Key Takeaways
1. Nurture is a Preventive Medicine Built in Infancy
When babies receive nurturing care in the first three years of life, it builds strong, resilient brains—brains that are less susceptible to poor mental health for life.
Early Experiences Matter. Mental health struggles are prevalent and growing, but the foundation for lifelong mental wellness is built in infancy. Nurturing care during the first three years of life has a dramatic impact on genetics and the development of an infant’s stress system, leading to a cascade of changes in the brain and body that boost lifelong health. This period of rapid brain development offers a unique opportunity to shape resilient brains less susceptible to mental health issues.
Nurture vs. Pills. While pharmaceutical treatments can help, they haven't improved collective mental health. Nurture, in contrast, is a preventive experiential approach that builds strong, resilient brains. This involves responsive relationships that regulate the stress system, mitigate genetic risks, and promote lifelong health.
The Mental Health Revolution. By nurturing our babies' brains, we can revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Mental health doesn’t impact individuals in isolation. Our families, communities, and nations at large are impacted by the mental health of their members. We are in a mental health crisis with wide-ranging effects on humanity and our planet. We are also in possession of knowledge to dramatically shift this crisis and create new cycles of intergenerational mental wellness.
2. Babies Need to Borrow Your Brain for Regulation
Babies need reliable access to you, a parent or caregiver, for what I call an external emotional brain; they need a caregiver who can reliably regulate their stress, support their emotions, and meet their needs.
Immature Brain Circuits. Infants' brains are still developing, particularly the emotional and thinking brain circuits. They cannot manage stress and emotions on their own, requiring caregivers to act as an "external emotional brain." This means providing a supportive, reliable, and safe presence to regulate their stress, support their emotions, and meet their needs.
Three Stages of Brain Development. The infant brain develops from the bottom up:
- Survival brain circuits (brain stem) develop first, sustaining life and inviting relationships.
- Emotional brain circuits (limbic system) develop extensively in infancy, shaped by nurture.
- Thinking brain circuits (prefrontal cortex) develop later, influenced by the emotional brain.
Co-regulation is Key. Babies need reliable access to you, a parent or caregiver, for what I call an external emotional brain; they need a caregiver who can reliably regulate their stress, support their emotions, and meet their needs. In order to build the healthiest brain, your baby needs to borrow your mature brain functions during the important early years of their life. The infant brain develops in the relationship with the adult brain. It borrows the adult brain to develop regulation, sociability, cognition, and health.
3. Nurture Interacts with Inherited Genes for Mental Health
Nurture makes an impact on inherited DNA and epigenetics to reduce or silence mental health effects.
Nature and Nurture. The brain is built by a complex interplay between genetics (nature) and experiences (nurture). While DNA provides the building instructions, experiences shape and strengthen important genes, proteins, cells, and circuits in the brain. Nurture can reduce or silence the power of genes that increase vulnerability to psychiatric symptoms.
Orchid vs. Dandelion Genes. Some infants inherit "orchid" genes, making them highly sensitive to both nurturing and stressful experiences. Others inherit "dandelion" genes, making them more resilient regardless of their environment. Since we don't know which genes our children have, it's crucial to provide every child with nurturing experiences to maximize their chances at good mental health.
Epigenetic Markers. Experiences in early development lead to epigenetic changes in our babies. Nurturing experiences create epigenetic markers on DNA that foster resilience and mental wellness. Stressful experiences may leave epigenetic markers that increase susceptibility to mental unwellness. By nurturing in pregnancy and infancy, we can create new epigenetic markers that foster resilience and mental wellness.
4. Parent Brains are Wired for Nurturing Superpowers
Having a baby changes your brain to give you nurturing superpowers.
Brain Transformation. Becoming a parent leads to massive brain changes, a period of neuroplasticity as significant as adolescence. This transformation, called matrescence (for mothers) and patrescence (for fathers), involves the emergence of new and specialized parenting brain circuits that nonparents do not have.
Parenting Superpowers. These new brain circuits give parents enhanced abilities for:
- Sensitivity to baby's communication
- Enhanced empathy
- Threat detection
- Feelings of motivation, reward, and calm when interacting with their baby
Nurture is Key. The extent of these brain changes and the strength of parenting superpowers depend on the amount of time parents spend nurturing their baby in the early months. This underscores the importance of parental leave for all parents.
