Category: Parenting

Putting It Into Practice….

My recent blog posts about Whole Brain Parenting have led to some great story sharing with parents and grandparents. It is these real life interactions with children that truly open our eyes and hearts to the positive impacts we can make.

One of my friends asked me if I could share an experience where I responded differently to one of my grandchildren, using what I am learning from Whole Brain Parenting. This is what I shared: My five year old grandson was crying uncontrollably, visibly shaken from a sudden scare. Although he was safe, he was still caught in an emotional tsunami. Dr. Dan Siegel’s framework popped into my head. I knelt down beside him, getting just a little lower than his eye level. I wrapped him in a gentle hug and said “that was so scary, wasn’t it?” He nodded between sobs. I assured him that he was now safe and I would stay with him while he cried. He told me that he wanted to stop crying but he wasn’t able to. “That’s normal” I told him. “you are just a little boy and at your age it does take a while to stop crying. It’s okay. I am right here helping you.”

It’s so natural to want to soothe and comfort a crying child, but this time I also could sense that I was in fact the “training wheels” he needed in that moment to help him regulate those really big, scary emotions. I could see how my calmness, my words and my gentle touch were taking effect – his little sobbing body full of tension beginning to relax, his breathing becoming steady, and soon the torrent of tears drying up. I offered him some cold water. After a big sip, he picked up his legos and began explaining to me the complex vehicle he was creating. All of this happened in just under 5 minutes.

As I walked to the kitchen with his now empty water cup, I took a few moments to reflect on what that experience felt like not only for my grandson, but also for me. There it was again — that word “awareness”.

That book – Whole Brain Parenting – informed my awareness about what was happening in the brain and body of a five year old. My full attention turned to meet his needs; needs that I now better understood. And all the while that I was comforting him, validating his emotions and normalizing his inability to tame them right away, I found myself feeling really connected to this new approach.

The “magic” in this integration approach is not lost on me. I didn’t have this whole brain parenting knowledge and accompanying skill sets when I was raising my own kids. I am sure that I soothed them when they were in distress. I am also sure that I inadvertently dismissed what they were feeling in the moment. My most pressing goal was to get them back to calm as quickly as possible. I am pretty certain that my old way took a lot longer than 5 minutes. There may have been a cookie involved too.

To be very candid, I wasn’t very skilled at “co-regulation” as a young parent. My own stress level was probably on high alert so its doubtful I was “cool, calm and collected” while attending to my emotional child — especially if all this was going down at the playground or grocery store. Depending on the circumstances, it’s likely I was as freaked out by a fall from the jungle gym as my child was; or awash in embarrassment watching my toddler have a full blown meltdown in the cereal aisle.

So why was I feeling so “connected” to this new approach? The answer to that question is embedded in all that I have learned (and continue to learn) through my own personal growth journey. When we are not taught the value of our emotions, healthy coping skills and emotional regulation, our life and relationships are so much harder. I know firsthand how it feels to go through life denying or hiding emotions; even being afraid of some of those very natural, human emotions. I’m well aware that stuffing emotions is very detrimental to living a wholehearted life. I’ve got the messy experiences to prove it. A lot of unprocessed emotional baggage kept me from living in alignment with my core values – especially when I was in high stress situations.

The hard work of unlearning, untangling and unearthing all the armor, the childhood behavioral patterns and the invalidating messages we were told takes a very long time. It also takes a lot of awareness, acceptance, self-compassion and courage. It takes commitment, dedication and practice. It can take a lifetime.

Did you know that the self help industry is a $13.2 billion business with average annual gains of 5.6%? Think about all the time and money we are spending to help people address the issues stemming from dysfunctional childhoods and a lack of knowledge about how our complex brains and bodies develop, integrate and regulate. What could we do with all that time and money if we didn’t create these problems in the first place? How might so many of our difficulties in life be reduced or even eliminated?

The bottom line is that we cannot teach what we ourselves do not know.

Ask anyone who has been doing their own personal growth work about how the quality of their life has changed, and they will share insights with you that are revelational. A familiar refrain is “I wish I had learned all this decades ago.”

Children are sponges for learning, so much of it occurring by example and osmosis — often mimicking the coping mechanisms and behavioral patterns of their parents. They will find a way to armor up to protect themselves when they are feeling vulnerable. They will learn how to make sense of their world with or without our help.

The real pivot point is recognizing that our kids can just as easily be taught these better life skills and tools. Dr. Dan Seigel makes it very clear in his book Whole Brain Parenting that “teaching” these skills to kids makes the lessons “stick”. It’s the integration between nervous system and brain that “pre-loads” them with the capacity to engage their upper brain as they get older, when emotions could potentially hijack them.

Proactively teaching our children has positive benefits that go both ways. As parents and grandparents, we get plenty of opportunities to hone our own emotional regulation and better life skills. Children will be witnessing how we are dealing with daily stress and the inevitable moments of emotional hijacking. We get consistent, diverse practice and our children get what we are teaching reinforced by watching us.

When we are using these better tools and skills to live within our core values and integrity, we build strong scaffolding for our children and grandchildren to do the same. They will gain confidence to ask for their needs to be met; it will be second nature for them. They will have a strong inner compass and be able to set boundaries for acceptable behavior with peers and even authority figures; they will have a well-honed sense of right and wrong. Within the safety net of their families, children will learn that we are all unique in our talents, gifts and emotional landscapes. They will come to respect and support differences in how others respond to unfolding events. Again, it will become second nature for them to “meet others where they are” and they will have a bulging toolkit of relationship resources to use for encouragement and empathy.

