Stressed parents have difficulty offering their children a specific quality required for the development of the brain’s self-regulation circuits: the quality of attunement. Attunement is, literally, being “in tune” with someone else’s emotional states. It’s not a question of parental love but of the parent’s ability to be present emotionally in such a way that the infant or child feels understood, accepted, and mirrored. Attunement is the real language of love, the conduit by which a preverbal child can realize that she is loved.
