Parent Book Club: August's Pick
August’s Book Selection:
We are excited to announce August’s Parent Book Club selection! This month, we are highlighting The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel.
Summary from Amazon:
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children. The authors explain—and make accessible—the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,” which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids throw tantrums, fight, or sulk in silence. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth.
Complete with age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.
Takeaways:
Introduction
Survive AND thrive: Watch for ways to take the difficult parenting moments when you’re
simply trying to survive, and turn them into opportunities for your children to thrive.
Integration > Health and success: The brain performs at its best when its different
parts work together in a coordinated and balanced way. An integrated brain results in improved decision-making, better control of body and emotions, fuller self-understanding, stronger relationships, and success in school.
The River of Well-being: The more integrated our kids are, the more they can remain in the river of well-being, avoiding the bank of chaos on one side, and the bank of rigidity on the other.
Chapter 1: Integrating the Left and Right Brain
Left + right = clarity and understanding: Help your kids use both the logical left brain
and the emotional right brain so they can live balanced, meaningful, and creative lives full
of connected relationships.
What You Can Do: Helping your child work from both sides of the brain
o Connect and Redirect: When your child is upset, connect first emotionally, right
brain to right brain. Then, once your child is more in control and receptive, bring in
the left-brain lessons and discipline.
o Name it to Tame It: When big, right-brain emotions are raging out of control, help
your kids tell the story about what’s upsetting them. In doing so, they’ll use their left brain to make sense of their experience and feel more in control.
Chapter 2: Integrating the Upstairs Brain and the Downstairs Brain
Be patient with the upstairs brain: Unlike the primitive downstairs brain, which is intact
at birth, the sophisticated upstairs brain is “under construction” during childhood and adolescence. Plus, it’s especially vulnerable to being “hi-jacked” by the downstairs brain, especially in high-emotion situations. So don’t expect your children to make good decisions all the time, or to remain in control of their emotions and actions.
What You Can Do: Helping develop and integrate your child’s upstairs brain
o Engage, don’t enrage: In high-stress situations, engage your child’s upstairs brain,
rather than triggering the downstairs brain. Don’t immediately play the “Because I said so!” card. Instead, appeal to your child’s higher-order thinking skills. Ask questions, ask for alternatives, even negotiate.
o Use it or lose it: Provide lots of opportunities to exercise the upstairs brain so it can be strong and integrated with the downstairs brain and the body. Play “What would you do?” games and present them with dilemmas. Avoid rescuing them from difficult decisions.
o Move it or lose it: When a child has lost touch with his upstairs brain, a powerful way to help him regain balance is to have him move his body.
Chapter 3: Integrating Memory
Make the implicit explicit: Help your kids make their implicit memories explicit, so that
past experiences don’t affect them in debilitating ways. By narrating past events they can look at what’s happened and make good, intentional decisions about how to handle those memories.
What You Can Do: Helping your child integrate implicit and explicit memories
o Use the remote of the mind: After a painful event, a child may be reluctant to narratewhat happened. The internal remote lets her pause, rewind, and fast-forward a
story as she tells it, so she can maintain control over how much of it she views.
o Remember to remember: Help your kids exercise their memory by giving them lots
of practice at remembering. In the car, at the dinner table, wherever: help your kids talk about their experiences, so they can integrate their implicit and explicit memories.
Chapter 4: Integrating the Many Parts of Myself
The Wheel of awareness: Sometimes our kids get stuck on one particular point on the
rim of their wheel of awareness, and lose sight of the many other parts of themselves. We need to give them mindsight, so they can be aware of what’s happening in their own mind. Then they can choose where they focus their attention, integrating the different aspects of themselves and gaining more control over how they feel.
What You Can Do: Introducing your child to the wheel of awareness
o Let the clouds of emotion roll by: Remind kids that feelings come and go. Fear andfrustration and loneliness are temporary states, not enduring traits.
o SIFT: Help your children pay attention to the Sensations, Images, Feelings, and
Thoughts within them. They can’t understand and change their inner experiences
until they are first aware of what’s going on inside.
o Exercise mindsight: Mindsight practices teach children to calm themselves and focus
their attention where they want.
Chapter 5: Integrating Self and Other
Wired for “we”: Watch for ways to capitalize on the brain’s built-in capacity for social
interaction, especially by being intentional about creating positive mental models of relationships. Parents and other important caregivers create children’s expectations about relationships that will affect and guide them throughout their lives. Help them develop mindsight, which offers them insight into themselves as individuals, and empathy for and connection with those around them.
What You Can Do: Helping your child integrate self and other
o Enjoy each other: Build fun into the family, so that your kids enjoy positive andsatisfying experiences with the people they’re with the most.
o Connect through conflict: Try not to view conflict as merely an obstacle to avoid.Instead, use it as an opportunity to teach your kids essential relationship skills, like seeing other people’s perspectives, reading nonverbal cues, and making amends.