Think about the self-awareness and tools that we are teaching kids with the Whole Brain Parenting approach as the protection you want them to have when they are out in the world on their own. These are the “forever” life skills that are their helmets, seat belts, guardrails and values.

Parenting is hard work but maybe it has been harder than it has to because of the old parenting models we used. The lessons weren’t sticking. Author James Clear offers this insightful wisdom:

Goals are good for setting a direction but systems are best for making progress. We fall to the level of our systems. Our goal is our desired outcome. Our system is the collection of daily habits that get us there.

Remember that I shared my parenting goal was to get to calm as quickly as possible? I was focused on the immediate outcome. That old parenting approach was like playing whack-a-mole. When the lessons weren’t sticking, the game got old and I was exhausted.

Whole Brain Parenting gets the lessons to stick. I discovered that the “system” actually takes less time too. Each interaction, each intervention that begins with validation and provides integration “training wheels” becomes a much more productive and rewarding building block for parent and child…..or in my case, for grandparent and child.

Both parent and child not only “feel” more connected and in sync in these teaching moments, they both are literally making neural connections that are life-changing.

I’ve spent over seven years on committed personal growth work to unlearn all that I operated on from childhood that made my life more challenging than it needed to be. At long last, I have a life skills tool kit that serves me well and keeps me in alignment with who I really am. What I value the most these days is my calm consistency; my ability to recognize what I am feeling and honor it without letting it hijack how I want to respond to others. I will forever be a helper and a harmonizer – that’s my true nature. The difference is that I am showing up now with healthy skills and tools that support both me and those I love in much-improved ways.

Best of all, I am better resourced now to handle the hard times in life. We owe it to our kids to prepare them for those inevitable challenges. No one gets through life unscathed; there will be heartbreaks, losses, and adversities. We wouldn’t send our kids on a mountain hike without the gear they need to be prepared for any situation that might occur. We can cultivate their resilience, grit, resourceful and problem solving skills by teaching them how to breathe to calm a racing heart, how to disengage from racing thoughts to get to clear-minded rationale, to think through all potential options and choose wisely. We equip them with a mental checklist and a “system” that helps them meet these obstacles more skillfully.

One of the biggest mistakes we made in the past was ignoring how much our children need us to help them process grief. This may be one of the most pivotal changes that we can make. Grief is a very nuanced emotion that is woven into so many “every day” and “normal” life experiences. Grief is present when a cherished toy is broken, when our little souls are crushed by someone’s hurtful comments and we believe what they have said about us. Grief is present when a family has to move, when someone passes away, when we break up with a first girlfriend, or if there is a divorce. Watch the movie Inside Out to gain a deeper perspective on how children wrestle with competing emotions (including sadness and grief). Kids need us and our training wheels most during complex emotional events. We know how our emotions, and our sadness, can ebb and flow for weeks and months after life altering events. We need to be more attuned to our child’s inner emotional world during these long haul life experiences. Trauma can get lodged in us if we are unable to process it. You’d be surprised at the dramatic difference validation, normalizing, and empathy can make in these big moments.

Dr. Dacher Keltner is an emotions expert, and the Director of the Greater Good Science Center in Berkley, CA. He was a major consultant on the movie Inside Out. Dr. Keltner is a renowned resource for learning more about the important role our emotions play in the quality of our life – and especially how we can help our children understand and process complex and competing emotions.

The reason that I felt so “connected” to myself, to my grandson and to the whole brain parenting approach was that it felt so natural, so comforting and also empowering – for both of us. I was in alignment with my values and I was offering to this little emotional guy exactly what I would have loved to receive when I was a small child. He was not only receiving my comfort and support, he was taking it in and all on his own, he was able to gain emotional regulation. He quickly returned to what was bringing him joy in that moment — his beloved legos. I felt “connected” because we really were feeling what happens when we are seen, heard and valued.

“Connection allows us to explore, innovate, trust, love, create and simply be. Connection gives us the power to be who we are and to enjoy the things that inspire us.” – Brene Brown

The Whole Brain Parenting approach is the transformational portal to this magical feeling of true connection. I felt it that day with my grandson in the most tangible way. The moment of clarity about the power of connection will be in my heart forever.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

GREATER GOOD MAGAZINE ARTICLE: How the GGSC Helped Turn Pixar “Inside Out” (with Dr. Dacher Keltner) https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_ggsc_turned_pixar_inside_out

BRINGING OUT THE GOOD IN KIDS – AND PARENTS – with Becky Kennedy
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/worklife-with-adam-grant/id1346314086?i=1000597939833

An Ounce of Prevention….

I’m pulling this thread from my last blog post — and it’s not just HOW an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure; its WHY. In my post, Whole Brain Parenting, we uncovered some hidden facts about how a child’s brain develops. We learned that we are often operating on unreasonable expectations about what those little brains are able to access — like logic and reasoning. Most importantly we learned how parents, grandparents and caregivers can all contribute to the “integration” of all the complex parts of our children’s amazing brains. We needed this foundational information and understanding.

Most of this knowledge has come from intensive, extensive research in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral science. It has dramatically shifted how we are addressing family, relationship, behavioral and mental health issues. The major pivot in counseling and treatments has been in a committed focus on “integration” of all parts of our brain. The good news is that due to neuroplasticity, we can foster this integration all throughout our lives. The optimum time to invest in this “integration” is in childhood.

And that brings me to WHY. Why it matters. Why we should care.

Emotions matter. Our emotional landscape needs to be integrated into our experiences, into our complex brain processing. It’s time we normalize being emotional. Our emotions are part of our inner compass.

