Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive

by Daniel J. Siegel

There may be experiences from your own childhood that you couldn’t make sense of at the time, because no caring adult was available to help you understand your experience. From the beginning of life, the mind attempts to make sense of the world and to regulate its internal emotional state through the relationship of the child with the parent. Parents help children regulate their internal states and bring meaning to experience. As children grow, they develop the capacity to create an autobiographical narrative from these experiences. This ability to tell stories reflects the fundamental way that the child has come to make sense of the world and to regulate his or her emotional states.