Quotes from Daniel J. Siegel

avoid solving and resist rescuing, even when they make minor mistakes or not-so-great choices.

To state this more succinctly, awareness of the body's state influences how we organize our lives. Knowing your body strengthens your mind.

Children are much more apt to share and talk while building something, playing cards, or riding in the car than when you sit down and look them right in the face and ask them to open up.

And our disciplinary decisions go a long way toward determining how strong those connections are. The way we interact with our kids when they're upset significantly affects how their brains develop, and therefore what kind of people they are, both today and in the years to come.

Instead of just reacting to the external actions, you are focusing your attention on what her inner world may be like—red, green, or blue—and communicating to that internal state of your child.

One reason big feelings can be so uncomfortable for small children is that they don't view those emotions as temporary.

Nature is far more inventive than is human imagination, and the microscopic world is not what Niels Bohr or anyone else could have guessed.

The downstairs state of reactivity doesn't know what to do with a lot of upstairs words. Often, in moments of reactivity, nonverbals (like hugs and empathetic facial expressions) will be much more powerful.

The key to clinical attunement is to be willing to say "I don't know" and "tell me more.

We will honor the controversy, and explore possibilities rather than assert absolutes.

When we set limits, we help develop the parts of the upstairs brain that allow children to control themselves and regulate their behaviors and their body.

Coupling the relaxation and sense of safety associated with that imagery with the sensations of the body can ground a person in the visceral reality of tranquility and clarity. It is this grounded place that can serve as a vital resource of safety and strength during the explorations ahead.

How we treat our children changes who they are and how they will develop. Their brains need our parental involvement. Nature needs nurture.

The immature brain of the child is so sensitive to social experience that adoptive parents should in fact also be called the biological parents because the family experiences they create shape the biological structure of their child's brain.

Creating stories through play, and presumably through our dreams, may be ways in which the mind attempts to "make sense" of our experiences and consolidate this understanding into a picture of our selves in the world.

This is the PART we play in helpful communication. PART means that we are present, attune, resonate, and create trust.

You can discipline in a way that's high on relationship, high on respect, and low on drama and conflict—and

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 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.

You can use all of the interactions you share—the stressful, angry ones as well as the miraculous, adorable ones—as opportunities to help them become the responsible, caring, capable people you want them to be.

When such resonance is enacted with positive regard, a deep feeling of coherence emerges with the subjective sensation of harmony. When

Beginning with a genuine sense of care and interest by the focus of the other's careful attention, resonance extends this positive interaction into a fuller dimension of the other being changed because of who we are. This is how we feel "felt," and this is how two individuals become a "we.

That's a direct lesson every parent should consider quite deeply: do we want to teach our kids that the way to resolve a conflict is to inflict physical pain, particularly on someone who is defenseless and cannot fight back?

Automatic pilot (Res/App):A way of being that is driven by a state of mind that is devoid of active reflection and that often involves top-down processing. It is reflected in reactive and enduring patterns of thought and bodily posture and movement, in which the past is shaping present perceptual biases, emotional responses, and behavioral output.

the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment" (Kabat-Zinn,