Those who were raised with a lot of dysfunction and emotionally disregulated parents went armed into parenthood with a long list of the things they would not be doing to their kids but still lacking the knowledge of how young developing brains work.

Well intentioned, but still misinformed, the new parenting pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction. In attempts to make our kids feel safe, we became helicopter parents; in our attempts to make them feel special and valued, we created awards and medals for everyone; and to soothe, we showered them with ice cream, bribes and too much acquiescence. This methodology also did not foster emotional and brain integration.

On the one hand, we told kids to “stuff” or “get over” their emotions; on the other hand, we dismissed their emotions or told them sweetly “oh honey, you shouldn’t feel that way.”

Bypassing the emotional component of how we make sense of the world literally leaves us with a poorly operating internal GPS system.

As a result, we move from teen-hood to to adulthood with very little knowledge or awareness that our brains and nervous systems have stored up over two decades of experiences, emotions and stories to help us make sense of the world we grew up in. That internal storage unit can be both a treasure chest and a Pandora’s box. We unconsciously rummage through it like a small child in her costume box, randomly choosing which prop we will lean on when we are hijacked by strong emotions, old triggers, mixed messaging and our default mode negativity bias. This is where we come out of that internal storage unit wearing outgrown behavioral patterns and protective emotional armor. Cue up flight, fight, freeze or fawning.

There were two big missing pieces in old traditional parenting paradigms: understanding how young developing brains actually work — AND — understanding the important role that emotions play in both brain and body.

One major distinction with the Whole Brain Parenting approach is that we are keeping our expectations realistic about our child’s developing brain and we are facilitating the slow and natural integration process as they mature.

The other big distinction is that we are fostering self awareness by helping them identify their emotions and understand how those emotions make them feel — in their bodies and in their knee jerk reactions to how they want to respond.

No more bypassing this essential component of our inner compass.

Instead of sending our kids into adulthood still relying heavily on fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses when they inevitably get hijacked by strong emotions, we can hand them a well-stocked toolkit of skills and practices that will help guide them to stay in control, make clear-headed decisions and empower them to be the best versions of themselves most of the time.

An ounce of prevention is truly worth more than a pound of cure.

There is an important caveat to Whole Brain Parenting: Parents have to do their homework.

Yes, it does take more skill to parent this way and perhaps a little more effort in the early stages. However, over time, the benefits of this newer, healthier approach will mean more connected teaching opportunities and fewer unproductive, emotional tugs of war. Imagine being able to witness our kids really gaining traction with their self-awareness and recognizing on their own where they could do a little better.

What’s in your toolbox, mom and dad?

Brushing up on our own self-awareness will reveal the areas that we want to shore up before we begin shifting from disciplining to teaching. Cultivating more patience and calmness is number one. Honing our active listening skills is number two.

Now let’s dive a little deeper into some of those toolkit resources that are the super-powers of Whole Brain Parenting:

Emotional Literacy:

When we can help our children name their emotions, we are teaching them a whole new vocabulary. Not only will they become better at understanding what they are feeling for themselves, they will be able to communicate more clearly to us what they are experiencing.

Brene Brown’s extensive research for over 20 years offers compelling reasons why emotional literacy is so empowering:

Most of us only readily identify 3 key emotions — angry, sad or happy. The truth is that our emotions and experiences are very nuanced; we often are feeling several emotions all at once. Some are even competing emotions which can be really confusing to a child. The bigger our emotional vocabulary, the better we are able to name and understand the nuances. This is emotional granularity. Kids can learn an expanded emotional vocabulary as readily as they learn how to describe in great detail their favorite toy or TV show.

Different emotions can actually show up very similarly when we are observing them. We are not mind readers, not even with our kids, and we may unconsciously respond to an emotional state thinking it is “anger” when it is really “scared to death”. We might think our kids are being stubborn and uncooperative when they are simply overwhelmed and trying to sort things out in their young brains.

Kids need an emotional vocabulary to help them identify what they are feeling; and to be able to understand how those emotions make them feel in their body. They can learn that emotions ebb and flow (you’d be surprised how comforting this is to a child.) Most importantly they can learn that emotions are our own internal warning lights to pay attention to what is important to them. When they are quite young, this might be more about a treasured toy but as they get older, they will learn to trust these emotional flashing lights when it comes to their core values. The best way to help them navigate peer pressure down the road, is to teach them early and often about their gut instincts. Emotional literacy and self awareness are the bedrock of gut instincts.

We also need to teach our children to process their emotions. There is no right or wrong, good or bad when it comes to emotions. Even as adults, we can tell ourselves that we “shouldn’t be feeling angry or envious” but the truth is, we simply do feel angry or envious in some circumstances. Owning these emotions and reflecting on them gives us insight.

As Carl Jung has advised “what we resist, persists.” Far better to sit with our truth than to try to ignore it. We gain more knowledge about ourselves and what matters most to us when we stay with our strong emotions and get curious. How many times have you over-ridden a feeling of anger only to discover it had morphed into resentment?

The same is true for our kids. We will learn a lot about what is going on in their inner world when we listen to gain understanding. This means giving our kids our undivided attention and not rushing them. We need to listen attentively, so that we can gain understanding about their inner world. A parent’s challenge is to resist the urge to chime in with advice or admonishment which will surely interrupt this teaching moment. We may discover that our kids are wrestling with confusion over mixed messages they receive. (News flash — we often are not following the same rules we put out there for our kids; they see it, they internalize it, and it gets thrown into the pot when they are trying to make sense of their own emotions and events).

