Gina Stepp: Wired To Connect

People who are good at maintaining important relationships in their lives have always instinctively known what researchers are now discovering: good relationships are crucial to our health and well-being. In Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, Daniel Goleman excavates the still-emerging field of social neuroscience for clues to a better understanding of human relationships. Says Goleman, "These new discoveries reveal that our relationships have subtle, yet powerful, lifelong impacts on us. That news may be unwelcome for someone whose relationships tend toward the negative. But the same finding also points to reparative possibilities from our personal connections at any point in life. Thus how we connect with others has unimagined significance." Louis Cozolino, author of The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, makes a similar point. "The individual neuron or a single human brain does not exist in nature. Without mutually stimulating interactions, people and neurons wither and die." Both Cozolino and Goleman trace the foundation of good relationships to quality attachment in infancy. This makes it extremely important for parents to be literate about what their children need, especially during the earliest years.