Watch the trailer for The Connected Baby
The Connected Baby is a 75 min film by Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk and Jonathan Robertson, about the ability of babies to communicate with adults from birth and how important for their development into adulthood is our recognition of and participation in this interaction.
An Interview with The Connected Baby Filmmaker
Lisa Reagan, Kindred’s editor, was privileged to interview Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk, a neuroscientist from the University of Dundee, on her new documentary film, The Connected Baby. The film shows the magnificent and overlooked nuanced ways babies are constantly communicating and trying to connect with caretakers. The neuroscience presented in the film shows that this need for interaction in the first three years is the basis for proper brain development. The consequences of babies not getting their need for connection to grow and thrive are well documented in the skyrocketing rates of depression and dysfunction in industrialized cultures. As Dr. Zeedyk shares, The Connected Baby has been used as the basis for communities to rethink their approach to child development, childcare and social violence prevention, as well as for mothers in post-partum recovery groups. Visit the film at www.theconnectedbaby.org.
“Babies arrive already connected to other people. That’s what a range of sciences is now telling us: that they have brains already tuned in to other people’s body rhythms and vocal tones and movements. It makes them much more communicative and sophisticated than we often realise. In fact, it turns out that their very brain pathways are shaped by the kinds of responses that they receive from other people.
“So, to build the kind of society that we all want, we need to pay more attention to the way that we relate to our youngest children. I guess you could say that science is helping us to understand why it is that the way we love our children matters so much.” — Suzanne Zeedyk, PhD