Every parent knows that emotions are oftentimes contagious. Whenever my own mood is jovial and calm, my children seem to experience fewer meltdowns, while my experience of stress seems to have the opposite effect on them (even with my best attempts at masking). Appreciating this contagion quality of emotion makes nourishing my own nervous system a priority for me, through making time for activities that keep it calm and rested (like exercise and mindfulness).

Attachment theorists concur that ways in which caregivers respond to their children's emotions impact children’s relationship with their inner experience, their coping, even their physiology.

Similarly, when the polyvagal theory came out in 1994, it offered yet another paradigm for appreciating the impact of parental responsiveness on children’s coping with emotions and their physiology.

Polyvagal theory is a collection of hypotheses about the functioning of the body’s vagus nerve and how it impacts individuals’ experiences of social connection, calm and safety, as well as trauma, coined by Stephen Porges, Ph.D.

At the center of the polyvagal theory is the vagus nerve, the largest nerve in mammals that extends from the brain’s cerebellum into the body’s many major organs and peripheral senses. According to the polyvagal theory, the vagus plays a key role in informing the brain about what is happening within the body, like a messenger that reports to the brain on the functioning of the body’s major organs as well as its peripheral sensory experiences.

Dr Porges suggested that the major facial muscles involved in facial expression reveal important safety cues about whether an individual’s nervous system is receptive to engaging with others and in a........

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