SAN DIEGO -- Children need lots of interaction and experiences in order to grow up physically and emotionally healthy, 10News reported. And parents need to reach out to family, neighbors, and professionals to get help in raising their children. That was the message from psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry during a recent seminar at the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center in Rolando. Perry works with high-risk children who have suffered some kind of trauma in their lives.

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Kids And Human Interaction

Perry said every child should be raised to bring out their best potential. He said that while scientists understand more and more about how children's brains develop, society has become increasingly foolish in its child-rearing practices.

"We've gotten to the point where we're so child illiterate that we actually think it's a best practice to take four infants and put them with one adult for seven hours a day," Perry told the crowd of teachers, child-care workers, psychologists, and social workers.

It is not just happening at day care. Perry said children have fewer adults to interact with at home, because fewer families have grandparents, aunts, and uncles nearby to rely on. Families are becoming isolationist -- choosing to interact with the television instead of with friends or neighbors.

According to Perry, humans are designed to be interdependent on others. So when infants and young children are cut off from a variety of social interactions, their emotional and cognitive growth suffers. In fact, bringing in more social interaction can actually help children who have suffered a trauma.

He explained, "One of the most important things that we try to do for children who have experienced some form of trauma is make sure that they're living in an environment where they have opportunities for wealth of relationships, where they have neighbors, and extended family, and family members who can be supportive and present and invested in their lives."

But it is not just social interaction that helps children. Physical interaction -- playing, rocking, and cooing -- also improve brain growth.

"All of these physical (activities) can be provided by the mother, by the father, by Grandma, by a primary child-care provider. And even though a person different from the mother may be providing the rocking and the cooing and interacting it's still very, very positive for the child," Perry said.

The key is to address the issue in the first few years of a child's life, when the brain is at its most malleable, or "sensitive to emotional, social and cognitive experiences," said Perry.

"It's a great time for parents to provide nurturing and enrichment and all kinds of cognitive activities that help their children grow up to be abstract and creative and humane and good healthy children," Perry said.

The seminar was sponsored in part by the First 5 Commission of San Diego, KGTV's partner with KPBS in Project QKids.