Child at Heart

This week I’m feeling amazed and nostalgic. It was 7 years ago this week that the niece of my heart was born. I was there throughout the long work of her labour and when she took her first breath. And for 7 years, with rare exception, I’ve seen her every week. With fall coming and school back in session, I look at wonder at the growing girl who has transitioned into the true child – a first grader. Not in the toddler/preschool years, but not in the pre-adolescent years, she is all about learning to read, colouring in the lines, running and jumping. It’s staggering to think that 8 years ago, nothing about her existed and 7 ½ years ago she was a tiny cluster of cells in the form of a baby, putting together all that will make her unique.

Children make me feel time. You mark it yearly when the seasons change, but when you see a child grow, you watch it daily in action. Learning to sit, crawl, pull-up, stand, walk, first sounds, first words all in the first 18 months. I haven’t done anything that exciting in the last 10 years. But as a doctor, I never cease to be amazed at the complicated maze of chemicals, DNA and cells that work together to make us all so much the same and yet so different.

In children you watch it happening. When babies start walking with that stiff legged stance so easily toppled, yet so proud of themselves, they are laying down the neural pathway that very quickly becomes second nature. Research shows us that the more we use a pathway, the faster it becomes encased in the myelin sheath to protect it. Good and bad. So when we learn incorrectly, or create a poor thought pathway, it takes more and more work to change this pathway. The more years we have a habit, the harder it is to change it. It’s also harder because we are so self-conscious of what we look like doing it. Unlike our 9 month old self, we’re less willing to fall on our bottoms in the middle of the sidewalk when taking our first steps. Whether it’s starting an exercise program, stopping smoking, changing our diet, thinking more positively, we worry so much of what people will think or how much work it will take. But if we don’t start, we’ll never get to start building the pathways that will work faster and faster until they are second nature. And if we never did that, we’d never get the chance to run and jump and play with optimal health.

So, this fall I’m thinking about what pathways (i.e. habits) I’d like to grow, hoping I won’t fall on my bottom TOO much, and trying to think more like a child.

Alison