12 revolutionary strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind
Your toddler throws a tantrum in the middle of a store. Your pre-schooler refuses to get dressed. Your fifth-grader sulks on the bench instead of playing on the field. Do children conspire to make their parents’ lives endlessly challenging? No- it’s just their developing brain calling the shots! In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson demystify the meltdowns and aggravation, explaining the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The ‘upstairs brain’, which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids can seem and feel so out of control. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth. Raise calmer, happier children using twelve key strategies, including:
- Name it to tame it: Corral raging right-brain behaviour through left-brain storytelling, appealing to the left brain’s affinity for words and reasoning to calm emotional storms and bodily tension.
- Engage, don’t enrage: Keep your child thinking and listening, instead of purely reacting.
- Move it or lose it: Use physical activities to shift your child’s emotional state.
- Let the clouds of emotion roll by: Guide your children when they are stuck on a negative emotion, and help them understand that feelings come and go.
- SIFT: Help children pay attention to the Sensations, Images, Feelings, and Thoughts within them so that they can make better decisions and be more flexible.
- Connect through conflict: Use discord to encourage empathy and greater social success.
Complete with clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles, and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.
Daniel J. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behaviour, autobiographical memory and narrative.
Dr. Siegel is currently clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute.
Other titles by Daniel Siegel
Healing Moments in Psychotherapy
The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (Second Edition) (Hardback)
Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology
The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice
