Quotes from Daniel J. Siegel

While group collaboration can certainly be a source of collective intelligence, it can also get you to jump off a cliff or drive too fast. And that's probably why some form of continued connection to the adults and their adult perspectives still exists in traditional cultures, and even in our animal cousins. Without adults around, young adolescents can literally go wild.

Everything they see, hear, feel, touch, or even smell impacts their brain and thus influences the way they view and interact with their world—including their family, neighbors, strangers, friends, classmates, and even themselves.

Feelings are not a side component of a life well lived; they are essential ways we live as a whole, embodied being.

For example, one of the most powerful ways we connect with our children is simply by physically touching them.

If the leaders of a culture are themselves devoid of mindsight, then the young, emerging minds of that culture will be living in a world in which the blind are leading the blind.

Remember, there are plenty of ways to spoil children—by giving them too many things, by rescuing them from every challenge, by never allowing them to deal with defeat and disappointment—but we can never spoil them by giving them too much of our love and attention. That's what the connection

An important take-home message is that it is vital to keep the lines of connection and communication open and to remember that we all—adolescents and adults—need to be members of a connected community.

brain imaging studies show that the experience of physical pain and the experience of relational pain, like rejection, look very similar in terms of location of brain activity.

Sherlock Holmes: the Arthur Conan Doyle character who declared, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Having an awakened mind means using the mental processes of attention, awareness, and intention to activate new states of mind that, with repeated practice, can become intentionally sculpted traits in a person's life.

the roots of security and resilience are to be found in the sense of being understood by and having the sense of existing in the heart and mind of a loving, caring, attuned and self-processed other, an other with a mind and heart of her own.

With an increased need to connect, missed moments of joining can quickly turn from misunderstandings to painful withdrawal into a shame state. While this is possible for anyone, those of us with difficult early histories filled with shame may be at highest risk of feeling the pain of missed connection and amplifying our reactions.

With a lack of jobs and a great deal of uncertainty about participating in contemporary society, however, the adolescent period may in many ways be even further prolonged. Because modern cultural practices do not offer transitional relationships with non-parental adults to help acknowledge and facilitate the adolescent period, we have some major challenges as adolescents in our modern times.

You can be grateful for what you enjoy, not longing for what you are missing.

But when we integrate those embedded experiences into our present consciousness and recognize them as implicit memories—not valid intuitions or reasoned decisions—then we begin to offer ourselves the means to become awakened and active authors of our own life story.

People exposed to emotional abuse as children have been found to be at higher risk of developing medical illnesses later in life,

The absence of limits and boundaries is actually quite stressful, and stressed kids are more reactive.

Serenity, courage, and wisdom are at the heart of temporal integration.

noticing not just their words but also their nonverbal patterns of energy and information flow. These signals are the familiar primarily right-hemisphere sent and received elements of eye contact, facial expression, and tone of voice, posture, gesture, and the timing and intensity of response. The

Attunement requires presence but is a process of focused attention and clear perception. We

That was his "survive" goal. But he also wanted to turn this difficult experience into an opportunity that would benefit Katie in both the short and the long term. That was his "thrive" goal. We

That might mean giving a warning five minutes before having to leave the park, or enforcing a consistent bedtime so your kids don't get too tired and grumpy.

connection calms the nervous system, soothing children's reactivity in the moment and moving them toward a place where they can hear us, learn, and even 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.

As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.