Understanding Micro Connections And The Benefits They Hold For Children
Our brain is wired to react in specific ways whenever we experience micro connections with others. Understanding this behaviour can provide opportunities for parents to help improve the lives of their children.
Whenever I ask school children about the one thing they think they’ll remember the most about school, their answer is always the same thing:
Their relationships.
With friends, teachers, sports coaches, and so on.
Children remember those relationships because they feel a deep, meaningful connection with the people involved. Over time, they’ve created experiences, through many little moments of connection, that add up over time to solidify into relationships that are memorable.
It’s the same thing with children and their parents. When you have micro moments of connection with your children, you build a special relationship with them.
Micro connections are, as the words suggest, small moments of connection that happen between people. It’s a smile between two people, a moment of shared laughter in a family, a student group experiencing a moment of agreement. In other words, micro connections are not the big relationship moments but, rather, the small flashes of connection that happen everyday.
A closer relationship is just one of the benefits of having micro connections with your kids. There are other benefits and we’ll discuss four of them in this article.
But before we do that, it’s pertinent to understand how the human brain works as it relates to micro connections.
Our Social Brain (What Happens During Micro Connection)
The brain has an inbuilt neuro-alarm system that is sensitive to social rejections, pains, threats and losses. This system senses social rejections and informs us whenever we experience them. We then interpret this information and form a reaction to threat — which is often negative.
In the same manner, there’s a different region of the brain that processes social connection, acceptance, and belonging called the neuro-reward system. And whenever we have these micro connections with others, that portion of the brain lights up.
Here’s how that works:
Let’s say you’re watching your team play on the TV screen of the bar. Your team scores at the last minute, so you jump up excitedly and share that moment of joy with other fans sitting close to you.
At that moment, your brain’s neuro-reward system is lighting up because you are having a micro moment of shared experience.
Professor Richard Davidson’s research at the University of Wisconsin also revealed this behaviour of the brain. His study showed that different regions of the brain process negative and positive emotions.
The fact that positive and negative emotions are experienced in different parts of the brain means that eliminating negative emotions doesn’t automatically give us positive emotions. It’s only when we engage in activities that promote positivity and connection that we actually feel positive emotions.
Creating moments of micro connection with our children is one effective way for them to experience positive emotions and other benefits brought about by micro connections.
This brings us to the next section of this article:
What are the benefits of having micro connections with your children?
The 4 Benefits
Benefit #1 - Increased Resilience to Pain
There have been many fascinating studies on what happens to us during moments of micro connections, especially in relation to pain.
In one interesting study, participants in the lab were split into two groups. Group 1 had an experience of feeling connected to, and understood, by the research team. Meanwhile, those in the other group were made to feel misunderstood and disconnected.
After this, the participants went through a series of experiments that tested their ability to manage physical pain.
In one of the experiments, the participants dipped their hands into a bucket of ice. Naturally, they began to feel pain after a certain period of time. But the researchers discovered that those who had a shared sense of connection in the earlier phase of the study could withstand the pain for longer periods than those in the disconnected group.
This shows that it’s possible for people to withstand physical pain longer when they establish micro connections with other people.
Benefit #2 - Reduced Perception of Pain
In another experiment, participants were taken outside and shown a hill. They were told that they needed to run up and down the hill. Then, they were asked how steep they think the hill is, how far it is, and how exhausting and painful it would be to run to the top and back down.
Those participants who felt connected and supported thought that the hill was less steep, less far, and easier to run.
What this shows is that their perception of future pain was reduced when they felt understood and heard.
Benefit #3 - Improved Physical Health
Micro connections can make children feel trusted, supported, understood and loved by their parents. When this happens, they’ll connect better with their parents, allowing them to build better relationships with them. And having healthy relationships can help improve their physical health.
There are many studies that support this mind-body connection. But how does it work?
When you experience support and have a strong sense of social connection, you’ll have increased levels of oxytocin in your system. Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone that encourages us to bond with other people. And at the same time, it also reduces stress.
By having a higher oxytocin level, you’ll boost your endocrine and immune systems. This can then improve your physical health.
Benefit #4 - Healthier Lifestyle Choices
Research has shown that people are more likely to engage in healthy behaviours when they feel more connected with others.
For example, when your children feel accepted and connected to others, they can regulate their appetite more and may even be able to do physical activities like exercise regularly.
How to Create Micro Connections With Your Children
Micro-connections are created when there is a shared sense of connection with others. That means simple acts like exchanging hugs with your kids, having a moment with them during family meals, playing together, enjoying the same music and figuring out a problem together, can help you create micro connections with them.
So, what you can do is engage in these types of activities to create micro connections with your kids.
Help Improve The Quality of Your Children’s Lives
Micro connections are created through shared moments of social connection between two or more people, such as parents and their children. And our brain rewards us in several ways when we have these moments with other people.
For example, having micro connections with your children helps increase their resilience to pain and reduces their perception of pain. It can also promote good health and help them to make healthy lifestyle choices.
All these will help them to live better lives.
Would you like to learn more about improving the quality of life of your children? Download my free SEARCH Family Wellbeing Activities. Click here