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3.1: The Unfinished Brain: Why the First Two Years of Life Decide Everything

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3.1: The Unfinished Brain: Why the First Two Years of Life Decide Everything

To understand why early attachment experiences shape our entire lives, we must return to the beginning—to the biological starting point with which we're all born. It's crucial to grasp the magnitude of the development we humans undergo after birth.

We Are Born "Unfinished"

Unlike many other species, humans come into the world essentially unfinished. Our brain is still relatively small at birth so that we can pass through the birth canal at all. The real explosion of growth only happens afterward, in a new world we must learn to adapt to.

In the first years of life, our brain undergoes enormous growth—so rapid that during the first three years, we develop up to two million new neurons and neural connections per second. This incredible pace of development is designed to allow us to adapt to vastly different cultures, environments, and societies.

The Right Hemisphere Takes the Lead

A crucial insight about the first two years—the time before children can speak—is that this development takes place primarily in the right hemisphere. It is the nonverbal, holistic hemisphere that takes the lead during this phase. It’s responsible for linking the body and the brain and lays the foundation for our nervous system, digestion, and capacity for self-regulation.

The Fundamental Contradiction

Here we encounter a fundamental contradiction that shapes our entire lives: Although we possess this astonishing capacity for growth and learning, after birth we are almost completely helpless and dependent.

It’s precisely this contradiction—the immense learning potential on one side and total dependency on the other—that makes attachment to our caregivers so crucial. The way this early, pre-linguistic, right-hemispheric development unfolds creates the blueprint for our later emotional and social life. It determines whether we develop a stable or unstable foundation for everything that follows.

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