But scaffolding is far more subtle than that. It happens not only at the emotional-to-behavioural level, but right down at the millisecond level of human consciousness, the level at which our emotions are guiding our perceptions which in turn are constructing a reality in accordance with our emotions — the level of our implicit story-telling hardware (and software).

The essential, long-term reason why compassion is so important for babies, is because it helps their own neurobiology learn to regulate itself. This is the basic insight of attachment research; receiving attentive care (i.e., compassionate, loving, responsive attunement with others) allows one’s own infant, raging, chaotic neurobiology to be, in effect, soothed by the more stable, grounded, controlled, resilient, more ‘ordered’ neurobiology of the attachment-figures.