Bruce Perry și Maia Szalavitz

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   The effect of an experience on a child depends not only on how severe it is but on when it lands in development and how often it repeats — which is why gentle repetition beats spectacular intervention.

   The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog · 2006

   The order is regulate, relate, then reason — never the other way round.

   Perry is a child psychiatrist who has worked with extreme cases: children from cults, children raised in isolation, survivors of violence. His model, called neurosequential, starts from the order in which the brain is built: first the brainstem, which holds heart rate and the alarm state, then the emotional regions, then the reasoning cortex. An early experience catches the structure being built at that moment, and an alarm calibrated early stays calibrated that way. Its practical consequence is the most useful thing here for an ordinary parent: you cannot talk to a child above the level at which they are activated. The order is regulate, relate, then reason. A child mid-meltdown has the brainstem switched on, so a logical explanation has nowhere to land; first the rhythm — low voice, rocking, walking, breathing — then presence, only then words. The second principle is dose: healing comes from many short, predictable repetitions rather than a few intense sessions, because that is exactly how an alarm system is recalibrated.

   “The brain develops sequentially, from the bottom up, and what happens early and often shapes more than what happens late and rarely.”

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