5. Nurturing Presence: Being in a Physical and Emotional Relationship
Being with my baby is vital brain-building, circuit-sculpting, cycle-starting activism for my baby’s future.
Shifting Mindsets. Nurturing presence is a shift in mindset from thinking of babies as objects to be managed to thinking of them as human beings who exist in relationships. It involves unconditional acceptance, respect, and trust in their cues and communication.
The Four Questions. A nurturing presence is characterized by answering "yes" to these questions:
- Do you see me?
- Do you care that I'm here?
- Am I enough for you, or do you need me to be better in some way?
- Can I tell that I’m special to you by the way that you look at me?
Being vs. Doing. Nurturing presence prioritizes being with your baby over doing tasks. It recognizes that the most powerful tool we have for building healthy brains is not perfection or any product, but simply our loving presence.
6. Nurtured Empathy: Connecting to Your Baby's Internal World
All of your baby’s stress and emotions need to feel welcome and safe.
Understanding the Internal World. Babies have an internal world made up of physical sensations, stress, emotions, needs, and thoughts. All behavior and communication comes from this internal world. Nurtured empathy involves bringing our attention to the baby’s internal world with the goal of teaching them how to navigate emotions, needs, thoughts, and behaviors.
Beyond Behavior-Based Parenting. Nurtured empathy is an alternative to behavior-based parenting, which focuses on modifying behaviors through rewards and punishments. Instead, nurtured empathy seeks to understand the underlying emotions and needs driving the behavior.
Building Self-Awareness. By linking behavior to feelings and needs, we help babies develop self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy for others. This involves naming what is happening internally, connecting the thinking brain with the emotional brain, and meeting the underlying need.
7. Nurturing Stress: Responding to Cries and Big Emotions
Responding reliably strengthens a baby’s emotional brain circuits, helps them grow confidently independent, and gives them the gift of stress regulation for life.
Stress as Communication. All infant stress is communication, signaling that their stress systems are overwhelmed and they feel unsafe and dysregulated. Babies need us to provide oxytocin to help them feel calm and safe.
The Stress Curve. Babies have a functioning amygdala alarm and hypothalamus gas pedal, but lack a hippocampus brake pedal. They need nurture to recover their stress system and get into safety states.
The Importance of Presence. Nurture, through thousands of experiences with a calm, regulated, and loving external brain in infancy, sets the conditions and builds the efficiency of the stress system that babies will rely on for life.
8. Nurturing Sleep: Creating a Safe and Connected Sleep Environment
There is a huge range of sleep needs for babies, and in a safe, comfortable sleep environment my baby will sleep the amount that their brain needs.
Normal Infant Sleep. Infant sleep is governed by circadian rhythm and homeostatic sleep drive, both of which are immature in babies. Night waking is a normal feature of infant sleep, and babies need our help to fall back asleep.
Beyond Sleep Training. Sleep training, which involves letting infants cry until they fall asleep alone, is not neuroscience-supported or evidence-based. It may lead to a freeze-dissociation-sleep response and put the infant brain at risk of toxic stress.
Nurtured Sleep Practices. Nurtured sleep involves:
- A regulated caregiver
- Supporting circadian rhythms with sunlight and darkness
- Following the baby's tired cues
- Nurturing the baby to sleep with co-regulation, feeding, cuddling, rocking, or carrying
- Sleeping close to the baby
- Prioritizing your own sleep
9. Filling Your Nurture Reservoir: Prioritizing Your Well-being
Becoming a parent is a unique opportunity to learn about your stress system and do inner work within the relationship with your baby.
The Nurture Reservoir. Think of yourself as having a nurture reservoir inside. When it's full, you feel comfortable, safe, and able to deal with stressors. When it's empty, you're more likely to switch into a stress state.
I CARE Practices. Use these practices to build your nurture reservoir over time:
- Intuition or Interoception: Observe signals from your body.
- Curious about your physical needs: Meet your basic needs for water, food, nature, movement, sleep, touch, and safety.
- Aware of your emotions and emotional needs: Learn to recognize and process your emotions.
- Regular breathing: Practice slow, deep belly breathing.
