Like a gardener nurturing a young sapling, adults shape the development of young children. From birth to age 5, a child’s brain develops more rapidly than at any other time in life and at a rate of 1 million neural connections formed every second. These connections are not random; they are shaped by interactions with caregivers. When a parent soothes a crying baby, engages in playful back-and-forth, or responds to a toddler’s endless “why” questions, they are literally wiring the child’s brain for trust, empathy and curiosity.

Conversely, when these nurturing interactions are absent or inconsistent, the effects can be devastating. “ shows that children who experience neglect or chronic stress during early childhood often face long-term challenges, including difficulties in learning, poor emotional regulation, and even physical health issues. The reason? Stress hormones like cortisol flood the brain, disrupting neural development and impairing the very areas critical for memory, attention, and emotional control. Such highlights the profound biological impact of relational deprivation.”

Children today often are raised in smaller, more isolated family units, with less access to extended family and community support. Playtime — a key driver of relational and cognitive development — has been reduced, as overscheduled lives and academic pressures dominate. Friendships are fewer, and technology increasingly intrudes on face-to-face interactions. Screen time often replaces the crucial human connections that build trust, empathy and relational skills. 

The good news is that positive relationships can act as a buffer against these risks. Secure attachments — built through consistent, loving interactions — not only mitigate the effects of stress but also promote the development of critical brain functions like executive control, problem-solving, and adaptability — foundational skills for success in school and beyond.

For early education, this means that fostering relationships must be at the core of teaching and learning. Educators who connect with their young learners on a personal level create an environment in which children feel safe and valued, feeding a biological need and aligning with , which refers to methods that emphasize a strengths-based, play-based approach. When children feel secure, their brains are free to explore, experiment and absorb new information.

Schools can amplify these effects by prioritizing relational practices, such as morning meetings, collaborative projects and one-on-one check-ins with little ones and families. Policies that support smaller class sizes and professional development in social-emotional learning can further empower educators to be relational leaders.

The ripple effects extend beyond the classroom. Children who grow up in relationally rich environments are more likely to become relational adults, effective leaders and engaged citizens. They are better equipped to navigate the complexities of life because they have learned, from the very beginning, that relationships are the bedrock of human existence and increasingly a major differentiator in our future of work increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence.

Investing in early relationships is not just an act of kindness, it is a societal imperative; it builds our future relational economy. When we nurture the relational foundations of our youngest learners by showing them love, we unlock their potential and, in turn, create a brighter future for us all.

Before COVID-19, one in five young people in their lives, and since 2020, almost half of high school youth reported having , a decline by half from a decade earlier. Hau calls this “relational scarcity” and concludes that while kids need strong early relationships to thrive, those same relationships are among the single strongest predictors of a child’s later success and ability to overcome adversity. 

Hau’s new book, “Love to Learn: The Transformational Power of Care and Connection in Early Education,” tackles this crisis head on, with all indicators pointing toward the power of early care. She includes her own personal story: A psychological test at age 3 concluded that Hau had “low academic aptitude.” Her parents, undeterred, enrolled her in a high quality public preschool in France with strong teachers, where she formed attachments and thrived. “I believe that this moment of benefiting from high quality early education made a huge impact. Which is why I have focused on early childhood education as a huge part of my academic life,” she says in an interview with journalist Rebecca Gale.

The conversation below is edited for length and clarity. 

Your book talks about the need for children to have a robust network of relationships, including with people they are not related to, and how this has changed in recent generations. How can parents and families make a shift going forward?

Isabelle Hau: This is why I wrote this book because I am very worried about where we are regarding “relationships circles” around children. We have a huge body of science that says relationships matter for children in life. However, children are more and more isolated, and while there’s more discussion on loneliness and isolation among adults, I believe that the problem starts in the early years. 

We have children in very small family units: The number of families with only one child over the past 30 years. And it’s intergenerational; have at least one grandkid who lives more than 200 miles away. And only 3% of children with someone above age 65 that is not their direct grandparent. 

There is lots of really on the benefits of [intergenerational relationships]for the child and for the elderly person, and also benefits for the middle generation, the parents. 

How can parents grow their relationship circles?

That starts as a family unit, increasing the number of relationships and making sure the relationships within the family unit are very strong. Turn family time into relational time. I know it’s not always possible for every family, but ideally dinner time is together without any technology interruption or devices at the table. 

