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

by Daniel J. Siegel

When our internal experience keeps us from connecting with our children, their experience of our intense emotion may trigger the arousal of a defensive emotional state in them. When this takes place, we are no longer in a collaborative relationship but each person has separated into his or her own internal world and feels alone and isolated. When both the parent’s and the child’s authentic, inner self is hidden behind the mental walls of psychological defense, neither person feels connected or understood. When our children feel this sense of aloneness they may express their fear or discomfort at this disconnection either by behaving aggressively or by withdrawing. Children’s behavior may then become the focus of our attention and our own feeling of isolation can keep us from making meaningful attempts at reconnecting with our children. In this way, our own emotional issues can create responses in our children that further impair our ability to emotionally understand them or ourselves.