Quotes from Daniel J. Siegel

All of this applies to our kids as well. They have their own little canoes, and they float down their own river of well-being. Many of the challenges we face as parents result from the times when our kids aren't in the flow, when

contingent response," which means that we attune our response to what our child is actually feeling, in a way that validates what's happening in her mind.

focus of attention becomes distracted, when you notice you are no longer aware of the sensations of the breath, lovingly and gently bring your attention back to the breath (or body part or image). Getting distracted is just what our minds do. As we've seen, if you think of this mindfulness training as being similar to toning a muscle, we need to have both the contraction and the relaxation to achieve muscle growth.

Time-in and the mindful awareness and presence it creates will enable your brain to literally grow more integrative fibers that create your ability to regulate emotions, attention, thinking, and behavior, and your sense of well-being and connections to others will be optimized. If carefully conducted scientific studies did not reveal this, I myself would look at this list and say, "That is too good to be true!

But it also would have missed an opportunity. My son would have missed a chance to see that relationships are about connection, communication, and compromise. He would have missed a chance to feel empowered that he can make choices, affect his environment, and solve problems.

As we'll explain in the coming chapters, these everyday parenting challenges result from a lack of integration within your child's brain. The

The drive to understand why things happen to us is so strong that the brain will continue to try making sense of an experience until it succeeds. As parents, we can help this process along through storytelling.

Integrative communication (App):When individuals are honored for their differences and become linked through respectful and compassionate communication.

my behavior is no longer under my conscious control.

When we are preoccupied with the past or worried about the future, we are physically present with our children but are mentally absent.

emotionally autonomous existence.

Conforme los niños se desarrollan, sus cerebros «reflejan» el cerebro de sus padres.

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

Contraction is our concentration—the activation of the muscle of the mind's attention—while relaxation is our becoming distracted as attention is deactivated. We activate intentionally, deactivate unintentionally—inadvertently, unavoidably and repeatedly—and then reactivate the directing of attention to refocus on our chosen subject of attention. See

integrar y cultivar tu propio cerebro es uno de los regalos más afectuosos y generosos que puedes ofrecer a tus hijos.

This is the way we can keep our selves well: with regular exercising of our attunement to ourselves through mindfulness practices.

Trata a las personas como si fueran lo que tendrían que ser y las ayudarás a convertirse en lo que son capaces de ser».

Essentially, we want caregivers to begin to think of discipline as one of the most loving and nurturing things we can do for kids.

El ejercicio aeróbico no sólo es beneficioso para los sistemas cardiovascular y músculo-esquelético, sino también para el sistema nervioso. Aprendemos con más eficacia cuando estamos activos físicamente.

It is confusing to children if their reality of an experience is denied or misunderstood by their parent or another significant adult, because those are the very people with whom they most need to connect.

Podemos ejercer un impacto en el futuro del mundo ocupándonos debidamente de nuestros hijos y ofreciéndoles de manera intencionada los tipos de relación que valoramos y queremos que consideren normales. Preparar

And remember that just by talking about the mind, you help develop it.

We need to know what's behind it, what's causing it. If we focus only on our child's behavior (her external world) and neglect the reasons behind that behavior (her internal world), then we'll concentrate only on the symptoms, not the cause that's producing them. And if we consider only the symptoms, we'll have to keep treating those symptoms over and over again.

By wondering what our kids are trying to accomplish and by allowing them to explain a situation before we rush to judgment, we're able to gather actual data from their