The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

by Daniel J. Siegel

Your left brain loves and desires order. It is logical, literal, linguistic (it likes words), and linear (it puts things in a sequence or order).

Significant problems arise when the two sides of our brain are not integrated and we end up coming at our experiences primarily from one side or the other.

The goal is to avoid living in an emotional flood or an emotional desert.

when a child is upset, logic often won’t work until we have responded to the right brain’s emotional needs.

We’re also not recommending permissiveness or letting your boundaries slide simply because a child isn’t thinking logically. Rules about respect and behavior aren’t thrown out the window simply because a child’s left hemisphere is disengaged.

What kids often need, especially when they experience strong emotions, is to have someone help them use their left brain to make sense of what’s going on—to put things in order and to name these big and scary right-brain feelings so they can deal with them effectively.

One of the best ways to promote integration in our children is to become better integrated ourselves.

One of the most important skills we can teach our kids is to make good decisions in high-emotion situations

We want them to pause before acting, to consider consequences, to think about the feelings of others, to make ethical and moral judgments.

This is really important information for parents to understand, because it means that all of the abilities on the list above—the behaviors and skills we want and expect our kids to demonstrate, like sound decision making, control of their emotions and bodies, empathy, self-understanding, and morality—are dependent on a part of their brain that hasn’t fully developed yet.

So your first task, when your child’s upstairs brain has been hijacked by his downstairs brain, is to help calm his amygdala.

we found a way to engage the upstairs, instead of enraging the downstairs.

When we don’t offer a place for children to express their feelings and recall what happened after an overwhelming event, their implicit-only memories remain in dis-integrated form, leaving the children with no way to make sense of their experience.

“Tell me two things that really happened today, and one thing that didn’t. Then I’ll guess which two are true.”

We can shift our focus to other rim points on the wheel of awareness, so that we are no longer victims of forces seemingly beyond our control, but active participants in the process of deciding and affecting how we think and feel.

But it’s also true that feelings need to be recognized for what they are: temporary, changing conditions. They are states, not traits. They’re like the weather. Rain is real, and we’d be foolish to stand in a downpour and act as if it weren’t actually raining. But we’d be just as foolish to expect that the sun will never reappear.

The kinds of relationships they experience will lay the groundwork for how they relate to others for the rest of their lives.

Remember that the brain uses repeated experiences or associations to predict what to expect.

Often, in moments of reactivity, nonverbals (like hugs and empathetic facial expressions) will be much more powerful.

Your state of mind can influence your child’s state of mind, letting you transform fussiness and irritability into fun, laughter, and connection.

It can be difficult for any of us to see things from someone else’s perspective. We see what we see, and often only what we want to see. But the more we can use our mindsight to view events through the eyes of another, the better chance we have of resolving conflict in a healthy manner.

The act of considering the mind of another requires us to use our right hemisphere and our upstairs brain, both of which are part of the social circuitry that allows us to enjoy mature and fulfilling relationships.

Too often we forget that “discipline” really means “to teach”—not “to punish.” A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioral consequences.

Instead, your job is to be present with your children and connect with them through the ups and downs of life’s journey.