Dispatches from the Field: Isabelle Hau on the connection between love and learning

Interview with Isabelle Hau

As executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning at Stanford University, Isabelle Hau partners with scholars, students, and others to use the latest advances in brain and learning sciences, data, and technology to develop more effective and equitable solutions for challenges faced by learners. During a decade with the Omidyar Group, the philanthropic investment arm of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, she founded and led the U.S. Education Initiative. Born and raised in rural southwestern France, Isabelle moved to the U.S. 20 years ago.

Earlier this month she released her first book, Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education.

Can you speak about why you include “love” in the title of your book and why you see it as such an important cornerstone for early education?

Love is more than a feeling or an emotion. It’s an essential active force that shapes how we connect. Love is tied to the deep responsive relationships that fuel the brain, development, resilience, and lifelong well-being. We are born with billions of neurons, so I call all of us billionaires. But unlike animal species that can walk or feed themselves when they are born, we can’t. This means that, in the very early years of life, we need to have those neurons connect to help us learn these skills.  This synaptic connection happens with relationships. This is how these neural pathways support learning, problem solving, emotional regulation, and resilience in young children from the start and then throughout life. This concept of love, which has been practically taboo in education settings, is the “silver bullet” for young children to develop.

What is relational deprivation and how does it affect young children’s development?

In the science of relationships there’s research showing that greater parental nurturing in the early years has large positive effects on the brain, including on the size of the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and other cognitive functions. The opposite is also true: When children are deprived of nurturing, loving relationships, negative effects on the brain occur. This was well illustrated by what happened to children in Romanian orphanages during the communist and post-communist period. It’s a very sad period of history, but it was a unique setting that enabled researchers to investigate the impact of relational deprivation.

The Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who came into power in the late 1960s, had this grand vision of bringing economic growth to Romania by increasing population growth. He took a lot of pro-natalist measures, and the population started to grow. But economic growth didn’t materialize as planned. Parents who had a lot of babies during this period but lacked the means to feed them abandoned their children in orphanages. When the communist regime fell in the late 1980s, it was discovered that 100,000 to 500,000 children had been left in orphanages.

Post-Ceaușescu, those orphanages reopened, and a lot of the little ones were adopted in the UK, Canada, the U.S., and other countries. Researchers found that the brain size of children left in orphanages was about 10% smaller on average than those who were adopted. There also was lower brain activity observed in these children — with proportionate decreases in brain size and activity based on the length of time a child lived in the orphanage. This led to understanding what can occur when a child is exposed to relational deprivation.

In our society, what are some factors influencing the prevalence of relational deprivation?

Parents are spending a lot more time with their children — mothers certainly — but it’s the increased involvement of fathers where we’ve seen the fastest growth. But we have concerns about what’s happening societally as the circles of relationships are contracting. For example, the number of single-child families has doubled over the past 30 years so there is less opportunity for a young child to have siblings. More than half of grandparents now have at least one grandchild that lives 200 miles away. Networks around young children tend to be smaller than they once were.

Despite parents spending more time with their children, there’s the question of the quality of this time and the need to be more intentional. Parents experience societal stress — whether financial, as the cost of raising a child goes up, or the stress of work and how work permeates our personal lives through technology. These are factors that are hard to control at a family level but harm the quality of those relationships.

And, of course, there’s technology, which can be a force for good, but can also be a source of interference in relationships. On average in the U.S., people check their devices 205 times a day. Each time, there’s an opportunity for breaking a beautiful relationship with a young child. That’s deeply concerning not only because children may imitate our addictive phone behavior, but also because of the message we’re sharing with a young child that this device is more important than they are.

Despite the importance of early relationships, they’re often seen as “soft” measures of success. What can be done to shift that conversation so the value of early relationships is put on par with such “tangible” measurements as math or reading scores?

