speaker-0: How do we heal best playing? So I always recommend go play with a child under age seven who hasn't been disrupted in their development and you'll have to be present and be spontaneous and react and playfully, happy, joyfully. Original play is that way. And then you will grow the right hemisphere and the right brain.

speaker-1: Today I'm speaking with Professor Darcia Norvais, a psychologist and researcher whose work explores how human evolution shapes child development, well-being, and the kinds of environments humans evolved to grow up in. Much of her research focuses on what she calls the evolved developmental niche, the idea that humans evolved in deeply social, cooperative communities with responsive caregiving, lots of physical closeness, free play, and strong social connection. Her work raises fascinating questions about how modern childhood differs from the environments humans evolved in, and what that might mean for parents and families today. Darcia, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

speaker-0: ⁓ it's wonderful to be here with you.

speaker-1: Well, so I figured let us begin at the start. What drew you to study child development from an evolutionary perspective?

speaker-0: Well, my earliest recollections are about injustice towards children. I spent half my life outside the United States and saw children my age on street corners selling gum in rags barefoot and I'm in a uniform, a school uniform, being driven to school. And then coming back every after a year away, coming back to the United States and seeing the abundance and ⁓ materialism and overwhelming wastefulness and all, I couldn't understand what was wrong with the world. So that was always plaguing my mind. What is wrong? And ⁓ it just took me a while of a circuitous route through various interests, different careers, like I was a music major in college. ⁓ and ⁓ finally ⁓ after getting my PhD and then mm that what I had been studying was a little not so it didn't interpret the world properly. ⁓ the US went to war with Iraq and I thought, What's wrong here? There's something really you know, and I read widely and found the anthropology, I found the neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology and that all just struck me. The evolved nest, it's like, ⁓ huh, we ⁓ 'cause I had gone to seminary ⁓ to try to answer the question what's wrong and th the answer there is original sin you're just born bad and all this like come on that doesn't make sense to me it didn't ring true and so finding the evolutionary history of our species, finding how everywhere all over the world the same kinds of parenting or child raising practices is communal, it's not just the parents, right? they were ⁓ widespread until recently. And and it's in in recent times that we've kind of become very destructive.

speaker-1: Super, yeah, that's okay. So not a straight path. I guess that's ⁓ often often the case. Yes. Fascinating. But so you already touched on it, like the evolved nest. How would you describe it for for someone who might not have heard about the the concept before? What is the evolved nest?

