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

by Daniel J. Siegel

This distinction is particularly relevant to raising children for a number of reasons. Early in life, during the first year or two, the infant is primarily a right-hemisphere creature. Knowing how to use your own right hemisphere is crucial to making connections with your young child. As the child grows into preschool age, the corpus callosum, the bands of tissue connecting the two hemispheres, is quite immature. This condition leads children at this age to have an innate difficulty “putting words to their feelings.” Sometimes their right hemispheres may be so intensely reacting that they enter a temper tantrum, a state in which they cannot use language to communicate. Nonverbal soothing communication may be best in these situations. Schools generally emphasize left-hemisphere processing over right-hemisphere. Adults, having been raised in those schools, often collude to reinforce this unfair bias toward words and logic. It is difficult for right-mode processing to make a case for itself without resorting to the logic of words for persuasion. Someone has got to stick up for the right hemisphere! Remember, the right-hemisphere brain processes are important for self-regulation, a sense of self, and empathic connections to others. Finding ways to encourage your child’s right-hemisphere development and its integration with the left may be crucial for developing a sense of resilience and well-being.