Brain Friendly(ness) as a way of life?

In his book “Blink” Malcom Gladwell makes several references to the work of  Dr. John Gottman.

Gottman is well respected for his research on relationship stability by using scientific direct observations published in peer reviewed literature. This makes him a man worth listening to.

While most of his work has been around predicting whether couples are likely to stay together by observing their interactions (he reckons it takes about 3 minutes and his accuracy is about 90%), he has also researched how you might predict the state of people’s marriage by testing the urine of their children – with remarkable results.

He discovered a significant increase in stress hormones in children from what later turned out to be turbulent marriages.

Stress can seriously affect learning. In Brain Rules, John Medina states in Rule 8:

Stressed brains don’t learn the same way

So Gottman developed an experiment to see what would happen to children if he could use his relationship research to stabilise their parents’ relationships.

He set up 2 groups of couples who were planning to start families.

• A control group
• A group where he used his proven techniques to help stabalise their relationships even if they had shown no need of such help.

When these couples subsequently had children he measured some key behaviours in them over several years. The children of the parents he had supported cried less, developed language skills more quickly and were more emotionally stable under pressure. In other words their abilities to regulate and control their emotions were significantly better than those in the control group.

We all try to spare our children our squabbles with our partners but they are very good at picking up the changes in atmosphere that these cause and a whole chain of chemical reactions takes place in them that can lead to a measurable reduction in their ability to learn both now and later.

As training professionals we try to reduce the levels of stress in our learners because we know that this is not good for their ability to learn and then later, recall.

It now seems that stress created at home may also be responsible for many of the issues our educators face with our kids – poor concentration, poor language skills, lack of emotional stability…

It seems brain friendliness at home is every bit as important as brain friendliness in the training room for the health and wellbeing of ourselves as much as our loved ones.

So here is our call to action:

• Could it be that being brain friendly isn’t so much a technique for training as a philosophy for life?
• Do you bring all your skills and resources to bear all of the time or are they just reserved for the days when you train?

While you may not think brain friendliness is a way of life, what difference would it make to you and those around you at work and at home if you did believe it?

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

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