speaker-0: Well, every animal has a nest and we do too. And our nest matches up mostly. ⁓ we have ⁓ some slight changes, but with the social mammalian nest, which is over thirty million years old. And what it is, it's a developmental system, if you just look at childhood, it's a developmental system for raising the young to be fitted into the society they live in to be cooperative, to be intelligent, to be healthy. ⁓ so it's a developmental system for shaping that individual by the community for living well. And then for us though, our nestedness it really should be throughout life. And that's our history too. W people didn't leave the nest. It was just, you know, there's a communal nest for every age, ⁓ and all these ⁓ practices. So what are they? Well When I talk to adults now, we've we've decided that the best way is to start ⁓ backwards from the way a child or a baby would experience it. So we start with nature. We are nature. Nature immersion, nature connection, build builds nature connection and then partnership, that awareness of being just one of the members of the community and our, you know, being able to hear and understand the communications of all the animals and understand the plants and everything. That's all nature. That's our heritage too, which again we've moved away from so far in the last few hundred years. Then there's regular healing practices. In our ancestral context, that is hunter gatherer civilization. They still exist in parts of Africa and other parts of the world, and in that civilization they have regular healing practices, because we get this regulated, we get you know, ⁓ are mentally, you know, unwell, start to have self doubt, have problems with relationships, spiritually feel disconnected. All those things need to be repaired rather quickly so they don't lead to problematic behavior. And so there's just regular ones. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, when they're asked, How often do you have these healing practices? ⁓ usually once a week. And then they say, ⁓ but if there's grieving to do every day, they know that you have to let go of those feelings or else they you you know, they stick to you like velcro and cause health problems, social problems and you can become very dangerous to others. So that's the healing practices. Third is play. How do we heal best? Playing. So I always recommend go play with a child under age seven. Who hasn't been disrupted in their development, and you'll have to be present and be spontaneous and react and playfully, happy, joyfully. Original play is that way. And then you will grow the right hemisphere and the right brain. So what happens when you don't have the all these things of the nest that I'm gonna keep talking about is your right hemisphere gets underdeveloped because the baby's brain is growing rapidly, especially the right hemisphere. in the first couple years of life. And then we have all these people with underdeveloped right brains. And the right brain is the seat of the self, the true self. And your ability to be empathic, to n understand your intuitions, your body's signals and how to get along and empathy and connectedness to spirituality, the world, the cosmos, all the good stuff, right? And what happens that when we don't provide the evolved nest or evolved developmental niche. is that's underdeveloped. So play is the way to heal. That's the third one. Then the fourth one is responsive relationships. We all need to be listened to to have a sense that we are important and matter and so on and especially important in babyhood when the baby has to it needs to be kept calm while they're growing so quickly, you can you don't know what's gonna be not growing well if you distress them. They go into an anti-growth state, right? So you don't wanna distress them, you keep them, you know, in that state of of healthy growth. And then there's multiple nurturers. So we are not intended to be raised in a nuclear family with one mother, one father there to do all the work. Babyhood is really hard. Babies need a lot, twenty four seven And and part of that is the t touch, affectionate touch. Babies are when they're born, they are like fetuses of other animals until about eighteen months of age. Eighteen months. The baby should be in the womb another eighteen months. It's like, ⁓ my God, you know, explode the mind. ⁓ so instead of of course keeping them in the womb, which doesn't work, they need an external womb experience. And what does that mean? That means their needs are met quickly. Just like in the womb, you know, the f the f food supply, the energetics are there. And they're not stressed out, hopefully, ⁓ in the womb. ⁓ and they expect touch, right? So the womb is providing all that coziness, right? And that's what the baby's gonna expect, especially in those first eighteen months. When they get more mobile, you know, they'll go wander off, but then they'll wanna come crawl back into someone's arms. One of those multiple nurturers. So that's mom, dad, grandma, neighbors. Kin, non-kin, ⁓ so it doesn't have to be a a family member necessarily. And then there's a welcoming social climate. So that means the whole community is giving a positive energy to that child. So when the mom is pregnant with the child, the baby's welcome, the fetus is welcome, the mother is supported, and so all this positive energy, positive biochemistry. is happening and then we all need to feel like we are part of the community. We have something to offer that we belong and so on. And then going to just babyhood, soothing perinatal experiences. So that means the mother's supported during pregnancy and birth is smooth and soothing. And postnatally you're with your mom. You're not separated. You're not induced and given painful procedures, you know, unless there's emergencies and such. And then breastfeeding. And it's child directed breastfeeding because again, that grows the brain and body in the healthiest ways possible. It's an elixir that's eighty percent alive. And our our heritage is to provide breastfeeding for at least two and a half years to four years. Four years is the average age of weaning, which is like, ⁓ my god. Right for modern people. So we've moved so far away from nestedness. Right, because we get everyone busy with work and debt and keeping the system going that we forgot how to raise people who are cooperative with the rest of the planet. You know, earthlings. So that's my mission, right? Is to h remind people, hey, we're earthlings. This is how you foster a healthy, happy earthling. ⁓ let's get back to that.

speaker-1: That's really fascinating and it really resonates. But yeah, I agree. We're on many aspects quite far away from maybe what's ideal or what we what what we're used to as a species. ⁓ I'm gonna dig into some of them because I have some questions. So we ended on breastfeeding, so two and a half year is the minimum.

speaker-0: Yeah, peaceful societies ⁓ provide at least two and a half years.

speaker-1: That's impressive. So basically during the whole day then and night.

speaker-0: No, that doesn't necessarily mean only breast milk. It means the night feeding. It can be just night feeding, which is really important for brain development because the breast milk at night in the evening has tryptophan, which is the precursor of serotonin, which is related to intelligence and not getting depressed and such. So I mean there's a lot of things we don't understand, but we have hints of how important these things are.

speaker-1: Okay, perfect. So okay, the night feeding is the most important. And until f four years. But so then eventually weeding, is that led by the child or is it the parent? Like who actually stops?

