LE FIGARO. - Over the past twenty years, research in affective and social neuroscience has emerged. What have they taught us about child development?
Catherine Gueguen. -
In the 20th century, we knew that the brain was devoted to intellectual, motor and sensory capacities.
Cognitive neuroscience taught us this in the 1970s. Affective and social neuroscience dates from the 21st century and teaches us something additional and extraordinary: a large part of our brain is devoted to emotions!
A researcher like Antonio Damasio has shown that we must give great importance to emotions to promote the proper development of the child, his ability to understand himself and to understand others, to have an ethical and moral sense...
Didier Pleux. -
For me too, neuroscience has been a way of corroborating certain intuitions.
Antonio Damasio also wrote, in his third book
The Strange Order of Things
(2017), that to make progress, to achieve stabilization, man must go through a “
neural imbalance
”.
His thinking fueled mine: I am convinced that human beings, if they do not encounter unpleasant obstacles at some point, risk stagnation.
Didier Pleux's bestseller.
Odile Jacob.
By placing emotions at the heart of child development, affective and social neurosciences have given rise to a new educational theory: benevolent – or positive – education. What does it consist of?
CG -
It is an education based on empathy, understanding of the child, non-violence, accompanied by a framework with clear rules.
The adult learns to perceive and understand his own emotions and those of the child.
Neurosciences show that the brain of the latter is very immature until 5-6 years, which does not allow him to control himself when he crosses “
emotional storms
”.
Showing him empathy - it doesn't mean giving in - helps him regulate himself.
Researcher Rianne Kok showed in 2015 that when both parents are empathic, there is a thickening of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of intellectual functions.
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