Unlocking the Mysteries of the Child's Mind: A Neuroscientist's Insight

“Not again! Not agaaain!” screams the seven-year-old, stomping his feet. "Did you climb on the closet again? What are you looking for up there?" the mother despairs. "You didn’t bring me one!" whines the six-year-old, and once again you find yourself facing a draining scene of tears, left with no energy. Have you found yourselves in front of challenging behaviors from your children? Have you lost patience, recognizing that feeling of endless trial and error? "It all begins in the brain," explains Racheli Langford, a neuroscience researcher and clinical psychologist based in London. Langford runs the London branch of the Waves Clinic for brain function training and enhancement. She is a scientific advisor and research director at NeuroAddit, a company creating cutting-edge technology to improve cognitive function in Alzheimer's and brain injury. Langford advises us to change our direction: “When looking deep into brain activity in children, we not only see how they think and learn but also understand their inner world. Why do they hit, seek attention, appear hyperactive, or do things that annoy everyone? Or even why some still wet the bed?” **Powering Up the Brain** Racheli shares important insights about what we can see in the brains of children with attention or behavioral disorders. So, what’s going on in the mind of a child struggling to focus or unable to sit quietly? “What do we parents and teachers tend to say, or at least want to say, to a hyperactive child?” Langford poses, answering: "Sit still, calm down a bit, stop, hold on." It seems like the child’s brain is overly aroused and needs calming down. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite,” she emphasizes. "Imagine the brain having a battery, like a car battery. It knows how to charge itself, but not always efficiently. Imagine this battery is running low, so low that if we stop the car (or the brain), we can’t restart it right away. There is such a battery in the brain — it's called the sensory motor frequency. The lower this frequency, the emptier the battery. When it’s empty, the child has to fight to stay awake and function daily, so they must keep moving. The child may not be conscious of this, but if they stop, they disconnect completely, are sleepy, or lack the energy to continue the day. The more children run on an empty battery, the more hyperactive they become. The more we charge the brain, the calmer the child becomes. That’s precisely what stimulant medications like Ritalin aim to do — stimulate! Stimulate a hyperactive child? Yes, precisely! But brain-wise." How do we stimulate the brain? "This is the question," Langford nods. "Medications are one way, the one most are familiar with. As long as the drug is in the system, it is often effective, but once it wears off, you’re back to square one. Alternatively, we can teach the brain how to raise the sensory motor frequency itself. Once it knows this, it’s set for life. Instead of telling a hyperactive child to stop, let’s recharge them." It sounds like magic, and Langford details how: “One way is to increase dopamine production in the brain. There are several ways to do this. One is positive feedback. Focus on what the child does well and genuinely compliment them; dopamine levels rise. Because reward = dopamine. Another way is physical activity and a lot of handwork. A third way is through diet. Some foods enhance dopamine production in the brain. Without delving into too many details, the main food category to give your child is protein. The more protein they consume, the more building blocks for dopamine they’ll have. The more protein, the less sugar they’ll need. Double the benefit." There’s also a way to teach the brain how to change desired frequencies in targeted areas to directly affect brain waves, so for example, the brain independently learns how to increase sensory-motor frequencies. That is what I do daily with children and adults in the clinic—each with their patterns to train. Our development is brain training based on the Yael Langford method—Yael was my mother, of blessed memory, and a neuroscience researcher herself.” The overarching field is called neurofeedback — brain pattern training. It’s crucial to note—many methods exist in this field, and practitioners come from varied backgrounds, most not from neuroscience, unfortunately. Hence, it's vital to carefully examine whom you entrust your brain to. I’ve seen charlatan campaigns promising naïve individuals brain training." **Rebellion: Friend or Foe?** Langford notes there can be numerous brain-based reasons for rebellion. Each brain requires individual mapping to understand the pattern configurations leading to certain behaviors. "In the case of children with ADHD, genetic studies show they lack sufficient dopamine in the brain's frontal area. Moreover, the enzyme that breaks down dopamine is abundant. Their brain is desperate for dopamine." How does a child get even a tiny bit of dopamine? They only know the first way: reward = dopamine. They do something to draw attention because attention equals dopamine, equals reward. Often, children don’t distinguish between positive and negative attention if either gets them what they seek. If I do something and know it will irritate everyone, sure, the price is everyone getting upset and shouting at me, but in the same moment, everyone looks at me and interacts with me, and I get a "dopamine shot." This shows just how desperate the brain is for dopamine. Understanding what underlies rebellion and stubbornness helps us adopt a direct and effective parenting strategy: emphasize positive attention over negative. Thus, the child receives dopamine, realizing which actions get rewarded and which do not. Try to give positive feedback before the moment of rebellion, and during challenging times, avoid over-rewarding with attention. It sounds challenging, but thank God, when you’re aware and understand what’s behind the difficult behavior, it’s easier to address it. I often hear from parents in the clinic that when the child is with them, even for an hour, suddenly they’re not hyperactive. Now we understand why—because at that moment, they get plenty of dopamine." **Who’s Afraid of Change?** Langford provides another example: "Sometimes it seems a child is rebelling and being stubborn, linked to the brain. Often, the brain’s ability to adapt to a changing environment isn’t efficient. The brain’s system doesn’t efficiently filter what information to pay attention to at any moment. Relevant and irrelevant information floods the child, overwhelming their brain." A classic example is seen in children on the autism spectrum. **How does this look from the parents' perspective?