yrieithydd

While I was failing to sleep last night, I heard The Forum on the World Service. One of the contributors was Camila Batmanghelidjh who founded Kids Company which works with deprived children in London with remarkable results.

She talked about brain development and the fact that the prefrontal lobe which is the controlling part of the brain is programmed by loving care in the first three years of life. As a parent (or other caregiver) soothes the child the child learns how to soothe themselves. The kids Camilla works with have not received this loving care at an early age and so lack the calming mechanisms -- many said to her early in her work `I just can't calm down'. She describes them as 'themostatically impaired'. They have also experienced much violence and trauma in their short lives and have little control of their impulses which are often violent. By long-term work with these children, they can learn techniques for calming themselves and 87% re-engage with education.

It struck me how much of a cycle occurs here. Often their parents won't have learnt the calming mechanisms either and so the children don't and so the cycle continues.

I found various newspaper articles about her work the Independent, The Observer, The Times

and a conservative blogger who dismisses her work with no argument, merely by mocking her words