In their New York Times bestselling book, “The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind,” parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson and neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel J. Siegel provide powerful ways parents can help foster healthy brain development leading to calmer, happier kids.
“You’ve had those days, right? When the sleep deprivation, the muddy cleats, the peanut butter on the new jacket, the homework battles, the Play-Doh in your computer keyboard, and the refrains of ‘She started it!’ leave you counting the minutes until bedtime,” the authors write. “On these days, when you (again?!!) have to pry a raisin from a nostril, it seems like the most you can hope for is to survive.”
They know that when it comes to your children, you are aiming a lot higher than mere survival. You want them to thrive.
“The good news is that the moments you are just trying to survive are actually opportunities to actually help your child thrive,” Siegel and Bryson insist, explaining that those times you feel are loving, important moments (like having a meaningful conversation about compassion or character) are separate from parenting challenges (like fighting another homework battle or dealing with another meltdown).
And these things aren’t separate at all.
“When your child is disrespectful and talks back to you, when you are asked to come in for a meeting with the principal, when you find crayon scribbles all over your wall: these are ‘survive’ moments, no question about it. But at the time, they are opportunities—even gifts—because a survive moment is also a thrive moment, where the important meaningful work of parenting takes place.”
The six chapters of their 176-page paperback guide parents and caregivers how to accomplish this goal. Yes, the authors dive deep into sophisticated neuroscience research, but they bring those big, whole-brain concepts down to earth through:
- real life examples
- cartoons
- helpful graphics
- a useful 15-page reference guide to whole-brain ages and stages (infant to age 12)
- And, perhaps best of all. a “refrigerator sheet” that they encourage parents to copy and paste in the kitchen (see a copy below to post on your frig).
What are the whole-brain ideas the authors help parents wrap their brain around?
- Chapter 1 presents the concepts of parenting with the brain in mind and introduces the simple and powerful concept of integration, which is at the heart of whole-brain approach.
- Chapter 2 focuses on helping a child’s left and right brain work together so the child can be connected to both his/her logical and emotional selves.
- Chapter 3 emphasizes the importance of connecting the instinctual “downstairs brain” with the more thoughtful “upstairs brain,” which is responsible for decision making, personal insight, empathy, and morality.
- Chapter 4 explains how you can help your child deal with painful moments from the past by shining a light of understanding on them, so they can be addressed in a gentle, conscious, and intentional way.
- Chapter 5 helps you teach your kids that they have the capacity to pause and reflect on their own state of mind. When they can do that, they can make choices that give them control over how they feel and how they respond to their world.
- Chapter 6 highlights ways you can teach your children about the happiness and fulfillment that results from being connected to others, while still maintaining a unique identity.
Discovering the personality of left and right brain
What is the difference between the left and right brain? “Some people say that the two hemispheres of the brain have their own distinct personalities,” explain Siegel and Bryson, noting each side actually has a “mind of its own.” Specifically:
- Left brain: Loves order and desires order. It is logical, literal, linguistic, and linear. It cares about the “letter of the law.”
- Right brain: It is holistic and nonverbal, sending and receiving signals that allow us to communicate through facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, posture, and gestures. Instead of details and order, it cares about the big picture—the meaning and feel of an experience—and specializes in images, emotions, and personal memories. We get a “gut feeling” from our right brain. Young children, 0-age 3, tend to be right-brain dominant.
Of course, two halves make a whole.
“In order to live balanced, meaningful and creative lives full of connected relationships, it’s crucial that our two hemispheres work together,” the authors share, explaining that it’s the corpus callosum (the bundle of nerves that runs along the center of the brain connecting the right hemisphere with the left) that allow the two hemispheres to work as a team, “which is exactly what we want for our kids.”
“We want them to become ‘horizontally integrated,’ so that the two sides of the brain work in harmony. That way, our children will value both their logic and their emotion; they will be well balanced and able to understand themselves and the world at large.”
Jen and Matt Moore, owners of Kiddie Academy in Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, and coming in the winter of 2020 in Pasadena, are focused on providing enriching educational settings that support positive brain development for each and every one of their students.
