What Separation from Parents Does to Children

Washington Post: “This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents.”

“Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites — the little branches in brain cells that transmit mes­sages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and — especially in young children — wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain.”

Said Harvard Medical School professor Charles Nelson: “The effect is catastrophic. There’s so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.”