speaker-0: Well, it varies by culture. So I would say ideally as a psychologist the child is leading. But it can I mean it's always a the duo decides together. Boys need more of the nest than girls. They mature more slowly and you know, we don't reach adulthood till around age thirty and on average boys are two years behind in development. they are more stressed out. They have less built in resilience like than girls. And they more easily traumatized by social humiliation or social distress. So that means they need more breast milk for longer and more responsiveness, more play, more nurturing.

speaker-1: Good that you touched on that, 'cause I had read that article of yours talking about the difference between boys and girls and how they need more. For how long do they need more? Is it always the case that boys need more? Okay. Good to know. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah, till adulthood. That's why in the United States the in automobile insurance companies charge more for males under age twenty five because they're more impulsive and their prefrontal cortex is not developed as well until around age thirty.

speaker-1: Mm. Okay, that's r good to know and ⁓ yeah, maybe not so good news for me as I had planned to wean my son maybe earlier than my daughter, but okay, I won't. Okay. I'll let him choose. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll let him decide.

speaker-0: Yes. They just mature more. So you can see it if you've had a a boy first and then you have a girl, you'll notice, wow, the girl's just like blah blah blah. But if you have a girl first, then you go look at the boy and go, What's wrong with you? Well, you know, you're not developing in the the what's you know. And then you want them to man up, you know. ⁓ don't cry, that's a you're you know, be a man, all this crazy stuff because of misunderstanding.

speaker-1: Hm. So is so really for for all parents of boys, like just to think about the the nest like even more, the the breastfeeding, the what else? Which what should we think about when it comes to boys especially?

speaker-0: Well, also in adolescence. They you know, girls have menstruation as a signal of becoming more adult. And the boys don't really have any physical thing. I mean the pubertal g ⁓ aspects of course, but it's not the same. So they need to have something like a vision quest, some kind of opportunity to find how they connect to the universe, how their gifts they're you know, that are growing and hopefully people are helping them grow their unique insights, their unique perceptions, their unique talents, and how that connects to the universe so they always feel connected and then to the community. So the community helps them with prepare for maybe a vision quest would be, you know, ⁓ going fasting for a couple of days out in wild nature. But there's other things you can do. And having that and then getting through it and then having initiation. It's an initiation ceremony really. In some communities in Africa they still of course do this. And they do it right at puberty time. So that the whole adolescence then is already grounded. So sometime in there you need to have this. Otherwise the boy's gonna go look for some place to feel important, to feel connected, to feel like they have a mission. And they can get in rabbit holes now online into hate ⁓ groups and such.

speaker-1: Is it always done alone, or can you do it like with a group of boys?

speaker-0: One of the places to read initiation ceremonies that's quite well described is Molly Doma Sommei's work, ⁓ healing I'm forgetting exact title, but traditions in Africa. And he talks about it's the whole set of boys that goes through things together, but then they have their individual unique experiences as well along the way. So it's kind of a combination. Ideally, you know, you're not alone, you're always in a group. The elders are watching out for you, but you have to go through through this improve yourself in a way. Yeah.

speaker-1: Fascinating. Yeah, I have a while until it's time, but it's good to have in mind. Regular heating practices. You came up quite early. What could that be? I mean play you said is one thing, but what could that look like in modern western? What can a heating practice be?

speaker-0: Yeah. Well in our ancestral context it would be coming together and drumming and singing and dancing and losing yourself in that flow of energy and the healers would come if you're the one ⁓ have a specific issue, lay their hands on you and get the the energy coming through to heal you in some way. ⁓ you know, that'd be great if we could all do that every week. Yeah, for sure. but we we don't usually have that opportunity in the modern world. So things you can do as an individual then are you know, to meditate, contemplate, just make sure you're ⁓ connecting to nature because that's also healing, you know, having a sit spot you go to where there are animals, wild animals, ⁓ they get used to you and they'll start appearing, you know, if you're in a forest or something. ⁓ and then having times just earthing, I mean even sunning and earthing lying on the earth lowers your cortisol, your ⁓ your immobilizing hormone. And increases perhaps your oxytocin, you know. So you wanna do cuddly things too, with an earthing blanket or have a pet or your family members, cuddle parties people have. Yeah, that's yeah, so touch is important for that healing too.