Listen to understand; remember that they have limited capacity to fully engage all parts of their brain. Let’s be honest, so do we often have limited capacity — because we are exhausted, stressed out, hungry or drained. It’s part of being human. We aren’t striving for perfection here. We are striving for greater understanding, a heaping dose of grace and lots of empathy.

Self Control and Emotional Regulation:

Young children do not yet have the ability to integrate their “lower” brain where they are feeling all their emotions with their “upper brain” where logic and reasoning help to guide us BEFORE acting on our emotions. And let’s be honest, as adults we can easily bypass this more mature ability when we too are hijacked by strong emotions, exhaustion or overwhelm.

The Whole Brain Parenting approach is for us to be the “training wheels” for this developmental integration process. The training wheels are “co-regulation”. The key is staying calm, using a softer tone of voice and making a sincere supportive connection.

We may think that this tactic is often reserved for emergencies, like when the airlines tell us to put our oxygen mask on first before helping a child…..but the reality is that the more we employ this strategy in our everyday interactions with our kids, the more likely they will imitate our calmer responses in times of stress.

How often do you catch your children repeating back to you the admonishments or reasoning that they hear day in and day out? Kids are our best mirrors for cultivating our own self-awareness. This is good news — because it normalizes how hard it is to be human and be “perfect” all the time. Outside influences, the daily grind and our unattended emotions take their toll on all of us.

These moments are teaching opportunities too. Simple, self-care practices like taking a break, going for a walk, reading a book, listening to music, or a taking a few deep calming breaths — this is what we can be offering to ourselves and our kids. Much more effective than blowing up and losing it.

Newsflash: We will inevitably blow up and lose it. And that is also a teaching opportunity. Dr. Dan Siegel offers this very reassuring truth: Rupture and repair is the gorilla glue of our relationships. We build trust and deepen connections every single time we acknowledge that we messed up and offer a sincere apology, and back it up with making amends. The best way to put a bow on that repair is a great big warm and fuzzy bear hug.

Very few of us have gone through life without experiencing how someone broke our trust and never apologized. It could have been a parent, or other authority figure, but we were left feeling that they lacked accountability and could no longer be trusted. We probably looked for more proof too — and we often find it because that is where we put all our attention. A break in trust can create a relationship that feels like death by a thousand paper cuts. Every future infraction causes pain and distrust. We stockpile those experiences and we fiercely guard against it.

This seems to be a natural segue into the next tool for our life skills toolbox:

Guard Rails and Boundaries:

We hear the word “boundaries” a lot these days. Yet few of us really were taught to use boundaries in the empowering way they are intended. Brene Brown offers his key insight about boundaries: “Compassionate, boundaried people stay in their integrity.”

If we sit with this, and really reflect on it, we can see that boundaries are guardrails for us all throughout life. Our personal boundaries are how we not only protect what is most important to us — they help us communicate clearly to others what our values are; what is acceptable and what is not in our relationships.

When our kids are little we use guardrails all the time to protect them from harm. It starts with the kid gate at the top of the stairs when they become mobile. We use socket protectors on electrical outlets, car seats, protective helmets for scooters and bikes, and filters on our devices.

Unfortunately we get a little too “loosey goosey” with the boundaries they need for a lifetime when we are teaching them what is appropriate behavior and what is not. Oh how quickly our little ones learn to become master negotiators — wearing us down til we honestly can no longer hold that boundary. Sure, eat the box of cookies before dinner; ride your bike without shoes if you think you know best. It is true that their consequences will also be learning experiences….an upset tummy or a bruised toe, but it doesn’t foster that longer term goal of integration and the pre-loading of good decision making skills.

The following excerpts from the book No Drama Discipline by Dr. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD help us reframe our concept of boundaries and provide the key motivation to wanting to use them effectively in teaching our kids.

“Deep, empathic connection can and should be combined with clear and firm boundaries that create needed structure in children’s lives” — (excerpted from No Drama Discipline)

Connection isn’t the same thing as permissiveness. Connecting with our kids during discipline doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want. In fact, just the opposite. Part of truly loving our kids — and giving them what they need — means offering them clear and consistent boundaries, creating predictable structure in their lives, as well as having high expectations for them. Children need to understand the way the world works: what’s permissible and what is not. A well defined understanding of the rules and boundaries helps them achieve success in relationships and other areas of their lives. When they learn about structure in the safety of their home, they will be better able to flourish in outside environments — school, work, relationships — where they’ll face numerous expectations for appropriate behavior. (excerpted from the book, No Drama Discipline).

Our children need repeated experiences that allow them to develop wiring in their brain that helps them delay gratification, contain urges to react aggressively towards others, and flexibly deal with not getting their way. (from No Drama Discipline).

The absence of limits and boundaries is actually quite stressful — and stressed kids are more reactive. So when we say no and set limits for our children, we help them discover predictability and safety in an otherwise chaotic world. And we build brain connections that allow kids to handle difficulties well in the future. (from No Drama Discipline)

Like any new skill that we are trying to improve, setting boundaries will be most successful if we start with things we can actually follow through on. A little advance planning about a realistic and do-able boundary will help prevent the heat of the moment overriding common sense. As an example, instead of loudly announcing “that’s it, I’m throwing all your birthday presents away”, we can say and follow through on the more rational “you will not be able to play with your new toy for an hour.” (feel free to trade an hour out for 15 minutes — both will seem excruciatingly long for both parent and child initially).

The more you practice setting and holding boundaries, the easier and more natural it becomes for you. Ironically, it also becomes the comforting guardrails for kids. Kids thrive in consistency and predictability. Boundaries aren’t punishment — they are simply the guidelines and guardrails.

