Thursday, September 12, 2019

A boy's brain at night poised for fight


Dear Finn,

Your brilliant human mind is much older than you are!  It is as old as all human time. It is designed for you still to be cave dweller, ready for action to protect yourself and the whole human species.

A bird starts calling out. But it is night time. Birds are not meant to call out at night time, unless…
Unless there is danger!  A bird at night will call when there is danger or great disturbance!
You are asleep. The bird calls and keep calling. It is worried because there are extreme winds, and those winds even carry a whiff of smoke from fires up North.

You wake, and your clever brilliant body and mind gets ready for action. You wake in a way that is fully energised and ready to fight a danger or run from it. The bird calling has told you of possible danger.
Then your modern brain does a check around and there is nothing in your room to fight. But that energy has to go somewhere.

You yell and yell, and the bird keeps you awake and ready to fight. So you fight your bed, your pillow, tossing and turning and full of that energy which has to go somewhere. It’s angry now, that energy. More yelling.
This is natural. It’s the clever part of your ancient brain. It made your body ready to fight or run. It also wanted to sleep!

As you grow up, the modern part of your brain will get better at really knowing when it’s just a bird outside worried about the strong wind and smell of smoke.  It will get faster at working out what you really need to do.

When you came to me for help, at first the headphones didn’t work.  When I gave you two pillows to block out the sound though, you even got back to sleep.
That was your modern brain working it all out and getting help. Humans are also designed to work together to fix problems and face a danger.

It is OK that your ancient brain woke up raging, you were ready for danger, because birds don’t call out at night for no reason!
Come and get help too, as each time you do this you let your modern brain get really smart as well.

Love, Mum