speaker-1: Sounds cozy. Mm, yeah, I can imagine. One part I find tricky or that I know that I could do better is the multiple bonded nurtures part. I have this typical nuclear family, it's me, my husband, my five year old daughter, and my one year old son and our dog. And that is like us. And we don't have any family nearby. But how why can I think about this? Is it enough if our grandparents come here once in a while? Or do I do I need to create like a little community here where we live?

speaker-0: Yeah. Ideally your babies are having experiences with different people. So they get used to adjusting to the smell of this person and how they move and then that person. So that their brain then is learning to be flexibly relational. The first f three, four years are when this is grounded, the foundations are laid. So even having a neighbor, you know, come over or other children of different ages, so our heritage of play is for children, multiple age groups. So you don't put kids into the same age group, ⁓ like we do in schools. That's crazy. Because they what do they have to learn from each other? How to be r risk takers, right? They get competitive rather than cooperative. But the natural pedagogy of multiple aged playgroups or learning groups is that the older love to help the younger and the younger love to look up to the older and it's so easy and flows, right? So Ideally your children have older people to play with regularly. ⁓ and part of play is also the freedom to be unsupervised, which is really hard now in the modern world in the States anyway. Parents are so anxious about what might happen to them because they didn't get enough play, you build anxiety if you don't get enough play because it helps you learn the flow, your executive functions grow and you're able to deal with difference and unexpected behavior from your play partner and you have to control your aggression or your play partner will stop playing with you. So really important to have a variety of relationships and then the baby has to get used to a new person. Maybe in one case a therapist was saying he was coming by this house to see a ten month old maybe and he was introduced to the baby and the baby's, you know, kind of off, like distrustful. He goes away for ten minutes and comes back and then sits there and the baby's a little more interested. Goes away for ten minutes, comes back, and the baby is getting more open. Right. So babies don't have a sense of time so much. That's why it's so important to meet their needs right away, 'cause it feels like forever if you leave them crying. It's like the death, you know, they're in the hell. So you don't want that to happen.

speaker-1: ⁓ no, ⁓ no, for sure not. Another one that I find really interesting is positive moving touch. It makes sense, especially when they're small. You carry them around a lot, they have to be near. But this need doesn't really stop, right, when they get older. What can I think about with my older daughter? How does the need for touch develop as we get older? And what can we do?

speaker-0: Well, our heritage is to sleep with other people, to sleep in piles. Right? So the family bed is a way to meet that need. Now, a lot of people can't do that or won't don't want to or feel offended by it. So ideally that's it, right? All night, you know, i hours and hours of touch. So helpful. So if you can't do that, then you can have various playing, ⁓ wrestling and other kinds of play where you have to touch each other. when I was a music teacher I learned folk song games. I'd use that to teach music. And yeah, I'm not sure which ones you might know. So but that's where you have a song and you're moving and you're touching others and you have some game going on as part of that. And I've taught my college students these games too. And then we would play them in class and then we would go teach them to five year olds. And ⁓ it's so fun to see the five year olds go You know, and they're just into it and that's so much fun. ⁓ so that's another way to do things that where you have to touch each other out of in a structured way that's not threatening if you are threatened by touch, for example.

speaker-1: That's fascinating. But so already touched on sleep. Okay, so ideal would be the family bed. Get it? And on some level I absolutely agree, but it was just not possible for us. The kids just continued waking each other up. It was a misery. So no one slept at all. So Adorda now has her own bed. But speaking of sleeping, how do I do there's just one part of me that loves having some time in the evening? where I don't have two kids on me, near me, around me. Mm-hmm. But how can I think about sleep with my I mean, my baby he doesn't like sleeping. He's almost one, but he doesn't sleep really alone. Like he doesn't like it. And I make sense. It's much cosier to be near someone. So from then like an evolved nest perspective, how can I think about sleep for him? ⁓ he needs to go to bed before I do because otherwise he's tired in the evening, all evening long.

speaker-0: Is it possible to have him sleeping on you while you're doing things?