What becomes very transformational when we teach our kids the importance and value of boundaries is that we give them one of the greatest tools for their lifetime. A child who knows how to set and hold boundaries will not easily be influenced by others who try to talk them into things they don’t like, and they will not accept inappropriate behavior from others. They will inherently know their own worth, be guided by their core values, and trust their gut instincts.

Teaching our children clear and consistent boundaries will reinforce their confidence in having their own back, being honest about their needs and being responsible for their actions.

The benefits of boundaries go both ways — they keep us in our integrity – and they hold others accountable for their actions and behaviors (without unnecessary drama, meltdowns, anxiety and stress).

Many of us adults struggle to set and hold our own boundaries:

we say “yes” to things we want to say “no” to (we are afraid of disappointing someone or rocking the boat);

we don’t speak up when someone is disrespectful to us (we wouldn’t tolerate someone disrespecting our kids, but we cut them slack when it is aimed at us);

we push through when we are exhausted (because we think we will be judged if we ask for help).

Remember that we have many teaching moments throughout our daily lives to actively demonstrate to our children the role that boundaries can play in the quality of our lives. Those little reflecting mirrors known affectionally as our kids will gain a lot of traction in their life skills by osmosis.

Empathy:

How many times have you watched your small child struggle with something that just touches your heart deeply? You can almost feel yourself having a “Benjamin Button” moment and becoming six again. You remember so well how it felt in that moment. That is empathy in action.

We can only get to empathy by being very aware and attuned to our own inner feelings and experiences. This is the critical piece of emotional integration that helps us become skilled in our relationships. We have to be able to access what it actually “feels like in our bodies” when we are hurt, scared, lonely or confused.

When we help our children to become self-aware, to express out loud to us what they are feeling inside (in their hearts, in their muscles, in their clenched fists or gasping- for-air sobs), we are helping them connect to compassion and empathy.

This highly developed inner awareness of how emotions and experiences feel inside of us becomes the key to understanding how others might also feel in similar circumstances. It is the heart to heart connection.

Even a young child can grasp how a sibling might be feeling on the inside as she stares at her favorite toy, broken into pieces on the living room floor. In that present moment, integration is happening for those two children. Each instinctively knows how the other is feeling.

A skillful parent can tap into these “inside emotional feelings” when they are teaching their children about getting along with others. Rather than shaming or embarrassing our kids into an apology or different behavior, we can use empathy to help them become aware of the consequences of their actions. They may not “get it” right away when they are so young, but it sets the stage for meaningful relationship skills when they are older.

Tying It All Together:

Are you beginning to see how all these life skills fit together like puzzle pieces? The integration process of the parts of our brains AND the addition of plugging in to our emotions provides us with the most transformational inner GPS system for life.

When we teach our children the importance of their emotions and give them language to identify them, we expand our capacity to understand them and to give them the tools they need to become their best selves.

Each of our children are so uniquely different. Ask any parent who has more than one child and they will tell you how unbelievable it is that two kids raised the same way can be so remarkably different.

We don’t want to change the innate personalities of our children. We often delight in the remarkable ways they are uniquely different. It’s just that it can be so challenging to figure them out.

This is where Whole Brain Parenting becomes such a remarkable pivot point. All the tools and skills we are teaching to our children help us to realize how we are all wired so differently and have a genuine appreciation for those differences. What is important to one child barely registers for another. Our “other awareness” becomes more attuned.

The more we know ourselves, the better we become at getting to know others. To be able to learn this in our own homes, with our family members, is the best educational environment we could ever have. Not only will our children have a solid life skills toolbox, they will have had nearly two decades of integration and practice when they are ready to launch into adulthood.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Watch this short YouTube Video with Dr. Dan Siegel entitled Why Attachment Parenting Matters.

He explains how to talk to our kids about what they are feeling in their bodies when their emotions are in play.

He also explains what is going on in those little developing minds….

This brief conversation will really jumpstart your Whole Brain Parenting process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsGOyX9WY4k

Whole Brain Parenting

In my last post entitled “Turning Personal Growth on its Head”, I shared that in just one generation we can have dramatic positive impacts on quality of life, mental health and well being. Imagine “pre-loading” our children with a strong sense of self worth, reliable inner resources like resilience and emotional regulation, self-awareness, and empathy.

This profound pivot starts with parenting.

The old approaches to parenting predisposed us to lack the skills and inner resources we needed to successfully navigate life, relationships and adversities. Instead of teaching children the value of their emotions, good coping skills, self-awareness, empathy and relationship skills, we were “disciplined”. We weren’t being “taught”, we were “punished” — mostly for emotional reactions we were experiencing and over which we had very little control. Prior generations did not know about how a child’s brain develops and the vital role parents play in a lifelong integration process of all parts of our brains.

So instead of honing invaluable life skills from an early age, we came up with patterns of behavior in response to whatever our parents were doling out. We became conflict avoiders, people pleasers, bullies or wimps. Even if we were able to bust out of those constraints as we matured, our inner critic would often chime in to remind us of our insecurities.

Before we dive into this concept of Whole Brain Parenting, think about what we got right about our children’s physical development.

As parents, we instinctively know that our young children are physically incapable of crawling, walking, using a potty, riding a bike or learning to swim until they have achieved certain levels of their body’s natural development. We do not have unrealistic expectations about when our child will be able to stand on her own or feed herself with a spoon. In fact, we encourage, role model and celebrate these milestones.

Yet, we often lack the basic understanding of how our child’s complex brain is in a similar state of “ongoing development.” We may be asking more of them with regard to logic and reasoning than they are capable of accessing. Those executive functions of their young brain will not come online for several years.

