Start Here: The Lens Behind the Shared Rhythms Framework
The study of humanity has always fascinated me. As a young girl, I remember poring over books about different human species, studying the drawings of how scientists imagined they may have looked, and reading about how they may have lived.
I remember feeling wonder and amazement at the thought that we, Homo sapiens — the only remaining human species — carry a past rooted in raw animal experience and survival. The design of Homo sapiens allowed not only for our survival, but for our extraordinary ability to communicate, work together, adapt, create, and utterly transform the world around us.
This curiosity about the essence of our kind has never left me. Although I long ago abandoned dreams of becoming an anthropologist, I now find myself bringing one of my oldest interests together with my expertise in early childhood development.
There is a deep and almost indescribable amazement in realizing that these threads were never really separate. The questions that fascinated me as a child did not disappear; they found their way back to me through my work with young children, and through a growing desire to understand what the smallest among us need — especially those struggling the most to feel safe in their bodies, connect with others, and express themselves in the world.
I have only existed on Earth for thirty-seven years. But my body — and every person’s body — still carries an incredibly ancient design. Beneath all of our modern language, schedules, technologies, and ideas, we are living organisms with bodies built around basic biological needs: to stay safe, stay connected, and stay alive.
Our nervous system — including the brain, spinal cord, and body-based systems that help us sense, respond, and survive — is part of that ancient design. So is the developmental process through which it grows.
Every second, about four new babies enter the world. Every baby enters this world with a brand-new body and brain, but the developmental process guiding that body and brain is much, much older.
Said simply: a baby is new, but her design is ancient.
For most of human history, the human design was being slowly formed within a very different kind of world. Across thousands of generations, the body and developing nervous system were shaped by daily life organized around movement, physical closeness, shared caregiving and work, sensory-rich experience, outdoor life, social interaction, participation, and direct connection to the surrounding environment.
These patterns did not simply surround human development. Over time, they became part of what the developing body and brain came to expect.
Yet we simply no longer live in the same kind of world that shaped the human body and nervous system. Modern life has brought many extraordinary protections and possibilities, but it has also changed the daily rhythms through which we live — and through which our children must grow and develop.
That matters.
Because neurodevelopment does not happen apart from daily life.
It happens through daily life, within small bodies that still carry ancient systems and ancient needs.
This is the central interaction the Shared Rhythms Framework aims to explore: the relationship between young children’s ancient biological needs and the modern world in which they are growing.
This evolutionary and anthropological viewpoint is the perspective I have carried for decades. It is also the one I am bringing to my work in early development, and the one I hope to invite my readers to consider.
For me, this perspective has made many things clearer — and future essays will explore these questions in more depth: why modern parenting can feel so stressful, why young children need more than toys, why daily rhythm matters, why the body matters, and why modern society makes it so difficult to build daily life around what young children need.
And why, perhaps, we are seeing more developmental differences — and more struggle when those differences are not well supported within the rhythms and structures of modern daily life.
My hope is that this lens offers parents, clinicians, and caregivers a little more clarity, compassion, and empowerment as they support young children in a world that has changed — and continues to change — very quickly.
Because young children do not develop apart from daily life.
They develop through it.
Sources and Further Reading
For readers who want to explore the research traditions behind this lens, I’ve included a short list of foundational sources below.
UNICEF Data — global birth estimates
Greenough, Black, & Wallace — experience-expectant development and neural plasticity
Knudsen — sensitive periods and experience in brain development
Shonkoff & Phillips — From Neurons to Neighborhoods
Daniel Lieberman — human evolution and mismatch theory
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy — cooperative caregiving and human development
Darcia Narvaez — evolved developmental niche / early caregiving ecology