speaker-1: I guess so. I have just imagined that it's somehow bad for him. That he has to like at seven he should be in like bed, sleeping there until the morning. But if that's not the case then for sure he could sleep in the carrier on me. That's also cozy. Okay, so so that is

speaker-0: That's the norm for our species. Yeah. On bodies, sleeping off and on all day long, all night. Usually at night you're next to each other on the ground, but

speaker-1: Hmm. Yeah. On the yeah, on the bed for us. But yeah. Okay, so it doesn't have to be that complicated, in other words. No. 'Cause sometimes evening can really be a struggle otherwise it's like, ⁓ he's awake again, okay, let's go up, feed him and then okay, he sleeps, okay. Silent. Yeah.

speaker-0: No. He just wants to be with you, he still expects the womb.

speaker-1: I know, I know, I know. Yeah.

speaker-0: But you can sleep on dad too, you know. So

speaker-1: That is true. That is true. Maybe we should take turns. Okay, that's good, but then ⁓ 'cause that that is really feasible. Like the carrier is that's fine. It just it's a good workout for the shoulders and the back. Yeah. Two in one. Yep. In the best of worlds, I would love to get all these areas right. Like I would love to be able to provide an evolved nest for my kids. And yeah, for all of us, but for them primarily.

speaker-0: Right.

speaker-1: But I will have to start somewhere. So is there any one or a couple of areas that are extra important like to focus on? If I have to start with something, what's the most important?

speaker-0: I was start play. However you wanna do it. Yeah. And even acting things out. If there's something goes wrong during the day, then you and the child or children can act it out over and over and take different roles. And that helps them process it, helps them feel safe again. ⁓ also having pillow fights, for example, where you allow them to knock you over. So if you have to boss them around a lot, like you have to get your shoes on, we have to get to this appointment, get you in the car seat, whatever. And they you know, they guess this is not our heritage to boss people around. That it's intolerable to hunter gatherer civilization. So the child might have a build up of resentment. So if you play a ⁓ pillow fight where knock your parent over, ⁓ you know, that then equalizes them the the relationship again, which is very healthy.

speaker-1: Wow. Okay, I think I will try that ⁓ already tonight because I is really see that in my daughter. And she can really become tired of all the do this, do that, which I understand. But sometimes I need to. Yeah. Okay. Good. Very good tip. It's a play.

speaker-0: Yeah. And yeah, and let her boss you around somehow and have some times for that and you know. So give her agency back, right? 'Cause we all want autonomy. ⁓ we don't want people, you know, b being authoritarians.

speaker-1: Perfect, I'll do that for sure. So play is the most important, but does it vary by age? Of course, breastfeeding, yes. Maybe you stop at some point. Because you also said that evolvedness is actually also lifelong, that's for human species. Are there parts that are more important in childhood versus adolescence versus later?

speaker-0: Mm, probably depends on the person, the situation. It's hard to say something general. You know, if you go through some loss, well then you need a lot of listeners and people who hold you and things like that. More touch maybe. And if you are transitioning to a new way of living, like leaving your parents, well you need a lot more conversation maybe about that. You have to have again it's more responsive c care. ⁓ so it's all about the whole thing is responsiveness. It's hard to say one thing or another. But one thing I could say is that grandparents are particularly motivated, typically, and ⁓ partial to caring for the young children. Zero to six or so, right? They just they tune into each other much more easily than parents in that children that age. Because they're both kind of close to beginning or end of life, right?

speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. If you ask my daughter who her favorite person is in the world, it's grandma. That's okay. That's fine. So you already touched a little on the topic of school. Because our oldest daughter is five soon. So she has one more year, but then school is gonna become a topic. So it's something me and my husband talk quite a lot about. And here in Sweden, homeschooling is not an option. It doesn't exist, it's not allowed. So I was just curious on your like with the evolved nest classes that you have, what is your take on schooling and child development?

speaker-0: Well, ideally it's a school that honors the interests of the individual child. Something like a traditional Montessori or a Waldorf school or a forest school, like a forest kindergarten, ⁓ where the child's given a lot of freedom. I guess in Finland they at least I've heard, ⁓ they allow children to dis decide what they want to learn. And they don't test them all the time like we do in the States. ⁓ And I think that's really important. So a lot of autonomy again, right? And not force on the child, ⁓ so much. But I know most schools in the world use a lot of force and it's really important to many of the school systems that children sit still and listen to the teacher and do all sorts of boring tasks. And then when they can't do that, they often get diagnosed with some problem. Right. So there's this film called The War on Kids and it it looks at different aspects in the States of what that looks like. And one segment was on ADHD, which is ⁓ attention hyperactivity disorder. And they ⁓ looked at the definition of what that means in the diagnostic manual of s the psychiatrists at the time. And one of the ⁓ criteria was will not sit still for boring tasks. Well, so it's the adult focus of what they want from the children and if they don't behave, they're the problem, right? That's insanity.

