Tag: neural pathways

When you reward bad behavior, you literally wire your child’s brain to repeat the bad behavior. No parent intends to do that, but it happens so easily. When you know how, you will reward only good behavior, and give your child a good start.

Imagine that your child grabs a cookie from someone. You tell them it’s not nice, but you let them keep the cookie. "Just this once."

A young brain learns from the cookie more than your words. Cookies trigger dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical. Dopamine paves a neural pathway that turns on more of the good feeling in similar future circumstances. That wires a brain to expect grabbing to get rewards. Each reward strengthens the pathway.

Allow me to introduce you to your Inner Witness.

First, through the study of neuroscience, we understand that we each develop patterns of thinking, also known as neural pathways. We can also learn about neural plasticity and our ability to create change around these neural pathways.

Without this awareness, our thinking, our reactions to life events, and our internal dialogue can become habitual, with routine responses to external stimuli that are triggered automatically, without our conscious awareness.