To complicate matters, there are the hormones and chemicals that get released from strong emotional triggers into those little bodies such as cortisol, dopamine and adrenalin — and suddenly we are face to face with meltdowns, temper tantrums and a torrent of tears that is a swirl of confusion and chaos for our little ones.

We just can’t “punish” this stuff into submission. We have to teach our children what is happening in their bodies, and be the “assist” they need til their brains are developed enough to process what’s happening. (This might be a good place to stop and ask ourselves — how good are we as adults at dealing with big emotions, inner emotional chaos and confusion when we are angry, tired, annoyed or hurt?)

Parenting is hard. Unfortunately it’s been a lot harder than it truly needed to be…but we didn’t know that. As we are discovering, the real pivot for parenting is in moving from a mindset of having to “discipline” our children to the more skillful mindset of “teaching” our children.

Did you know that the root of the word discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina, which means teaching, learning or instruction?

We often think of discipline as punishment and that belief was supported by old familiar parenting quotes: Spare the rod and spoil the child; children are to be seen and not heard; do as I say and not as I do. These old adages kept us trapped in a dysfunctional parenting paradigm that did not support helping our children integrate the full capacity of their brains in the same way we were fostering the integration of new physical milestones as their bodies grew and developed.

We put training wheels on our kids’ bikes to help them learn how to balance their bodies. We put flotation devices on those eager little bodies in the pool to keep them safe while they are having fun splashing. We use repetition and role plays to teach them words and identify familiar objects.

It turns out that we also need to put training wheels and flotation devices on our child’s emotional development until their brains are ready for the full installation of logic and reasoning.

In other words, we need to be their “executive function”– their emotional regulator — when they are young and unable to do this effectively for themselves.

The more we are able to support them with strong emotional scaffolding when they are young, the better they will be at emotional awareness, self-control, empathy and discernment between right and wrong when they are older — when we take off the “training wheels”. This is the “pre-loading” component that is a game-changer.

That old conventional approach to parenting bypassed an integral process to nurture and integrate the full capacities of our children’s developing brains.

The old conventional approaches often led to blocked integration of different parts of our brains. That blocked integration can linger with us far into adulthood, causing us to unconsciously rely on childhood behavioral patterns even when we should have outgrown them. It is also the reason we get emotionally triggered from something that occurred decades ago, have heightened anxieties or fears, and blind spots in our self-awareness.

What We Know Now…..That We Got Wrong Before:

We now have before us the most incredible neuroscience-based resources to seize this missed opportunity and support our children’s brain developments more skillfully than ever before. Our role as parents and caregivers is to “step in” and assist with the integrative process by providing the connection needed until a child’s developing brain is ready to take over on its own.

Two very important things are happening in this approach: (1) we are the scaffolding needed to ensure that a child feels safe, valued and connected and (2) we are preparing him to install that same foundation of his very own when he is older — when his brain has developed fully and he can now readily access the logic and reasoning part of his upper brain. Our children will grow up with reliable inner resources, a strong sense of self-worth, and healthy relationship skills.

As you will learn a little later in this post, the Whole Brain Parenting approach creates a “secure” attachment style which is the most beneficial life foundation we can give to our children.

The Whole Brain Way to Calm the Chaos & Nurture A Child’s Developing Mind:

Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson have been teaching their transformational new approach to parenting for over a decade. In their 2016 book, No Drama Discipline, they share very relatable stories that are commonplace for most parents. What makes this book so different however, is the time and attention they devote to teaching us about the child’s developing brain, what is happening in her nervous system, how her brain gets hijacked by emotional disregulation and her innate lack of capacity to deal with all of it. It is a real eye-opener about the complex inner world of our little ones.

It may be the very first time as parents that we get a clear picture of how we are asking for the impossible when we try reasoning, bribing or punishing to tame a temper tantrum or seemingly unreasonable meltdown.

This deeper understanding of a child’s developing brain should be the key motivation for most parents and caregivers to adopt a whole new approach to “disciplining” their children: The “No Drama Connection Cycle”.

The operative word for this contemporary Whole Brain parenting approach is “connection”. Connection calms the nervous system, which soothes a child’s reactivity in the moment, and moves them toward a place where they can actually hear us, learn and even begin to make their own “whole brain” decisions.

When the emotional gauge gets turned up, connection is the modulator that keeps the feelings from getting too high. Without connection, emotions can continue to spiral out of control. — Excerpted from No Drama Discipline, page 74

Connection is essential for brain integration. This matters because the brain is complex; it has many parts, all of which have different jobs to do, including memory and pain regions. Did you know that the same areas of the brain get activated when people feel emotional pain as well as physical pain?

Think about that — we are so quick to attend to a scraped knee or swollen lip, but often impatient with an emotional outburst. To a child, the pain feels the same.

The old parenting approach also led us to believe that if we “coddled” a child every time they got physically hurt, they wouldn’t be resilient. Turns out that was wrong also. Acknowledging how they are feeling when they get hurt, calming them and attending to their injury teaches them how to care for themselves, promotes strong coping skills, resiliency and better discernment of the actual level of pain.

Why Connection and Integration Matter:

The responses we heard repeatedly in the old conventional approach to parenting sounded like these: “Get over it”; “Pull yourself together”; “You need to calm down”; “Go to your room until you can be nice”.

Dr. Siegel points out that these responses actually do the opposite of connection — they amplify negative states and increase internal distress, which perpetuates more acting out. Not only did this lead to an ongoing cycle of disconnection and lack of integration of all those complex brain parts, it predisposed us to develop an unhealthy attachment style.