speaker-1: For sure, for sure. Yeah. But so if you are forced to do this then we're maybe not not not the type of school that we would prefer. Is there something that one can do as a parent to counteract the negatives of having to spend maybe that much time in something that's not autonomous, ⁓ where you have to sit still? What can I do as a parent to kind of help?

speaker-0: Yeah. So I would want to give them lots of freedom after school and let them choose and be unsupervised and not bossed around and ⁓ unfortunately in the States a lot of kids are scheduled. They're scheduled then for a piano lesson, then they have a sport and then they have something else, right? And their whole day is like, ⁓ I have no no way of, you know, just expressing themselves. So I would want to do that.

speaker-1: Good, good. It'll also give me some more time also if I don't have to drive around someone a lot.

speaker-0: I spoke to an African grandmother ⁓ some weeks ago and she told me she has grandchildren in the States and she was talking to another grandmother, I think, about how she watched her grandchildren and she would be so exhausted at the end. 'Cause she's following them and supervising them the whole time. And this African grandmother said, Whew I would never want to be that kind of grandmother. I'd be exhausted too. That's crazy. Right? Because freedom is central to raising children in Africa and elsewhere, right? ⁓ at least in the traditional way.

speaker-1: Yeah, that makes sense. It's just really ⁓ scary to give when you're not used to it.

speaker-0: Yeah, there's a book called Free Range Kids by Lor Lenore Scanese. She had been writing a column for a New York newspaper and she wrote about how she had let her ten year old son, finally, after he had wanted this for a long time, find his way home from the middle of the city of New York City, ⁓ with a map. Right? And so he figured out the buses to take and the routes and all this and got his way home and he was so proud and she wrote about that. ⁓ my goodness, people were so upset with her. It's like, ⁓ such a bad mom. You're the worst mom in the world. So she wrote this book about pre range kids and how important it is for kids to have freedom and unsupervised life. And then they did a television show that she ⁓ was involved in, where they go to moms who are so afraid to let their children outside the house. And I watched one episode where they finally convinced the mother to let the children have a lemonade stand outside the front door in the driveway, selling lemonade to the neighbors. And so she's looking out the window, biting her nails, you know, something bad's gonna happen to them, right? And then you look out there and it's just a suburban neighborhood with really no trees, just houses and driveways and nothing's happening. But she's so anxious, right? So we have all these anxious people now from the lack of the Evolved Nest experience.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Is there something you do in your life that surprises others or that is very non-typical? Like that's a little unusual.

speaker-0: I have an indigenous perspective on the world, pretty much, kinship worldview. We wrote a book about that, restoring the kinship worldview. And that means that I feel related to everything. Everything's alive around me. And so I am responsible to be careful, kind, considerate. That means I ask the spiritual world to guide me on that, to be always sensitive. So it's not just humans that matter, right? Morality is about everything. Everything you do. So that might be unusual, right? Because everything I do is like, okay, what's the impact going to be? What are the consequences? better not do that though. Do this other thing, or whatever. So

speaker-1: Absolutely. What what made you live this way? Like how how come you have this world view?

