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

by Daniel J. Siegel

One of the best ways to begin orienting kids to what’s on their rim is to help them learn to SIFT through all the sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts that are affecting them. By paying attention to their physical sensations, for example, children can become much more aware of what’s going on inside their bodies. They can learn to recognize stomach butterflies as markers of anxiety, a desire to hit as anger or frustration, heavy shoulders as sadness, and so on. They can identify tension in their body when they’re nervous, then learn to relax their shoulders and take deep breaths to calm themselves. Simply recognizing different sensations like hunger, tiredness, excitement, and grumpiness can give children a great deal of understanding and ultimately influence over their feelings. In addition to sensations, we need to teach our kids to SIFT for images that are affecting the way they look at and interact with the world. Some images remain from the past, like the memory of a parent on a hospital gurney, or an embarrassing moment at school. Others might be fabricated from their imaginations or even nightmares they’ve had. A child who worries about being left out and isolated at recess might, for example, picture herself on a lonely swing by herself. Or another child might struggle with nighttime fears as a result of the images he remembers from a scary dream. When a child becomes aware of the images that are active in his mind,