We’ve focused on cognitive intelligence for a long time. All of us know the concept of IQ as translated into academic contexts with GPA or with organic academic success. Then, over the past 20 plus years, there has been a rise, especially in the workplace, of the concept called emotional intelligence — EQ — which has nicely translated in education settings into social emotional learning.

I’d love to see a third concept introduced called relational intelligence, or RQ. There’s a chief economist at LinkedIn who has been vocal that he sees the future of our economy to be a relational one. There’s already discourse in the workplace about the need for collaboration skills, for people to be focused on teamwork, and for collaboration on a global basis. If we can make it an important concept — especially with artificial intelligence rising — and we believe our future is relational economies, I think we can then connect it to the early childhood discussion expressing that relational intelligence is what will matter most in our future. Parents, you need to really focus attention on this, because if you want your child to be successful in this rising economy dominated by artificial intelligence, the key attribute or human skill your child can offer will be relational!

Studies show that mothers who had babies during the COVID pandemic had harder times with maternal-child bonding. How can we support mothers and fathers in these kinds of high-stress situations?

Research by Columbia University neuroscientist and pediatrician Dani Dumitriu tracked the emotional connection between moms and their infants during the early days of COVID. The data was sobering: Only 20% of infants and moms had a strong emotional connection.

But what troubled me more was that only 40% of infants and moms had a strong emotional connection before COVID.

In terms of interventions, the first one I’d mention is paid parental leave, as the U.S. is the only country among industrial nations not to have a national policy. Parental leave is a deeply researched area that shows it’s beneficial for the child, it reduces stress for the parent, and it has value for the workplace because companies with leave have greater retention of their workforce. Only 11 states have a paid parental leave program. In my mind, universal paid parental leave would be a good place to start.

Ideally, we also need to provide more supports for parents through parental groups. I’m a huge fan of what the group healthcare model Centering Health does in this regard, where  cohorts of parents get together both in the prenatal and postnatal periods. Parents learn from and support each other. Mental health is another big area where we need to support mothers, especially given the rates of postpartum depression.

In your book, you advocate for a paradigm shift, from child-centered to relationship-centered learning. What does that look like and how it would benefit young children?

Many early childhood environments do this in beautiful ways, simply because a lot of educators came to the profession, and stayed in the profession, for those relationships. Most teachers are deeply relational so it’s more about how we equip their environments so early education settings become ”relational hubs.” For example, we could open those settings to families and to the community more. This could be as simple as making sure the library is open for parents as well. There are a number of small things that can be done for little cost.

There are other approaches that could be more costly or those that could look different. I’d point to the work of Briya Public Charter School in Washington DC, which offers a high [reimbursement] rate per child in the early years. Briya braids early childhood and workforce funds, such that in addition to early childhood classes, they offer GED and English language classes for parents. So, parents come to the site not only to pick up or drop off their child but also to take classes and can more easily connect with other parents doing the same thing. They also connect more with teachers.

In the care or classroom setting, to build better relationships for young children with each other and with their teachers, ratio matters a lot. In a large class, it’s more difficult to establish a high-quality relationship. It’s also important to invest in the well-being of educators so they can thrive in the environment in which they work.

Prioritizing relationship training also fits in the more expensive category, but more accessible tools are becoming available. There’s a free tool called ALONG, used by many K-12 teachers to help track and set relational goals that could be adapted easily to early childhood.

Beyond relational intelligence, what should we be thinking about in early education settings?

We need to think more about play because play drives better relationships among little ones and adults too. States are starting to look at play as a priority, but only 40% are focused on play beyond the early settings. Free play has a lot of meaningful benefits but, by over-scheduling our kids, by eliminating recess, and overly focusing on academic activities in the early years, we’re eliminating those spaces for the brain and for normal development to occur.

Let me pick one example that may be relatable as an adult: 2 spaces where we as adults have our most creative thoughts are in the shower and when we’re walking. How can we translate that for young children? We need to protect spaces where there is no structure, no devices, no interruptions — where our free thoughts can develop and materialize, where we can be with ourselves and with others.