Work to clear your own painful past.

Pamela Chubbuck PhD, LPC, LCSW a psychotherapist, international trainer of therapists, ex-midwife and grandmother of 9, has long studied peace and violence among humans.
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