Attachment styles are developed in early childhood based on our relationship with our primary caregivers and how they respond to our needs. Whole Brain Parenting will help parents provide the optimum “secure” attachment style for their children.

If you are thinking that Whole Brain Parenting takes a lot more time and energy than the old school approach, let’s dispel that. While it may take a little more skill on the parent’s part initially, over time with all that consistency of calm and connection, the lessons you want to impart to your child will actually start to stick. Parents won’t be exhausted from repeating themselves over and over, feeling defeated about gaining any traction in their parenting efforts. So many times, our well intentioned lessons are falling on deaf ears because kids are just so disregulated, they cannot possibly take in what we are saying…..especially if our tone of voice conveys our angering frustrations.

Let’s dispel another myth while we are at it — the myth of spoiling our kids. This is a question that Dr. Dan Siegel has answered many times – and it’s one that is based on a misunderstanding of what spoiling really is — and what it is not.

Connection defuses conflict, build’s a child’s brain and strengthens the parent-child relationship. Connecting during discipline is quite different from spoiling a child.

“Let’s start with what spoiling is not. Spoiling is not about how much love and time and attention you give your kids. You can’t spoil your children by giving them too much of yourself. In the same way, you can’t spoil a baby by holding her too much or responding to her needs each time she expresses them. Parenting authorities at one time told parents not to pick up their babies too much for fear of spoiling them. We now know better. Responding to and soothing a child does not spoil her — but NOT responding to or soothing her creates a child who is insecurely attached and anxious. Nurturing your relationship with your child and giving her the consistent experiences that form the basis of her accurate belief that she’s entitled to your love and affection is exactly what we SHOULD be doing. In other words, we need to let our kids know that they can count on getting their needs met.” – Excerpted from No Drama Discipline, page 89 (Chapter entitled from Tantrum to Tranquility)

“Spoiling on the other hand, occurs when parents or caregivers create their child’s world in such a way that the child feels a sense of entitlement about getting her way, about getting what she wants, exactly when she wants it, and that everything should come easily and be done for her. We want our kids to know that their “needs” can be consistently understood and met, but we don’t want our kids to expect that their “desires and whims” will always be met. Connecting when a child is upset or out of control is about meeting the child’s needs, not giving in to what she wants. — Excerpted from No Drama Discipline, page 90 (Chapter entitled From Tantrum to Tranquility)

The Big Impact that Whole Brain Parenting Can Have in the Long Run:

I recently participated in a week long seminar about the newer approaches being implemented in counseling and therapy treatments as a direct result of the breakthroughs in neuroscience about brain integration. The most effective protocols are focused on helping clients integrate all the parts of their brain and nervous system. Because of neuroplasticity, as adults we can actually rewire our brains and reconnect to “whole brain” living.

Even patients with a history of trauma and PTSD do not need to go through the arduous and often painful experiences of sharing their trauma stories. The faster, less painful and more effective approach is to focus on integration and being fully present in the current moment. This is a groundbreaking new approach for anyone who struggles with issues that stem from dysfunctional attachment styles and the lack of integration of the full capacities of our most amazing brains.

There is one old adage that rings truer than ever: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Imagine how empowering it will be for our children to be able to name, process and learn from their emotions; being taught reliable, healthy emotional regulation and coping skills; and gifting them with self confidence, self worth and strong inter-personal relationship skills. This will become a much better foundation for our younger generations to have as they enter adulthood.

In upcoming blog posts, I’ll be sharing more about what we are discovering through psychology and neuroscience that will be game changers for all of us. In the meantime, check out these resources to learn more about Whole Brain Parenting and No Drama Discipline:

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

These two books by Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson are two of the most insightful Parenting Books you can read. They are easy to understand, relatable and refreshingly candid about the parenting issues we all face. Chock full of real life examples & reference guide.

Check out this brief and noteworthy clip from Dr. Andrew Huberman, about the role our childhood attachment styles play in choosing our life partners, and the impacts of our childhood attachment styles on our adult intimate relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ00Bd1zmdk

There is nothing like listening to Dr. Dan Siegel explain why Whole Brain Parenting can make such a dramatic difference for both you and your child.

Check out this short clip: Why Attachment Parenting Matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsGOyX9WY4k&t=8s

Turning Personal Growth on Its Head..

From Iceberg to Mountain Range

When Brene Brown launched her newest book, Atlas of the Heart, she offered this beautiful, profound insight:

For me, this quote captures exactly what my personal growth and self discovery journey feels like. I had no idea where I was going when I started. Seven years ago, I was leaning pretty hard on the quote “all who wander are not lost” which makes me laugh out loud…because I was indeed “lost”. I used a lot of maps to find my way – and I still do. Some of those maps are weathered and worn, some are pristine and folded neatly into a well scored rectangle, some are digital and some have ink so fresh it washes over the paper like a watercolor.

Initially I wanted the “how to” maps. I scoured the self help sections of libraries, bookstores and the internet. Over time I came to realize the most transformational way to go about self discovery and personal growth is to approach it more like looking for clues on a hidden treasure map and being open to discovery.

If I were to break out a gigantic three-feet long piece of butcher block paper, I could whimsically draw with chunky crayons what that treasure map looked and felt like for me. There would be volcanos, broken bridges, tornados and swampland…and a few fairies, leprechauns, trampolines and bungee cords, rays of warm yellow sunshine and a deep reflecting pool. I’d add in some glittery neon-bright fireworks to spotlight my “aha” moments.