speaker-0: Well, I told you how I came to a realization of the importance of the evolved nest after the Iraq War and I wrote an article about triune ethics. So my area is moral development, morality. And so I pointed out how when you're undercared for, and especially in babyhood, you develop then a brain that doesn't develop its social intelligence but is easily triggered into threat. And when you when you're threatened your blood flow shifts away from your higher order thinking to your muscles to help you run away or fight. And so we have a whole world of people like that, at least in the States. Lots of people like that. Easily triggered and they want us somebody to save them or whatever. And so anyway, the three ethics that I focused on are self protectionism then. You your perception, your decision making is all when you're a threaten is for Find something safe. So there's self protectionism and that's when the brain is threatened and you can even in the moment, any of us can go into that. If you see a shadow come across the room, you wonder, Whoa what is that? Is there a beast outside? ⁓ no, it's not that. Okay, I can calm down. If your brain works well, you can calm down right away. If you're undercared for and under nurtured in especially babyhood, You may not calm down for a long time because your brain is going so one way of living is self protectionism. It c can become part of your personality, your disposition. But the normal species normal way is social engagement, the ethic of engagement where you relationally attuned to the other, you're flexible, every situation's unique, you have unique ways of being, with others and develop you know, the interpersonal dance with each person differently and each moment differently. When you're in the self protectionist mode, you want script. You want everything to be rigidly controlled because otherwise you get so upset so easily. So those are the two kind of face to face orientations. You're either welcoming others or you're bracing against them. And then your your imagination of thinking about things outside the present moment. if it's fueled by this engagement, ⁓ then you have a communal what I call a communal imagination. And if you ⁓ are guided by the protectionism, you either have a vicious imagination where you want to control everybody and you build to do that, or you just kinda detach away 'cause you learn to dissociate from your feelings and body. You go into academia, become a professor. And just sit in the Ivory Tower and make up stuff and, you know, ⁓ it's so fun and whatever. All right, so that's the that's the trine ethics that I was writing about. So I got invited to write a book for the interpersonal neurobiology series and this is the book that came out of it. And so I was supposed to focus on that theory only. Well, the book had a mind of its own So I had to add the subtitle, Evolution, Culture and Wisdom. Because that's what brings us back. It's understanding evolution, understanding how culture matters and w how we get to wisdom.

speaker-1: Fascinating. So speaking of your research and your books, what has surprised you the most? If anything, have you ever been surprised?

speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. Every seven or eight or nine years in my life, it's like the rug's pulled out. Everything I thought was normal and appropriate was like, ⁓ nope. So it still happens. Yeah.

speaker-1: Fascinating and uncomfortable. Is there any any what what was the most most recent such shift of yours?

speaker-0: ⁓ I haven't thought about that. Hm. But you have to trust trust spirit. Trust the universe in order to be able to respond to those moments.

speaker-1: This this is a question that I'm very curious about. ⁓ so I'm gonna go back a little to not school, but then let's say kindergarten. So I'm a little torn about ki I mean, I love kindergarten for older kids. My daughter is soon five and she goes to kindergarten three days a week. It's it's really short. It's fifteen hours a week. She loves it. She gets to be with her friends, they're yeah, ish ish her age. ⁓ but she also gets to do fun activities and ⁓ I think for her it's really super. And she has these teachers there that are really also ⁓ good good adult people for her to spend time with. So I for her I think it's really super now. But then my plan is to leave my then 16-month-old son ⁓ into kindergarten also when he's 16 months, and to that I am very torn because I would like to work again. I I find it Good for me. ⁓ it's both interesting, but it's also makes me a better mom. ⁓ because I don't have to spend all of my time with my kids, which is quite exhausting. because I supervise them a lot. Part of me is like, ⁓ it feels very selfish of me to leave him in kindergarten so early. Because I mean he's he's not even gonna be 18 months, it feels very early. But on the other hand Yeah, maybe I could see the teachers there as other caregivers also. So ⁓ what is your take on kindergarten? Is it way too early to leave your child there when they're sixteen months?

speaker-0: So for us kindergarten means five year olds or six. We would call it nursery nursery school or daycare.

speaker-1: Let's say daycare then. Okay.

speaker-0: Well, ⁓ what kind of work do you do?

speaker-1: I work for a non profit. so it's really nice. ⁓ it's it's very fun, rewarding.

speaker-0: Yeah. So ideally you would be able to take your child to work. And there would be place for the child to be and they can move around and just be nearby and there maybe other kids or something, right? That's the ideal.

speaker-1: Mm, agreed. I would love that too.

speaker-0: But it can't happen, I suppose, huh?

speaker-1: I don't think so. I don't think so. At at least at least ⁓ it's not done like that at the moment. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: Because for a boy that young

speaker-1: Oof. Yeah, so good.