“Along with all of our teachers and staff, is our goal to create a fun, interactive, and interesting lessons for our kids at all stages of their development,” says Jen. “Our mission is to nurture the heart, inspire the mind, cherish the dreams, and awaken the amazing possibilities of every child who is entrusted to our Academy, and we are excited to bring that vision to life for your family.”
For Your Refrigerator: The Whole-Brain Child
Integrating the Left and Right Brain
- Left + right = clarity and understanding: Help your kids use both the logical left brain and the emotional right brain as a team.
- What you can do:
- Connect and redirect: When your child is upset, connect first emotionally, right brain to right brain. Then, once your child is more in control and receptive, bring in the left-brain lessons and discipline.
- Name it to tame it: When big, right-brain emotions are raging out of control, help your kids tell the story about what’s upsetting them, so their left brain can help make sense of their experience and they can feel more in control.
Integrating the Upstairs Brain and the Downstairs Brain
- Develop the upstairs brain: What for ways to help build the sophisticated upstairs brain, which is “under construction” during childhood and adolescence and can be “hijacked” by the downstairs brain, especially in high-emotion situations.
- What you can do:
- Engage, don’t engage: In high-stress situations, engage your child’s upstairs brain, rather than triggering the downstairs brain. Don’t immediately play the “Because I said so!” card. Instead, ask questions, request alternatives, even negotiate.
- Use it or lose it: Provide lots of opportunities to exercise the upstairs brain. Play “What would you do?” games and avoid rescuing kids from difficult decisions.
- Move it or lose it: When a child has lost touch with his upstairs brain, help him regain balance by having him move his body.
- Make the implicit explicit: Help your kids make their implicit memories explicit, so that past experiences don’t affect them in debilitating ways.
- What you can do:
- Use the remove of the mind: When a child is reluctant to narrate a painful event, the internal remote lets her pause, unwind, and fast-forward a story as she tells it, so she can maintain control over how much of it she views.
- Remember to remember: Help your kids exercise their memory by giving the lots of practice at recalling important events—in the car, at the dinner table, wherever.
Integrating the Many Parts of Myself
- The wheel of awareness: When your kids get stuck on one particular point on on the rim of their wheel of awareness, help them choose where they focus their attention so they can gain more control over how they feel.
- What you can do:
- Let the clouds of emotion roll by: Remind kids that feelings come and go; they are temporary states, not enduring traits.
- SIFT: Help your children pay attention to the Sensations, Images, Feelings, and Thoughts within them.
- Exercise mindsight: Mindsight practices teach children to calm themselves and focus their attention where they want.
Integrating Self and Other
- Wired for “we:” Watch for ways to capitalize on the brain’s built-in capacity for social interaction. Create positive mental models of relationships.
- What you can do:
- Enjoy each other: Build fun into the family, so that your kids enjoy positive and satisfying experiences with the people they’re with the most.
- Connect through conflict: Instead of an obstacle to avoid, view conflict as an opportunity to teach your kids essential relationship skills, like seeing other people’s perspectives, reading nonverbal cues, and making amends
About Dr. Tina Payne Bryson
Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is the author of Bottom Line for Baby (Random House 2020) and co-author (with Dan Siegel) of THE POWER OF SHOWING UP (Random House 2020) and THE YES BRAIN (Random House 2018), as well as two New York Times bestsellers — THE WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD (Random House 2011), and NO-DRAMA DISCIPLINE (Random House 2014) – each of which has been translated into more than 40 languages.
Tina is a psychotherapist and the Founder/Executive Director of The Center for Connection, a multidisciplinary clinical practice, and of The Play Strong Institute, a center devoted to the study, research, and practice of play therapy through a neurodevelopment lens.
Dr. Bryson keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for kids, parents, educators, clinicians, and industry leaders all over the world, and she’ makes frequent media appearances for venues like TIME, “Good Morning America,” Huffington Post, Redbook, The New York Times, and Real Simple. She is the Child Development Specialist at Saint Mark’s School in Altadena, the Director of Parenting Education at the Mindsight Institute, the Director for Child Development for Camp Chippewa in Cass Lake, Minnesota, and the Child Development Director for Lantern Camps. Tina is a graduate of Baylor University and earned her LCSW and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where her research explored attachment science, childrearing theory, and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology.
Learn more here: www.tinabryson.com