To expand the circles of relationships, there are a few things that families can do. Ensure that kids play — focusing on free play, and prioritizing relationships with little ones and families. It sounds also really obvious but with kids who are more and more scheduled, there is less and less time to make those friendships and enjoy free play. Even playdates have become more and more structured these days. 

You have many examples about how our COVID-era policies had detrimental effects on our youngest learners. Can you talk more about why that is, and what else we can do to overcome it?

There is a reason one of the greatest punishments in incarcerated systems is to have people in solitary confinement, because it is one of the greatest human tortures. 

It had a huge impact [during COVID] to be confined at home with minimal interaction. ECE educators are still observing a number of issues at this point. Kids are having more and more issues socializing with others. 

Parents were expressing some concern for older kids too. I was looking at that shows more than 20% of children at this point don’t have a friend. This was for any child, ages 6-12, as expressed by parents. 

And these concerns have seen a shift since COVID?

The challenges we’re seeing today didn’t start with COVID. Even before the pandemic, children were playing less and spending more time on technology — reflecting broader societal trends that predated COVID. However, the pandemic amplified these concerns significantly.

One deeply troubling data point comes from during the pandemic. She studied a cohort of mothers giving birth at the onset of COVID-19 in New York City and tracked the emotional connections between mothers and their babies. Alarmingly, only 20% of these children had a strong emotional connection with their mothers; 80% did not. Even more concerning is that, before the pandemic, only 40% of mothers with young children had a strong emotional connection; 60% did not. Think about that – 60% was already a crisis, and the pandemic made it so much worse.

You focus on the need for relational learning at school, and how not enough attention is given to teaching this. Do you see that shifting, and what do you think progress in this area would look like?

There are many promising experiments happening in early childhood settings, but I would love to see more schools intentionally focus on the importance of relationships. Most teachers enter the profession because they are deeply relational and passionate about building meaningful connections with their students. Yet our current systems often fail to prioritize relationships. For example, early childhood educators are often moved between classrooms early in their careers, disrupting the relationships they strive to build. They often leave the profession as a result. There are concrete steps we can take, such as dedicating more time to free play/recess, or guided play during class, setting relational goals, and starting each day with connection circles. These small but powerful changes can make a big difference in fostering meaningful relationships in early education.

Your chapter on robotic child care sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. How can we approach AI so that we aren’t relying on robots to care for kids but we are still open to learning about ways technology can make things easier?

The option of AI is everywhere; there is extremely rapid adoption. The impact on relationships and learning is really unclear on this point. We want to see technology and AI augment human relationships and not replace them.

Here is where I am concerned — what I call ‘junk tech’ is technology that is not good for us, not relational in nature. We should minimize that, like we do with junk food. We can have a little bit but not too much. But here is a problem I see as a parent and an educator: It is very difficult for any of us to find what is good or not good from a tech perspective. 

If you are looking at or trying to download an app for your child, it is very difficult to know whether it is relational or not. You have tools like that are trying to help, but I would like to see, like in food, that if you buy a bag of chips you can see the nutritional benefits. It doesn’t mean it will change your behavior, but at least you will have information. But for tech tools we don’t have that right now. It is an area I would love to see more progress being made. 

A key to halting that malign ascendency could be found very close to home, especially Latinx homes, recent research from the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS) indicates. “,” published in the Journal of Latinx Psychology, found that Latinx children living with grandparents at home were more likely to exhibit prosocial, other-oriented behavior than children without grandparents in the home. The findings, the authors write, have broader implications for our understanding of culture, socialization and prosociality.

Prosociality refers to behaviors that accommodate or benefit others, voluntary actions such as sharing, comforting, helping and cooperating. In short, the cornerstones of a workable society. For research scientist Dr. Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, the study’s lead author, investigating children’s prosocial behavior is more than an academic exercise, its real-world applications matter to the kind of society we have now and in the future. Barragan’s research seeks to identify the key ingredients for positive outcomes in human development and society.

“Prosociality is key to everyday human civilization,” Barragan says. “Civic society may start with simple actions with children but over the long term, that gets us to a well-functioning society.

“It’s an important goal for scientists to be able to inform the dialogue about how we can have a better, more civilized, courteous society. I’ve been interested in that reality and that’s what drives me to conduct research that’s broadly relevant to everyday social interactions.”

