Child Attachment Expert: Hidden Dangers Of Daycare, It Might Be Causing Future Issues For Your Kid! Birth Rates Are Plummeting & Its Terrifying! Dr Erica Komisar

Erica Komisar (0:00)

One in five children will not leave childhood without developing a serious mental illness, anxiety, depression, ADHD, behavioral problems. And what pisses me off is that we're not really educating or telling parents the truth as to why.

Steven Bartlett (0:14)

Why is it that what you say is so troubling for some people?

Erica Komisar (0:17)

Sometimes facts are an inconvenient truth, but everything I'm going to say is supported by research.

SPEAKER_3 (0:23)

Erica Komisar is a parenting expert and psychoanalyst who uses over 30 years of research to challenge the societal norms on parenting and early child development.

Erica Komisar (0:32)

There's some myths that really have to be debunked about how to raise a healthy child. And the first is daycare is good for children for socialization. No, it's so bad for their brain. And it's been known to increase aggression, behavioral problems, attachment disorders, because babies need their mothers for the first three years for emotional security.

Steven Bartlett (0:50)

Can a father do that?

Erica Komisar (0:51)

So fathers are important in a different way. And I'll go through all of that. But they're both critical, because if you're raised without one, you are missing a piece. And then there's quality versus quantity time. Myth. You need to be there a quality of time as well as a quantity of time. You can't have a fabulous career and then come home and be present for your child on your time. It needs to be on their time. And there's more.

Steven Bartlett (1:13)

And we're going to go through all of them. But are there any areas of privilege that you need to acknowledge? Maybe someone who doesn't have a partner there, or someone who is in an extremely difficult economic situation.

Erica Komisar (1:23)

They do. But there are ways to creatively deal with it. And I'll go through each of them. So there's...

Steven Bartlett (1:35)

You're clearly on a mission. And I get that energy from you, that there's really an idea that you believe that much of the world doesn't believe or is struggling to accept in some way, but it's an important idea. What is the mission that you're on?

Erica Komisar (1:54)

I like to think of it as three Ps, Presence, Prioritization and Prevention. And I'll go through each of them. My mission is to educate parents and policy makers and clinicians and educators about the fact that for children to be mentally healthy in the future, you have to be physically and emotionally present for them throughout childhood, but particularly in the two critical periods of brain development, which are zero to three, and nine to twenty-five, which is adolescence. So in those two critical periods of brain development, particularly zero to three, much of a child's development depends on their environment, and you are their environment. So I run around the world talking about the importance of physical and emotional presence. Attachment security. Attachment security is the foundation for future mental health. Prioritization. We prioritize everything today other than our children. We prioritize our work, our careers, our material success, our personal desires and pleasures, but what we're not prioritizing is children. And, you know, that's a problem because if we don't prioritize them, they break down. They may break down at three. They may break down at eight, or they may not break down until they're an adolescence. But eventually, they break down. And prevention, there's so much that we can do. We have a mental health crisis now in the world. It varies to a certain degree in America. One in five children will not leave childhood without breaking down at some point, without developing a serious mental illness, anxiety, depression, ADHD, behavioral problems, suicidal thoughts. So we have a problem in the UK. It's one in six. In America, it's one in five. Around the world, it's about one in five. That is a shocking figure. And so, and the truth is, we can do a great deal to prevent that. The idea that we are trying to put out fires without talking about what is the origin of these issues. The way that the mental health care system works now, it's like what I call cutting the grass, children are medicated, which is basically just pain management. They're given CBT therapy, which again is just pain management. But why aren't we asking the important questions, which is where does emotional regulation originate? Where does it come from? When does it start? How do we foster development in children from a very young age to promote resilience, to stress and adversity in the future?

And so those are my three missions.

Steven Bartlett (4:45)

And for someone who doesn't know your work and isn't aware of you, they might be thinking, how would you know, Erica? How would you know the answer?