- Evoke compassion and awe: Cultivate positive emotions.
Growing SPACE Practices. Use these in-the-moment strategies to guide you from stress states to safety states:
- Self-awareness: Notice when you're getting stressed.
- Pause your immediate reaction: Interrupt the immediate response.
- Aware of the sensations: Feel the emotion and notice sensations in your body.
- Create movement: Release the stress through physical movement.
- Emotion processing: Name your feelings and needs.
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FAQ
1. What is The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum about?
- Infant brain development focus: The book explores how nurturing parenting during the first three years profoundly shapes a baby’s brain, stress system, and lifelong mental health.
- Nurture as preventive medicine: Kirshenbaum presents nurture as a science-backed way to build resilience and prevent mental health struggles, bridging neuroscience and practical parenting.
- Parent and baby transformation: It details how both infant and parent brains change through nurturing, creating “parenting superpowers” and fostering healthy emotional development.
- Debunking myths: The book challenges common misconceptions about infant care, sleep, and emotional needs, offering evidence-based guidance.
2. Why should I read The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum?
- Science-based, practical advice: The book translates cutting-edge neuroscience into accessible, actionable parenting strategies, empowering parents with evidence rather than outdated myths.
- Addresses real parenting challenges: It offers compassionate, research-backed solutions for infant stress, crying, sleep, and behavior, validating parents’ experiences.
- Promotes lifelong mental health: Kirshenbaum shows how early nurture builds resilient stress systems and emotional brains, reducing risks for mental health disorders later in life.
- Supports parents’ well-being: The book recognizes the importance of nurturing the parent’s own mental health and provides tools for self-care and emotional regulation.
3. What are the key takeaways from The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum?
- Infancy is a critical window: The first three years are a unique period of neuroplasticity when nurturing experiences literally build brain circuits for stress regulation and emotional health.
- Nurture shapes genetics and resilience: Early caregiving influences gene expression and epigenetics, reducing inherited risks and starting new cycles of resilience.
- Responsive caregiving is essential: Reliable, empathetic responses to infant cues build resilient stress systems and prevent reactive brain wiring.
- Nurture is about relationship, not perfection: Being present and attuned, even imperfectly, is what fosters lifelong mental health and connection.
4. What are the most important quotes from The Nurture Revolution and what do they mean?
- “Babies borrow your brain.” This highlights that infants rely on caregivers’ mature brains to regulate their own stress and emotions, as their own brains are not yet developed for self-regulation.
- “Nurture is a gift like no other; it is the most dramatic life-shifting advantage a human can have.” Kirshenbaum emphasizes the lifelong impact of early nurturing on mental health and resilience.
- “Our babies learn how to repair when we repair.” This underscores the importance of modeling emotional repair and reconnection after mistakes or ruptures in the parent-child relationship.
- “There are no good or bad emotions... Emotions are sacred.” The book encourages parents to accept and validate all emotions, teaching emotional literacy and healthy processing.
5. How does The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum debunk common myths about infant care?
- Infants do remember: The book explains that infants form implicit emotional memories that shape their stress and emotional systems for life, even if they don’t recall events explicitly.
- Responding to cries builds independence: Contrary to the myth that responding spoils babies, reliable responses foster confident independence and strong emotional circuits.
- Babies cannot self-soothe: Infants lack the brain development to self-regulate; they need caregivers to help them manage stress and emotions.
- Extended breastfeeding and closeness are beneficial: Practices like extended breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact are nurturing and support brain and immune health, not spoiling.
- Sleep training myths debunked: The book rejects the idea that babies should sleep independently or self-soothe early, advocating for responsive, nurturing sleep practices.
6. What are the core concepts of nurtured stress and co-regulation in The Nurture Revolution?
- Babies need co-regulation: Infants rely on caregivers to help them move from stress to safety states, as their brains are not yet capable of self-regulation.
- Nurtured empathy guides behavior: Understanding and responding to the feelings behind behaviors like tantrums or biting helps link emotions to safe, social behaviors.
- Flexible, multisensory soothing: The book encourages using movement, singing, and sensory input to help babies calm, rather than rigid calming methods that may trigger stress.
- Building resilience: Co-regulation and nurtured stress responses help infants develop resilient stress systems and emotional confidence.
