The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired

by Daniel J. Siegel

Many people don’t have this advantage. They instead grew up in families where almost all of the attention was focused on external and surface-level experiences: what they did and how they behaved, misbehaved, or achieved. Families like these can have fun with one another and enjoy activities together, but the world within is largely ignored. Dinnertime discussions might cover surface topics like current events, what the dog did, what the neighbor said, or other topics that, while being perfectly acceptable subjects of conversation, are cut off from the internal experiences of feelings, memories, meanings, and thoughts—the subjective, rich, inner nature of the mind. Their friendships might be outwardly focused as well. We all tend to have at least some relationships where we discuss superficial topics, rarely sharing vulnerabilities, thoughts, feelings, desires, or fears, and that’s fine as long as we also have significant friendships where we’re truly known and deeply know the other. The degree to which we live on the surface without a deeper understanding of ourselves, our significant others, our children, and our closest friends often correlates with how seen or unseen we felt by our attachment figures.