More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Integration is simply that: linking different elements together to make a well-functioning whole.
When neurons fire together, they grow new connections between them. Over time, the connections that result from firing lead to “rewiring” in the brain.
we can actually rewire it so that we can be healthier and happier.
Right now, your child’s brain is constantly being wired and rewired, and the experiences you provide will go a long way toward determining the structure of her brain.
The good news is that by using everyday moments, you can influence how well your child’s brain grows toward integration. First, you can develop the diverse elements of your child’s brain by offering opportunities to exercise them. Second, you can facilitate integration so that the separate parts become better connected and work together in powerful ways. This isn’t making your children grow up more quickly—it’s simply helping them develop the many parts of themselves and integrate them.
We’re talking about simply being present with your children so you can help them become better integrated.
As a result, they will thrive emotionally, intellectually, and socially. An integrated brain results in improved decision making, better control of body and emotions, fuller self-understanding, stronger relationships, and success in school. And it all begins with the experiences parents and other caregivers provide, which lay the groundwork for integration and mental health.
The powerful and practical approach of integration enables us to see the many ways in which our children—or we ourselves—experience chaos and rigidity because integration has been blocked.
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). The left brain loves that all four of these words begin with the letter L. (It also loves lists.)
The right brain, on the other hand, is holistic and nonverbal, sending and receiving signals that allow us to communicate, such as facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, posture, and gestures.
In terms of development, very young children are right-hemisphere dominant, especially during their first three years.
The very architecture of the brain is designed this way. For example, the corpus callosum is a bundle of fibers that runs along the center of the brain, connecting the right hemisphere with the left. The communication that takes place between the two sides of our brain is conducted across these fibers, allowing the two hemispheres to work as a team—which is exactly what we want for our kids.
We want them to become horizontally integrated, so that the two sides of their brain can act in harmony. That way, our children will value both their logic and their emotions; they will be well balanced and able to understand themselves and the world at large.
The goal, then, is to help our kids learn to use both sides of the brain together—to integrate the left and right hemispheres.
We defined mental health as remaining in the harmonious flow between these two extremes.
By helping our kids connect left and right, we give them a better chance of avoiding the banks of chaos and rigidity, and of living in the flexible current of mental health and happiness.
So how do we promote horizontal integration in our child’s brain? Here are two strategies you can use right away when “integration opportunities” arise in your family. By using these techniques, you’ll be taking immediate steps toward integrating the left and right hemispheres of your child’s brain.
This story points out an important insight: when a child is upset, logic often won’t work until we have responded to the right brain’s emotional needs. We call this emotional connection “attunement,” which is how we connect deeply with another person and allow them to “feel felt.” When parent and child are tuned in to each other, they experience a sense of joining together.
Step 1: Connect with the Right In our society, we’re trained to work things out using our words and our logic.
Instead, we can use these opportunities to realize that at these moments, logic isn’t our primary vehicle for bringing some sort of sanity to the conversation. (Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it?) It’s also crucial to keep in mind that no matter how nonsensical and frustrating our child’s feelings may seem to us, they are real and important to our child. It’s vital that we treat them as such in our response.
During Tina’s conversation with her son, she appealed to his right brain by acknowledging his feelings. She also used nonverbal signals like physical touch, empathetic facial expressions, a nurturing tone of voice, and nonjudgmental listening. In other words, she used her right brain to connect and communicate with his right brain. This right-to-right attunement helped bring his brain into balance, or into a more integrated state. Then she could begin to appeal to her son’s left brain and address the specific issues he had raised. In other words, then it was time for step 2, which helps to
...more
Step 2: Redirect with...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Once she had connected with him right brain to right brain, it was much easier to connect left to left and deal with the issues in a rational manner. By first connecting with his right brain, she could then redirect with the left brain through logical explanation and planning, which required that his left hemisphere join the conversation. This approach allowed him to use both sides of his brain in an integrated, coordinated way.
We’re not saying that “connect and redirect” will always do the trick. After all, there are times when a child is simply past the point of no return and the emotional waves just need to crash until the storm passes. Or the child may simply need to eat or get some sleep. Like Tina, you might decide to wait until your child is in a more integrated state of mind to talk logically with him about his feelings and behaviors.