Though prosocial behaviors vary by culture, numerous social theorists have held that Latinx culture is especially adept in this domain. According to previous research cited in this study, Latinx individuals generally prefer to engage and work in settings that emphasize personal harmony and seek to engage in positive conversations and interactions with new people. Latinx people’s graciousness, gregariousness and hospitality are legendary, and those qualities generally begin at home. A series of I-LABS experiments with 19-month-old infants showed that Latinx infants shared more objects of personal value with strangers than non-Latinx white infants, indicating that the enculturation of prosociality may start at “surprisingly early ages,” the researchers wrote.

A solid body of research has looked at children’s prosocial learning from their parents, but little has been done to examine the connection between grandparents and young children’s prosociality, including Latinx grandparents. What is known about Latinx grandparents is their connection to cultural values such as �������貹��í��, or relational harmony; familismo, an emphasis on supporting and nurturing all members of a family; and respeto, deference and respect toward others, all of which are likely to be emphasized in their interactions with grandchildren. These prosocial behaviors can have a significant effect on children in an academic setting, and previous research has shown that Latinx children with grandparents at home do better academically and emotionally than kids without grandparents at home.

To test the idea that Latinx grandparents’ presence in their grandchildren’s homes puts them in a prime position to influence prosocial values, the researchers conducted their study in Los Angeles County, which has the largest Latinx population of any U.S. county. The children in L.A. County are often children and grandchildren of immigrants, or immigrants themselves, and a pilot study found that approximately 50 percent of the young Latinx children in the region’s parks lived with grandparents at home. The researchers focused on 4- and 5-year-olds because at these ages children are less influenced by the formal education system and are considered old enough to engage in verbal interactions with researchers.

The pilot study took place in 2019 and ground to a halt along with most other public life when the pandemic hit in early 2020. By the time the study started again once vaccinations became available, researchers observed that the percentage of live-in grandparents had been reduced to about 33 percent — likely reflecting the fact that COVID-19 had hit the older U.S. population hardest. A national analysis found that Latinx children had nearly twice the risk of experiencing a grandparent’s death during the pandemic compared to non-Latinx white children.

Still, the researchers were able to carry out their study with 250 young Latinx children and their families, which Barragan says is the largest — “almost unheard of” — sample of children of this population on a behavioral test. They conducted the study in public parks because they wanted to take it out of the constrained environment of the behavior lab and into the community. Testing sessions were conducted in the mid-to late-afternoon when the parks had many families with young children and a recreational atmosphere prevailed. On some days, the parks were hosting COVID-19 vaccination drives.

For the study, young children were invited to play a “sticker game” on a preprinted sheet of paper divided into two sides. One side gave the child the choice of getting a small smiley-face sticker for themselves, and another child represented by a silhouette would also get a sticker. The other side gave the child the choice to take a sticker for themselves only, with the other child getting none. The study indicated that children with a grandparent in the home were almost twice as likely to make the prosocial choice of giving another sticker to the other child as were the children without a grandparent at home.

The researchers theorize that the grandparents may be transmitting these prosocial behaviors by verbally encouraging helpfulness and communicating the complex web of Latinx social values during mealtimes, while taking walks with the children and through daily interactions with others. The grandparents’ own behavior and the “imitative abilities of young children” may also serve to model these prosocial attitudes and behaviors. The precise ways in which this occurs, and if there’s any difference between the influence of grandmothers in the home versus grandfathers remain questions for future studies, Barragan says.

“We’re going to need more research on some of these questions because one limitation of our studies is that we had to be quick because of COVID and weren’t able to get as much information as we would have liked,” he says.

The researchers write that the current findings underscore the desirability of examining the grandparent-grandchild prosociability link in other groups beyond the Latinx community, such as African American families, and in Native American and Asian American communities, all of which have strong but distinct familial values and frequent involvement of grandparents in childrearing.

“Even though this study was focused on a particular population, it’s really important to extrapolate (to our larger society),” Barragan says. “This study teaches us about the importance of how grandparenting can be important in a culture that’s perhaps more traditional than contemporary mainstream American culture. It teaches us about different ways of being and the diversity of our community.

“And it teaches us that by looking into different communities, we can learn about human psychology in ways that inform our approach. It’s about being open to new ideas and new ways of seeing things.”

