This episode is a conversation with Dr Suzanne Zeedyk. Suzanne is a Developmental Psychologist and Research Scientist with an honorary post at the Univeristy of Dundee, Scotland. She is fascinated by baby’s innate capacity to communicate and is passionate about sharing the Science of Connection. She is the founder of Connected Baby, an organisation that shares the latest discoveries on infant communicative capacities, brain development and the parent-infant relationship with the wider public. Her goal is to increase awareness of the decisions we take about caring for children, because they are integrally connected to our vision of the kind of society we wish to build. Please note that this conversation is not specifically about Aware Parenting.

In this episode, Suzanne shares her expertise about babies and the gap between what science now understands about the capacities and needs of babies and what is understood about that in our wider culture. She shares that babies are born already able to recognise the voices, the laughter and the songs of people who have been around them in utero. She shares that the way babies are treated in the early years has an impact on their biology. And she reassures listeners by explaining the positive impact on attachment of the rupture–repair process - that repair matters more than rupture. We discuss the need parents have for support and information if we are going to be able to meet our baby’s needs. She reassures parents that us being imperfect is exactly what our babies need and we discuss the impact of the wider economic and social context in which we are trying to raise our families.

To find out more about Suzanne’s work, please visit www.connectedbaby.net, read her book Sabre Tooth Tigers and Teddy Bears, watch her film The Connected Baby and her many videos on YouTube. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @drsuzannezeedyk