Brain-based parenting

As a neuroscientist, if I wanted to make something really memorable for my kids I would use some of the most powerful ingredients we have to make memories: our senses, our emotions and repetition… our senses, our emotions and repetition (see what I did there?!)

Why does Christmas feel so emotionally charged?

The short answer is the powerful emotion- nostalgia, a feeling of yearning towards the past, typically childhood or adolescence that is usually triggered by objects, music, films, photographs, tastes, smells or - in the case of Christmas, many of these things all together. Of course for many people, there can be feelings of pain and loss accompanying this period, others may have experienced traumatic upbringings that are not imbued with all the emotion we see in the endless Christmas movies played this time of year. Since we are a week away from it, I’m using Christmas as an example of how we can gift our future grown up children the wonderful feeling of nostalgia.

Making memories

Certain things get priority in our brains when it comes to making memories that stick. Smell is one of the most powerful things, with the smell centres of your brain (the olfactory bulb) having more direct access to the emotion and memory centres than your other senses - which is why a smell can so easily evoke a memory of a place, or a person, or an event. Emotion also makes memories stronger - the bigger or deeper the emotion the more likely it is to stick.

Now add to that making things ritualistic, by repeating them every year, and you have the perfect cocktail for memories that stick. The reason you might feel nostalgic this time of year, and why it feels different from other memories is because of the incredible mix of emotions and sensory memories coming together. 

What does this mean for my parenting?

🎄Build rituals. Rituals have always been an important part of human culture because they encourage social behaviours and build trust. For children they also provide a sense of familiarity and reassurance. Having rituals around Christmas, particularly those that involve other sensory experiences, like music, feel-good films and smells and food are all guaranteed to come together to give your children wonderful memories. This doesn’t only apply to Christmas, but work for anything, like birthdays or summer holidays.

🎅🏼 Eat, drink and be merry! Smell and taste are some of our biggest memory makers and nostalgia drivers. Smells like the pine of Christmas trees, cinnamon and mulled wine, all evoke the associated memories of Christmas because every year these smells are so dominant. Baking Christmas cookies or making hot chocolate every year can build these associations, so that the smell alone can evoke really nostalgic memories. Again, the association need not be with Christmas, if you don’t celebrate it - just a feeling of warmth and familiarity at this time of year can be positive (especially if you are in the colder climates). While I lived in Austalia and South Africa, we ate seafood - and those taste memories still stick with me even in the cold of the UK!

🎄Make new rituals. If you have negative associations with Christmas, from your own childhood. Build new memories and associations with your children. Although you might feel a great deal of nostalgia towards particular movies or music, recognise that your children might want to watch things that are new and more familiar to them, and these will probably form the basis of their nostalgia. They don’t have the associations you have with these things, so don’t be offended if they are not interested in Home Alone and they want to listen to Ariana Grande!

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