Barton realizes that understanding a 4-year-old’s outburst demands another, deeper level of reflection. “There’s a lot going on behind what happened before that desk got thrown,” she says. When she reached out to (LFC) in 2020, she was seeking a partner who could help the early learning system of Marin County develop its equity fluency so that every adult would feel equipped with the internal skills and strong partnerships vital to support children.

LFC’s mutual learning programs are delivered through a series of convenings that bring together adults from diverse roles, known as Learning Networks. “We have had a lot of trainings about equity and diversity,” Barton recalls, “but what I really wanted was for everyone to work together in a way that’s equitable.”

Nichole Parks, LFC’s director of programs, says the Marin County Learning Network members find self-empowerment through equitable conversations. “One member said she was able to have an open dialogue with her father and say, ‘I believe that I am smart. I believe that as a woman, I can go to college and have a career.’ And that’s exactly what she’s doing,” Parks says.

LFC has partnered with organizations to establish Learning Networks in 11 states and Washington, D.C., that are striving to create cultures of equity, shared learning and collaborative decision-making. These Learning Networks convene all the stakeholders — not just teachers and parents, but also bus drivers, administrative staff and social workers — to work together on dialogue and shared solutions.

Executive Director Judy Jablon says that LFC focuses on adults in the early learning ecosystem because “children learn respect, dignity and empathy from the adults in their lives.”

Parks adds, “Children learn what they live.” For this reason, LFC has focused their work on supporting communities to create and model equitable relationships. Members who have engaged in mutual learning experiences report increased self-confidence, sense of agency in their interactions and respect for diverse perspectives.

Marin County’s equity issues are all its own, but they also speak to economic and racial divides across the nation. , it is one of the most segregated in the region. “This is a county of privilege and wealth as well as hard-working communities in poverty,” Barton says.

Barton engaged LFC to supplement statewide efforts such as the (DRDP), an assessment tool that helps educators see children through a developmental lens, though she notes that it is mandated for use only in state-funded, low-income settings. “What does it say that we’re assessing these children and not the ones from privileged families?” she asks. “That’s a built-in distortion.”

To address such structural issues, Barton instituted a project for incoming kindergarteners, where their preschool teachers meet with the new teachers to share the DRDP as well as a strengths-based list of “things you should know about this child.”

J is a dual language learner. He has excellent English language skills (expressive, receptive, reciprocal). He has worked extremely hard to express how he is feeling.

J loves art and drawing. He can sit for a long time and focus on what he is drawing.

J is a master rhymer. He loves rhyming games and is very good at it.

“Sitting with preschool teachers, and kindergarten teachers in our initial Zoom meetings,” Barton recalls. “I could feel the bias of the elementary school teachers break and drop away from them.”

“What they’re doing is breaking down power structures,” says Parks. “We know that power is at the core of inequity, and we know it is cruel to assess children without really seeing them.”

Returning once again to the desk-throwing child, Barton acknowledges that the early learning classroom is “an incredibly hard world to be your best person in and to show up that way or to have empathy and compassion for every other being in your space.” Nevertheless, she urges those stressed, underpaid educators to ask, “What is he experiencing in this moment? And how can I connect with him so that he can self-regulate in this moment? But first, as the adult, I have to be self-aware, and I have to be able to self-regulate.”

The same self-awareness matters when dealing with adult-adult relationships in the child care setting. Jablon says, “Our adult relationships are fraught with distrust and uneven power dynamics, creating toxicity that undermines the success of young children.”

Barton tells a story of a dad who, in his anger, was using aggressive language with an educator. “The educator explained that previously, his aggressive tone and words had caused her to withdraw. Although she didn’t find his style appropriate, she has learned to ask herself, ‘What is he trying to tell me? What is he trying to say that he needs?’ So she stopped and said, ‘I hear you. Your feelings are valid. How can I help you?’ Her self-awareness and sense of empowerment allowed her to work with him towards a solution that benefited his son.”

“The systems we have are not set up to support empathy and compassion,” says Barton. “They’re not set up to help us cultivate our own self-awareness. In fact, I think we are in systems that actively drive all that out of us.”

Engaging with LFC is a step toward reimagining systems that have functioned so long with their built-in inequities that those inside the systems often don’t even notice them. Breaking them down starts with creating safe and respectful spaces where open, honest and courageous conversations can happen.