Parenting and the Brain

Being a parent gives us the chance to re-parent ourselves--we have the opportunity to continue to learn about ourselves in relationship with our child. This relationship can encourage us to deepen our connection with ourselves and with others.

One way this shows up is dealing with them when they are sad, upset or frustration. Suppose your child comes home from school or playing with friends and says that they did not let them play or excluded them from a game. For you as the parent to respond with the understanding and empathy, you will need to connect to them with your right brain. That means stopping what you are doing, being present, getting down to their level and touching or holding them, if they are open.

You will also need to connect to the pain within of being rejected or excluded yourself. This gives you the opportunity to remember something from the past, to really understand the pain your child is experiencing. Of course, the focus still needs to be on our child—we need to be careful to not make it about us. We can start with something like, “Being a kid is hard, isn’t it?”

If we respond first with our left brain, we want to fix the problem and get them to stop crying. We all know that this is not a wise move and usually will not solve the issue. Think for a minute how that worked out when someone (your spouse, a friend, or a co-worker) tried to give you advice about how to solve a problem that you were having! Once the child has calmed down, then we can move to talking about what to do.

In the last ten years, there has been an incredible amount of research and discovery about how the brain works. Dr. Daniel J. Siegel is a neuropsychiatrist and has done years of research on the brain and authored numerous books including The Whole-Brain Child and Parenting from the Inside Out. He says that we can help our kids learn to use both the logical left brain and emotional right brain together. It starts with our modeling it for ourselves and for them.
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Two tools that he recommends are:

• Connect and redirect:  When your child is upset, connect first emotionally, right brain to right brain. Then, once your child is more in control and receptive, bring in the left-brain lessons and discipline.
• Name it to tame it: When big, right-brain emotions are raging out of control, help your kids tell the story about what is upsetting them, so their left brains can help make sense of their experience and they can move towards feeling more in control.
  
  

Stay tuned for more about the brain functions in relationship. Discover how we can grow and expand our prefrontal cortex (the upper brain) through relationship. The prefrontal cortex is where our thinking brain lives which helps us to make good choices, calm down and tune into others.

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