** "Not so pleasant... These are children who rebel against plan changes, get anxious about new plans, and any unexpected event in their daily routine. They resist, cry, protest, or even become aggressive. This is the practical expression of the child's brain challenge. I’m overwhelmed and don’t know how to organize the emotional or sensory content around me. Moreover, I need to explain why I'm behaving like this while I'm trapped in my reaction. The more the child is accused, the more they lose control, because they truly don’t understand why they explode like this. The secret is that the brain lacks effective filtering of environmental information. This is also a common brain-related cause of sensory and emotional regulation challenges." **So what to do with a child struggling to adapt to changes?** "First, understand there’s no reason to get angry and upset with the child. They’re in distress, not understanding what’s going on or why. Second, remember that asking 'why did you do this? I’ve told you a thousand times to stop' won’t get a real answer from the child. They themselves don’t know why they hit, why they scream when frustrated, or why they don’t want to go on a school trip. They don’t realize they’re just afraid of what the plan is and what will happen if it changes, or any other situation their brain can’t adjust to. If we combine this with the challenge of ADHD, changes are doubly hard for the child. Change requires focus, understanding, adaptation to a new situation, reorganization, and possibly tasks to perform, all of which are challenging for someone with ADHD. Unconsciously, the child recognizes a change will bring demands their brain may not meet, causing stress. Therefore, when a plan change is anticipated, it’s important to discuss it as much as possible in advance, allowing the child to ask all their questions and receive answers. Children need to know what change is coming and why it’s important. Of course, explaining this in terms they understand, and if possible, letting them suggest ideas for the new plan or solution. This shifts their perception from feeling something larger than them is altering their environment to having control and involvement in the process and valuing their ideas. Also, when introducing change, focus on one area while keeping all else familiar and consistent. Breaking down an expected change into smaller stages also provides more time for adaptation. Despite this, there are unexpected changes, and changes needing to occur in one direct step. It’s crucial as parents to prepare for this and accept that the child might emotionally protest or be temporarily unbalanced. It’s vital to be forgiving and, with understanding of their difficulty, recognize it will pass. Additionally, through neurofeedback, it’s possible to address fear of change. We see children in the clinic who started training because parents knew their child was so stressed by any plan change that they wouldn’t share any plan with them. Not even what’s happening in five minutes. Over time, as the child progresses with training, the brain learns to operate the mechanism facilitating adaptation to a changing environment efficiently, and suddenly plans can be discussed at home. The child doesn’t cry if plans change. They even suggest their improvements to the plan." **Perpetual Injustice** "It’s not fair! Why didn’t I get that? Why do you love him more than me?" are familiar complaints of injustice. A cute story I encountered in this context involved two brothers who received candies from their mother. When one started crying bitterly, his mother asked why he was sad—he had a hand full of candies. He tearfully replied, "It’s not fair that Yossi got 4 candies and I only got 5!" In other words, when you’re looking to feel unjustly treated, it doesn’t matter what you have. So what to do with children who constantly feel deprived? Langford answers: "When it’s occasional behavior, it can be natural for children. But when it characterizes the child, when they always feel deprived, never satisfied, always complaining, and nothing is good enough, we see this in their brain patterns: they have far more slow waves (alpha waves) on the left side of the brain compared to the right. The left side is the action side, the right side is for thinking. When the action side has too slow frequencies, it makes us view the world negatively, and for such children, reality is always negative. **How should we respond to such children?** "Dopamine activates faster waves in the brain, and sometimes the child's behavior seeks additional dopamine. Hence, chronic deprivation ties back to the child's need for attention (even negative attention at any cost). Often it's not the content of the complaints but the complaining pattern that lets the child vent anxiety or fear in a way that gives them a sense of control, or they behave negatively with everyone to get the attention that gives them the dopamine they lack. Therefore, rather than getting caught up in the complaint’s content, let’s focus on the form—they need more attention. We need to emphasize positive, not negative, attention. If something the child comments on ‘presses all our buttons’ stirring our anger and frustration, let’s ask ourselves as parents two questions: are we, at times, displaying this same pattern to the child? And why does this button they push trigger us? Consequently, what can I improve within myself so it doesn’t bother me as much? Langford suggests a home exercise with the children: each day, ask one another: what are you happy about today? And what positive thing can you say tonight to Dad? So, actively, the child learns to seek the positive and express and declare it aloud. **The Crucial Question... Once we understand the issue is in the brain—does this mean the child is exempt from self-work? Should we make no demands? How can we guide and educate more appropriately?** "Our first parental response is rooted in understanding and embracing the child, also from a brain perspective," Langford responds. "Understanding he is not a bad child, he doesn’t do it intentionally, and in fact, he also is trapped in the reaction his brain chose based on the tools it has, or lacks, at this point in time. This realization places us in a mindset of more forgiveness and less anger. Practically, the correct approach is to enlist the child’s cooperation with the parent to help the brain function better. Rather than asking for justification for their negative behavior, reflect that perhaps their brain hasn’t learned that yet but can be taught. Amazingly, the child rallies as responsible with the right approach, rather than giving up in frustration that neither he nor those around him truly understand." *Racheli Langford -[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])*