It is only with the clarity of my “hindsight googles” that I can now truly appreciate all the trash and treasures I discovered on my ongoing personal growth adventure. My experiences are much like the one my grandkids have with one of those “shine a light” flashlight books where the hidden pictures are revealed when a focused beam of illumination hits them.

It occurs to me that so often when we talk about personal growth and self-discovery, the emphasis is on how hard it is. The images of peeling off the layers of our emotional onion, dumpster diving into the baggage we’ve accumulated and breaking old habits seem more like punishment than an appealing invitation to become a better version of ourselves.

Rarely do we hear the upside of embarking on the personal growth journey, at least not in tangible, realistic ways. We hear all those fluffy, gauzy accolades about finding our “authentic” self but it all seems as fleeting and surreal as dressing up in a costume and pretending to be Cinderella or Spiderman. Looks good…but what does it really “feel” like?

The greatest gift of personal growth work is how freeing and empowering it feels — once you get to one of the pinnacles in the process. That becomes the motivation to reach the next pinnacle. Each one creates more space for what we really want in our lives. We often are completely unaware of just how much we get in our way, until we start looking at our patterns and blind spots. As we lighten the load, the journey becomes a lot more engaging in a very positive way.

One of the most insightful moments in any self-discovery journey is when we realize just how far we’ve come. This is a big boost to our motivation to keep going — when we look back and recognize that we have actually made a lot of forward progress; that we are showing up in improved ways in old familiar circumstances.

Recently I was re-taking a self-assessment test with a friend of mine and expressed to her that I would have answered the questions much differently a few years ago than I do today. The same was true for my friend and she expressed her gratitude that over the past several years, I have often reminded her of all her forward progress. Both of us were well aware that we now move through our daily lives with greater ease, having discarded old patterns for better skills.

From my personal perspective, personal growth doesn’t have to be the “hard work” of a paleontologist digging through stratifications and fossilizations we’ve amassed for decades. We can turn this concept on its head and treat it as the fascinating adventure it truly is. What if we had a whole new, enlightened approach to how we enter and maintain personal growth and self-discovery?

Picture this: — we often use the image of an iceberg to help us understand all the baggage, beliefs, narratives and personal history we are dragging under the surface.

If we flip this image, we now have an impactful — and inviting — new way to look at personal growth, self-discovery and self-improvement.

This is a powerful transformational image….

We will get stronger physically, mentally and emotionally as we scale and explore; we will need a backpack full of supplies, resources, tools (and maps), it’s a great idea to have a buddy system for a host of awesome reasons (safety, shared experiences, a boost or tether, meaning and memory making). We will get fresh air, fresh perspectives and see the bigger picture.

We can re-write the guidebook for living our best lives. What if personal growth became a “call to adventure”. What if we “preloaded” all the resources and practices we really need to meet life in a skillful way?

The truth is that we are now spending an incredible amount of our time and energy undoing all the damage caused by old paradigms, old parenting models, old stereotypes, outdated methodologies and therapies – not to mention a complete lack of understanding about the value of emotions, empathy, and meaningful connection with others.

We have a growing mental health crisis, too many distractions for our attention, and a deficit of awareness (our own as well as “other” awareness). We keep throwing ideas and challenges at the problems. The big PIVOT is to look at the root causes.

All throughout my exploration of a wide variety of resources and modalities for my own personal growth, there was one common thread.

Regardless of the resource, the compass always pointed back to childhood: childhood narratives about who we are, behavioral patterns and protective armor we developed in childhood, our childhood attachment styles, our beliefs and how we make meaning from our emotions and experiences. There is a lot to unpack from our childhood BEFORE we can even begin a successful and meaningful adult life journey.

Once I discovered this overarching theme, it dawned on me that we can do better. Our children are sponges for learning — and we can equip them for life in transformational ways by “resourcing” them in powerful new, healthier ways.

Neuroscience, psychology, neurobiology and epigenetics are all converging in astonishing ways to shine a light on so much of what we did not understand, or got wrong, and can do better.

In upcoming blog posts, I will be unpacking what we are learning about the old childhood framework that did not provide healthy scaffolding for life. Together we can learn about the importance of secure attachment styles, how a child’s brain develops and how adult brains can be rewired, teaching emotional literacy and healthy coping skills, how we can keep our brains “updated and upgraded” thanks to neuroplasticity, and the importance of integrating our nervous system with our executive functions.

In just one generation, we can break cycles of dysfunction, addiction, insecurity and inauthenticity. At this very moment in time, we have more substantive research, more accurate knowledge, and unbelievable access to meaningful resources than ever before. Significant changes in what were ground-breaking, Nobel prize-winning discoveries 15 or 30 years ago are happening at a very rapid pace. Children are learning faster and differently than they did when we were kids. Even us adults are learning faster and differently in some arenas than we ever have before.

When I began my personal growth journey in my early 60’s, I did not realize that it would lead me to children – and I am ecstatic that it did. So many of us enter parenthood with hopes and dreams of giving our kids a good life, possibly a better one that we had. With all the new research, enriched skill sets and tools we now have, we can equip our children for life as smartly as we equip them for their favorite hobbies and sports; have you noticed that we now put helmets on those little developing brains for good reason?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

BEING WELL PODCAST: Listen to this relatable AND mind-expanding conversation with Dr. Rick Hanson and his son, Forrest, on the Keys to a Great Relationship. Rick has a brand new book out as well that offers fresh perspectives on his many decades of counseling and his own personal growth work.

https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-the-keys-to-a-great-relationship/

Learn 50 simple practices for solving conflict, building connection and fostering love.. Read Dr. Rick Hanson’s newest book – Making Great Relationships.