7. How does The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum approach infant sleep differently from traditional sleep training?
- Rejects self-soothing expectations: The book explains that infants naturally wake frequently and need co-regulation to return to sleep, rather than being taught to self-soothe.
- Nurtured sleep supports brain health: Sleeping close, feeding on cue, and responding to night wakings nurture the infant brain’s stress system and promote resilience.
- Safe bedsharing and contact sleep: Kirshenbaum advocates for safe bedsharing or sidecar beds, especially for babies who need full body contact to feel secure.
- Follows baby’s cues: Parents are encouraged to respond to their baby’s tired cues and needs, rather than adhering to rigid sleep schedules.
8. What are the “parenting superpowers” described in The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum?
- Enhanced sensitivity to cues: Parents develop a heightened ability to notice and respond to their baby’s cries and subtle communications, supporting bonding and regulation.
- Increased empathy and understanding: The parent brain enhances emotional empathy and theory of mind, allowing caregivers to better understand and respond to their baby’s needs.
- Improved threat detection: Brain changes make parents more vigilant to potential dangers, helping keep babies safe.
- Motivation and reward from caregiving: Interacting with their baby activates parents’ dopamine and oxytocin systems, making nurturing feel rewarding and reinforcing positive behaviors.
9. How does The Nurture Revolution define and use “nurtured presence” and “nurtured empathy”?
- Nurtured presence: Being fully present, attentive, and accepting with your baby, communicating safety and unconditional acceptance through calm, undistracted attention.
- Nurtured empathy: Attuning to your baby’s internal world—feelings, needs, and thoughts—using marked mirroring (exaggerated facial expressions and words) to reflect and name emotions.
- Foundation for brain growth: These practices create safety, regulate stress, and build emotional and cognitive brain circuits essential for lifelong mental health.
- Application in daily life: The book provides scripts and examples for practicing nurtured presence and empathy during stress, sleep, and everyday interactions.
10. What practical strategies does The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum offer for nurturing infants during calm and stress?
- “Baby chats” and serve-and-return: Engage in back-and-forth interactions when your baby is calm and alert, building synchrony and brain circuits for regulation.
- Multisensory connection: Use skin-to-skin contact, voice, touch, and movement to provide nurturing experiences that release oxytocin and dopamine.
- Be the external brain during stress: Lend your calm, regulated presence to help infants move from stress to safety, acting as a bridge for emotional regulation.
- Respond reliably and empathetically: Attend to all stress and emotions without judgment, recognizing that consistent responses build resilience and independent regulation over time.
11. What methods does The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum recommend for nurturing the parent brain and supporting parental mental health?
- I CARE practices: Use Intuition, Curiosity, Awareness, Regular breathing, and Evoking compassion and awe to build your own nurture reservoir and resilience.
- Growing SPACE strategies: Practice Self-awareness, Pause, Awareness of sensations, Create movement, and Emotion processing to reduce reactive parenting and respond from a safety state.
- Emotional intelligence development: Expand your emotional vocabulary and understand your own needs, modeling healthy emotional processing for your baby.
- Build a support network: Share caregiving, seek help, and connect with nurturing people to sustain your mental health and caregiving capacity.
12. How does The Nurture Revolution by Greer Kirshenbaum address repair after parental mistakes or reactivity?
- Repair is essential and normal: The book emphasizes that all parents make mistakes, but repair is crucial for maintaining connection and modeling healthy relationships.
- Steps to repair: After calming, reconnect with eye contact and touch, review what happened with clear language, apologize sincerely, and make a plan for next time.
- Repair can happen anytime: Even if low nurture or harsh parenting occurred for months or years, repair can begin at any age, fostering healing and reconnection.
- Modeling emotional regulation: Repair teaches babies how to process emotions, repair relationships, and builds trust and resilience for the future.
Review Summary
The Nurture Revolution receives mostly positive reviews, with readers praising its science-based approach to attachment parenting and emphasis on nurturing babies. Many find it validating and life-changing, appreciating the focus on responding to infants' needs. Some criticize the repetitive nature and lack of detail in certain areas. A few readers express discomfort with inclusive language choices. Overall, the book is widely recommended for new parents, though some suggest it may not be suitable for all audiences or parenting philosophies.
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