Quotes About Understanding

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

we can use these opportunities to realize that at these moments, logic isn't our primary vehicle for bringing some sort of sanity to the conversation. (Seems counterintuitive, doesn't it?) It's also crucial to keep in mind that no matter how nonsensical and frustrating our child's feelings may seem to us, they are real and important to our child. It's vital that we treat them as such in our response.

No-Drama Discipline allows us to communicate to our children, "I'm with you. I've got your back. Even when you're at your worst and I don't like the way you're acting, I love you, and I'm here for you. I understand you're having a hard time, and I am here.

In other words, deep, empathic connection can and should be combined with clear and firm boundaries that create needed structure in children's lives.

Once she had connected with him right brain to right brain, it was much easier to connect left to left and deal with the issues in a rational manner. By first connecting with his right brain, she could then redirect with the left brain through logical explanation and planning, which required that his left hemisphere join the conversation.

Para nosotros, imponer disciplina se reduce a una simple frase: conectar y redirigir. Nuestra primera respuesta debe ser siempre ofrecer conexión tranquilizadora; a continuación podemos redirigir conductas. Incluso cuando decimos «no» al comportamiento de los niños, siempre hemos de decir «sí» a sus emociones y a su manera de experimentar las cosas.

understand. Such an approach

No se sentirán tristes o enfadados o dolidos o solos eternamente. Éste es un concepto que al principio les cuesta entender. Cuando sienten dolor o miedo, a veces les resulta difícil imaginar que no van a seguir sufriendo siempre. Ver las cosas a largo plazo no suele ser fácil ni siquiera para un adulto, y mucho menos para un niño pequeño

Even if an emotion seems ridiculous to you, don't forget that it's very real to your child, so you don't want to dismiss something that's important to her.

You won't always be able to discipline in a way that both connects and redirects.

When we say to embrace emotions, we mean that during redirection, parents need to help their kids understand that their feelings are neither good nor bad, neither valid nor invalid. They simply are. There's nothing wrong with getting angry, being sad, or feeling so frustrated that you want to destroy something. But saying it's OK to feel like destroying something doesn't mean it's OK to actually do it.

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.

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.