By Simran Saroya
We all know that a child needs nurturing relationships to help them grow but to what extent does a child need the caregiver there? The basic concept of serve and return will explain how important it is for the caregiver to be present AND engaged with the child.
What is serve and return?
Serve and return is about building relationships and strong brain foundations. During serve and return, the child’s brain is forming many connections. These connections start very early, as soon as the child “coo’s” and the adult responds to the child. The child may serve using various forms of communication such as: eye contact, touch, through games or verbal cues. This serve is an indicator that the child is interested in something or that they want to engage in an activity. Think of it as a game of tennis, where the child serves the ball and the caregiver receives the serve and then serves back.
Why it is important:
Healthy brains are built by forming healthy foundations which all start with daily human interactions. Being present physically and emotionally will benefit the child and strengthen the relationship between the parent and child. Staying attentive and responsive to the child’s needs helps the child make and build strong and solid foundations for brain development. These strong foundations will help build strong relationships as well as better the child’s learning and understandings. Always keep in mind that these interactions must be positive, meaningful and directive to help create strong brain architecture within the child’s brain. Emotion, visual, language, memory, motor skills and behavior control all depend on the neural connections the child makes while engaging with their caregiver. For example, if your child has picked up an animal book and has brought it over to you, that is their serve. The adult can then take the book and read it to the child or go through the pictures with the child, which is then returning the serve. It is as simple as paying attention to their interests. This will lead to more learning and more experiences. Being responsive and acknowledging the child’s interest in wanting to read that book will lead to recognition of letters and reading.
Negative factors:
Sometimes we forget that engagement from a parent holds so much importance especially among the young children. A parent may be exhausted from a day at work and not think twice about what their five-year-old is bringing over to them. This disrupts the relationship building, instead of avoiding the child or being passive about it, acknowledge that they have brought that story up to you and set aside a better time to read it together. Being enthusiastic and interested in what your child is interested in will help build a stronger connection. Putting the child by a computer screen or TV will hold their interest and have them engaged but will not build healthy brain development. This is called passive communication, where you may be present but not fully engaged. There may be barriers that sometimes permit the serve to be responded to such as a phone call or text but there is a difference between being responsive and distracted or just being unresponsive. Passive activities will not build healthy and strong brains. Our goal is to build healthy brains.
Children need positive interactions and positive environments around them to thrive. It is our job to ensure that the children in our life have adults who consistently engage in serve and return with them to build healthy foundations in the brain for all their learning, behavior and health in the future.