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). The left brain loves that all four of these words begin with the letter L. (It also loves lists.)

basic idea is that while the left brain is logical, linguistic, and literal, the right brain is emotional, nonverbal, experiential, and autobiographical—and it doesn’t care at all that these words

But when a toddler begins asking “Why?” all the time, you know that the left brain is beginning to really kick in. Why? Because our left brain likes to know the linear cause-effect relationships in the world—and to express that logic with language.

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,

The key to helping Amanda was for me to attune to those real feelings gently. I didn’t point out abruptly that she was hiding, even from herself, how this important person in her life had hurt her. Instead, I allowed myself to feel what she was feeling, then tried to communicate from my right brain to her right brain. Using my facial expressions and posture, I let her know that I was really tuning in to her emotions. That attunement helped her “feel felt”—to

The goal, then, is to help our kids learn to use both sides of the brain together—to integrate the left and right hemispheres.

So does that give them a get-out-of-jail-free card (“Sorry, Mom, that I squirted our new puppy’s face with Windex. I guess my upstairs brain wasn’t fully engaged”)? Hardly. In fact, it actually gives us parents even more incentive to see that our kids develop the faculties that result in appropriate behavior. And it gives us a pretty effective strategy for making some dicey decisions, especially when we’re in the middle of a heated situation—like a tantrum.

An upstairs tantrum occurs when a child essentially decides to throw a fit.

But you can see that she knows what she’s doing, and that she’s definitely working from strategy and manipulation to achieve a desired end: that you drop everything and immediately buy the slippers.

parent who recognizes an upstairs tantrum is left with one clear response: never negotiate with a terrorist. An upstairs tantrum calls for firm boundaries and a clear discussion about appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

Then it’s important to follow through on those consequences if the behavior doesn’t stop.

Now, I make plenty of mistakes as I parent my boys (as they’ll freely tell you). But just the day before, I had given a lecture to a group of parents about the upstairs and downstairs brain, and about using everyday challenges—the survival moments—as opportunities to help our kids thrive. So, luckily for my son, all of that was fresh in my mind. I decided to choose option #2.

You’ve had those conversations with your sibling or your spouse where after you tell a story about something, they say “That’s not how it happened!” Your state of mind when you encoded the memory and the state of mind you’re in when you recall it influence and change the memory itself. So the story you actually tell is less history and more historical fiction.

me.” I sang it—in Russian and in English—during the last trimester of pregnancy, when I knew the auditory system was wired up enough to register sound coming through the amniotic fluid.

Dan’s newborn children recognized his voice and the Russian song because that information had been encoded in their brain as implicit memories.

In fact, before you over-analyze the situation, HALT and check the basics: is your little Jedi simply hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?

That means that when you give your children lots of practice at remembering—by having them tell and retell their own stories—you improve their ability to integrate implicit and explicit memories.

So our second suggestion is simply that you remember to remember. During your various activities, help your kids talk about their experiences, so they can integrate their implicit and explicit memories.

details from last night’s play rehearsal. Or encourage them to journal. Studies have clearly shown that the very act of recalling and expressing an event through journaling can improve immune and heart function, as well as general well-being.

“Tell me about your day. Give me one high point, one low point, and one act of kindness you performed for someone.”

To download a printable refrigerator sheet, please visit http://rhlink.com/wbc001