Quotes from Daniel J. Siegel

But at the same time, they are opportunities—even gifts—because a survive moment is also a thrive moment, where the important, meaningful work of parenting takes place.

instead of a time-out, you might ask her to practice handling a situation differently. If she's being disrespectful in her tone or words, you can have her try it again and communicate what she's saying respectfully. If she's been mean to her brother, you might ask her to find three kind things to do for him before bedtime. That way, the repeated experience of positive behavior begins to get wired in her brain. (Again,

It is, ironically, "safer" to believe that the reason your needs are not being met is because there is something wrong with you, rather than that your parents—whom you depend on for your very survival—are actually not dependable.

when a child is upset, logic often won't work until we have responded to the right brain's emotional needs.

As children develop, their brains "mirror" their parent's brain. In other words, the parent's own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child's brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the rewards and move toward health as well.

Using only the right or left brain would be like trying to swim using only one arm.

As you learn about the brain and consider all of the information we're offering here, don't forget about the simple and the obvious, the little things you already know. Common sense can take you a long way.

Connection is about walking through the hard times with our children and being there for them when they're emotionally suffering, just like we would if they scraped their knee and were physically suffering.

children whose parents talk with them about their experiences tend to have better access to the memories of those experiences. Parents who speak with their children about their feelings have children who develop emotional intelligence and can understand their own and other people's feelings more fully. Shy children whose parents nurture a sense of courage by offering supportive explorations of the world tend to lose their behavioral inhibition,

If you're in a public place and your child is disturbing everyone around you, it may be necessary to take him outside while you attempt to appeal to his upstairs brain.)

Adolescence is not a period of being "crazy" or "immature." It is an essential time of emotional intensity, social engagement, and creativity.

Fear and punishment can be effective in the moment, but they don't work over the long term. And are fear, punishment, and drama really what we want to use as primary motivators of our children? If so, we teach that power and control are the best tools to get others to do what we want them to do.

Your job as a parent is not to prevent them from experiencing setbacks and failures, but to give them the tools and emotional resilience they need to weather life's storms, and then to walk beside them through those storms.

But science and experience reveal that with self-reflection and understanding, non-ideal patterns we've adopted from our own pasts can be transformed. Be patient with yourself and with your family members. With kindness and understanding, to yourself and to others, change can be nurtured and good things can emerge.

Recent studies have found that the best predictor for good sibling relationships later in life is how much fun the kids have together when they're young. The rate of conflict can even be high, as long as there's plenty of fun to balance it out. The real danger comes when the siblings just ignore each other. There may be less tension to deal with, but that's also a recipe for a cold and distant relationship as adults.

Every time we say "Convince me" or "Come up with a solution that works for both of us," we give our kids the chance to practice problem solving and decision making. We help them consider appropriate behaviors and consequences, and we help them think about what another person feels and wants. All because we found a way to engage the upstairs, instead of enraging the downstairs.

Mindsight is a teachable skill at the heart of being empathic and insightful, moral and compassionate.

what you do and don't value, and what you do and don't give attention to, will impact who your child becomes.

Rather than simply telling them what to do and demanding that they conform to your requests, you'll be giving them experiences that strengthen their executive functions and develop skills related to empathy, personal insight, and morality.

As I've mentioned, research has revealed that people with dismissing narratives show physiological signs that their subcortical limbic and brainstem areas still register the importance of relationships. It's simply that the higher cortical areas, where consciousness is created, shut out this awareness in order to survive barren times. The key would be to align myself with these deeper subterranean circuits and bolster Denise's ability to integrate them into her life.

experiences actually change the physical structure of the brain.

So the more we give our kids practice at considering how someone else feels or experiences a situation, the more empathic and caring they will become.

By helping them understand the rules and limits in their respective environments, we help build their conscience.

The healthy move to adulthood is toward interdependence, not complete "do-it-yourself" isolation.