speaker-0: So ideally you'd be able to ⁓ have a place where you go where there's just several moms and several kids and you just do your work together. Or the grandparents are nearby because they're the ones who are really evolved to be with those young kids because in our ancestral context the twenty to forty year olds are the ones maintaining the community. They have stuff to do. Grandparents already moved past that.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: So they're available to watch over and just be nearby. The child young children. So that's what we need. So we gotta get the baby boomers. We have so many older people. Come on. Have a little daycare center outside of, you know, ever in every neighborhood so that parents can go off and do what they have to do. So it's really hard. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah. No, but okay, so so ⁓ I'll just have to convince my parents to move closer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That is good. And what if you do need to send them to kindergarten, what is what is a good age? Or sorry, let's say ⁓ childcare. What's what's the what's the best age or ideal age or or an okay age?

speaker-0: Well, it's gonna vary by child, but ⁓ probably mm it you know, I would say for girls maybe age three, couple hours or something. For boys, hmm goes age three and a half, four, I don't know.

speaker-1: Mm.

speaker-0: But it depends on what that means. Are you gonna be there? Is it one hour, two hours, three hours? So you you know, and you follow the child. What does a child want to do? Your mother reached out and asked about her son who she's been sending to daycare. And he once he's there he's fine, but at home he's saying, I don't wanna go and he's scared and da da da da da And so she was wondering what to do about that and

speaker-1: Mm.

speaker-0: I think he's three and a half, four. And I said, Play. Act it all out. Let him play different roles so that he can get used to, you know, being the mom or the dad and him and all that. So that so she s has to tell me now whether that worked or not to help alleviate his anxiety. But that's an older child than yours, so

speaker-1: Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we'll see. I'm I'm not one hundred percent sure of my of my choice yet either. We will see.

speaker-0: Yeah, because it's hard to if you're alone at home with a child and you wanna work even at home, it's really hard because I mean, they want your attention because there's nothing else right to draw their attention and no other living creatures around. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no th that that is hard. It's a bit of a dilemma, but okay. I'll think about if I can come up with a smart solution. That is good for us all.

speaker-0: Yeah, if only the non profit were right next to a daycare center, so you're right there.

speaker-1: Mm? Yeah, yeah, that would be the ideal. Mm-hmm. We'll see. So before I let you go, I want to know if there is one small thing that a family could experiment with to live a little more in line with our evolutionary past. It has to be small, so it's really doable.

speaker-0: You know what I meant to bring this up earlier and this may help. Is we have at EvolveNAS dot org we have twenty eight days of different things. You can do just one thing today. So we have twenty eight days of nature connection, for example. And this was based on an experiment that I did with college students who lived on campus and it improved their e equ what we called ecological empathy, ecological mindfulness. And for example, it would be pay attention to the clouds today or acknowledge the trees you walk by today. You know, so it the intention is to bring you back to your body, your senses, and connect, right? So we have twenty eight days of it's called ecoattachment dot dance, but if you go there you'll see there's twenty eight days of self calming. So when we're talking about healing. You know, how to calm yourself. There's little nudges to try each day for twenty eight days. There's twenty eight days of solo play. This is ⁓ solo because it's ⁓ adults often have trouble playing. They think it's undignified and so All right, well go practice this, you know. Just ⁓ talk funny today or something for a for a few minutes or dance into the next room or, you know, stupid silly things like that that are start to break down that rigidity. We also have thirteen days of spontaneous joy. And so that might be a place for the families to just try one of those things. Any of them and see, you know, ⁓ if that is that little nudge might help.

speaker-1: I love that. That is so practical and really doable. And sounds really fun. Cause you don't have to come up with stuff yourself. Perfect. Thank you. So, last question before we end. Where can people learn more about you and your work? Where should they go look?

speaker-0: Well, we have the Evolved Nest dot org website. We also have a new website called nestedworld dot org. And we have a nesting ambassador program. We are now training people in the principles and practices of the Evolved Nest and then helping them develop tools to employ wherever they are. So if as an educator, as a therapist, as a community member, as a parent. So you can find out more about that there. So those are the main places. ⁓ and then I have my university website, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.

speaker-1: Super, thank you. And I'll put links to everything in the show notes. Darja, thank you so much for for taking the time to speak to me. It's been really, really fun and I've learned a lot from you.

speaker-0: I'm so glad to have been here with you, Nicolina. And I'm sorry I've been coughing and using cough drops and all. But yeah.

speaker-1: No, no no no worries at all. Thank you so much.