A RECIPE FOR SELF-CONTROL
When my sons were just two or so and would get upset,I sometimes used distraction to calm them down: Look at that birdie, or an all-service, enthusiastic What's that? with my gaze or finger directing their focus toward something or other.
Attention regulates emotion. This little ploy uses selective at tention to quiet the agitated amygdala. So long as a toddler stays tuned to some interesting object of focus, the distress calms; the moment that thing loses its fascination, the distress, if still held on to by networks in the amygdala, comes roaring back.The trick, of course, lies in keeping the baby intrigued long enough for the amygdala to calm.As infants learn to use this attention maneuver for themselves,they acquire one of their first emotional self-regulation skills-one that has vast importance for their destiny in life: how to manage the unruly amygdala. Such a ploy takes executive attention, a ca pacity that starts to flower in the third year of life when a toddler can show "effortful control"-focusing at will, ignoring distrac tions, and inhibiting impulse.
Parents might notice this landmark when a toddler makes the intentional choice to say "no" to a temptation, like waiting for dessert until after she's taken some more bites of what's on her plate. That, too, depends on executive attention, which blossoms into willpower and self-discipline-as in managing our disturbing feel
ings and ignoring whims so we can stay focused on a goal.
By age eight most children master greater degrees of executive attention. This mental tool manages the operation of other brain networks for cognitive skills like learning to read and do math, and academics in general (we'll look into this more in part 5).
Our mind deploys self-awareness to keep everything we do on track: meta-cognition-thinking about thinking-lets us know how our mental operations are going and adjust them as needed; meta emotion does the same with regulating the flow of feeling and im pulse. In the mind's design, self-awareness is built into regulating our own emotions, as well as sensing what others feel. Neuroscien tists see self-control through the lens of the brain zones underlying executive function, which manages mental skills like self-awareness and self-regulation, critical for navigating our lives.
Executive attention holds the key to self-management. This power to direct our focus onto one thing and ignore others lets us bring to mind our waistline when we spot those quarts of Cheese cake Brownie ice cream in the freezer. This small choice point har bors the core of willpower, the essence of self-regulation.
The brain is the last organ of the body to mature anatomically, continuing to grow and shape itself into our twenties-and the networks for attention are like an organ that develops in parallel with the brain.
As every parent of more than one child knows, from day one each baby differs: one is more alert, or calmer, or more active than another. Such differences in temperament reflect the maturation and genetics of various brain networks.
How much of our talent for attention comes from our genes? It depends. Different attention systems, it turns out, have different degrees of heritability.The strongest heritability is for executive control.