Posts Tagged ‘being fully present’

• Why We Should NOT Ignore a Tantrum — or — Where NPR’s Health Blog Missed the Boat

  Date: 2012.01.02 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 0

  Several people have asked me recently about Shankar Vendantam’s post on NPR’s Health Blog, where he writes about a subject I’ve discussed a good bit:  tantrums.  In Vendantam’s article, he discusses a recent study that appeared in the journal Emotion, where scientists examined different toddler sounds that typify a tantrum.

  I find the whole study – which analyzes the patterns of sound and action that usually accompany a tantrum – absolutely fascinating.  And I’m grateful to any scientists (in this case Michael Potegal and James A. Green) who offer us new information that can help us better understand our children so we can be more loving and nurturing as we interact with them.  I also want to mention Vendantam’s book The Hidden Brain.  I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my “get to” list, since I understand that it raises some really interesting questions regarding how much our brain drives who we are, even without our awareness.

  Having said all that, a couple of objections kept nagging at me when I read Vendantam’s blog post about Green and Potegal’s science explaining “what’s behind a temper tantrum.”  Specifically, I kept wanting to hear less about how parents can “get a tantrum to end as soon as possible” (though I totally understand this desire and have felt this way during many of my own children’s tantrums), and more about how parents can be emotionally responsive and present when their kids are upset.

  In other words, I wanted a tantrum to be presented not only as an unpleasant experience that parents can learn to manage for their own benefit, but instead as another opportunity to make a child feel Read the rest of this entry »

• A Different Take on Spoiling

  Date: 2011.11.21 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 15

  The other day a reporter asked me to respond to a few questions about spoiling, and what it means for our kids.  With the holidays coming up, this seems like a pretty timely subject.  Here’s how I answered the reporter’s questions about what spoiling is, and just as importantly, what it’s not.

   

  WHAT IS SPOILING?  DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH MONEY SPENT?  TIME? NEVER SAYING NO? ALL OF THE ABOVE?

  Let’s start with what spoiling is not:  Spoiling is NOT about how much love and time and attention you give your kids.  You can’t spoil your children by giving them too much of yourself.  In the same way, you can’t spoil a baby by holding her too much or responding to her needs each time she expresses them.

   

  SO HOW DO WE SPOIL OUR KIDS?

  The dictionary definition is “to ruin or do harm to the character or attitude by overindulgence or excessive praise.”  Spoiling can of course happen when we give our kids too much stuff or spend too much money or say yes all the time.   But it’s more than that.  It’s also about giving them the sense that the world and people around them will serve their whims.

  Again, it’s impossible to spoil children with too much nurturing or love or attention or time.  Nurturing your relationship with your child or giving them a sense that they are entitled to your love and affection (or holding them when they’re little) is exactly what we should be doing.  In other words, we let them know that they can count on getting their NEEDS met.

  Spoiling, on the other hand, occurs when parents (or other caregivers) create their child’s world in such a way that the child feels Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Beyond “How was your day?” – Getting Your Kids to Talk After School

  Date: 2011.11.07 | Category: Parenting | Response: 16

  It’s a classic parenting dilemma, isn’t it?  How do we get our kids to talk to us?

  The conversation itself is even more cliché:

  –How was your day?

  –Fine.

  –Anything interesting happen?

  –Not really.

  A few years ago I found myself almost literally wincing as I heard myself ask my six-year-old the “How was your day?” question as he got into the car at the pick-up circle.  It’s not that it’s a bad question, it’s just that I knew it wouldn’t encourage him to talk to me.

  So why was I even asking the question?  Wasn’t there something else I could do or say or ask that might get him to offer some of the mundane morsels I hungered for when I’d been away from him for six hours while he was at school?

  I realized I needed to be more creative when it came to drawing out meaty details about my kids’ school lives.  What I eventually came up with was Read the rest of this entry »

  

• The Whole-Brain Child: The Opening Pages

  Date: 2011.09.27 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 12

  My new book with Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, comes out one week from today!  I hope you already pre-ordered your copy.    Below you can read the book’s opening pages.

   

  ——————

  You’ve had those days, right?  When the sleep deprivation, the muddy cleats, the peanut butter on the new jacket, the homework battles, the play-dough in your computer keyboard, and the refrains of “She started it!” leave you counting the minutes until bedtime.  On these days, when you (again?!!) have to pry a raisin from a nostril, it seems like the most you can hope for is to survive.

  However, when it comes to your children, you’re aiming a lot higher than mere survival.  Of course you want to get through those difficult tantrum-in-the-restaurant moments.  But whether you’re a parent, grandparent, or other committed caregiver in a child’s life, your ultimate goal is to raise kids in such a way that lets them thrive.  You want them to enjoy meaningful relationships, be caring and compassionate, do well in school, work hard and be responsible, and feel good about who they are.

  Survive.  Thrive.

  We’ve met with thousands of parents over the years.  When we ask them what matters most to them, versions of these two goals almost always top the list.  They want to survive difficult parenting moments, and they want their kids and their family to thrive.  As parents ourselves, we share these same goals for our own families.  In our nobler, calmer, saner moments, we care about nurturing our kids’ minds, increasing their sense of wonder, and helping them reach their potential in all aspects of life.  But in the more frantic, stressful, bribe-the-toddler-into-the-carseat-so-we-can-rush-to-the-soccer-game moments, sometimes all we can hope for is to avoid yelling or hearing someone say, “You’re so mean!”

  Take a moment and ask yourself:  What do you really want for your children?  What qualities do you hope they develop and take into their adult lives?  Most likely, you want them to be happy, independent, and successful.   You want them to enjoy fulfilling relationships and live a life full of meaning and purpose.  Now think about what percentage of your time you spend intentionally developing these qualities in your children.  If you’re like most parents, you worry that you spend too much time just trying to get through the day (and sometimes the next five minutes!), and not enough time creating experiences that help your children thrive, both today and in the future.

  You might even measure yourself against some sort of perfect parent who never struggles to survive, who seemingly spends every waking second helping her children thrive.  You know, the PTA president who cooks organic, fully balanced meals while reading to her kids in Latin about the importance of helping others, then escorts them to the art museum in the hybrid that plays classical music and mists lavender aromatherapy through the air-conditioning vents.  None of us can match up to this imaginary super-parent.  Especially when we feel like a large percentage of our days are spent in full-blown survival mode, where we find ourselves wild-eyed and red-faced at the end of a birthday party, shouting, “If there’s one more argument over that bow and arrow, nobody’s getting any presents!”

  If any of this sounds familiar, we’ve got great news for you:  The moments you are just trying to survive are actually opportunities to help your child thrive.  At times you may feel that the loving, important moments (like having a meaningful conversation about compassion or character) are separate from the parenting challenges (like fighting another homework battle or dealing with another melt-down.)  But they are Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Surfing the Waves of an Emotional Tsunami: When Your Kid’s Upset, Connect and Redirect

  Date: 2011.09.20 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 13

  [Two weeks from today (Oct 4), my new book with Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, comes out!  Below you’ll find the third in a four-part series where I post excerpts from the book.  I hope you enjoy it.]

  ——————

   

  You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

  –John Kabit Zinn

   

  Here’s a conversation I recently had with my 7-year-old when he wasn’t at his logical best.

  My son:  I can’t go to sleep.  I’m mad that you never leave me a note in the middle of the night. 

  Me:  I didn’t know you wanted me to.  

  My son:  You never do anything nice for me, you do things at night for Luke, and I’m mad because my birthday isn’t for ten more months, and I hate homework. 

  Sound familiar?  An encounter like this can be frustrating, especially when you’re beginning to feel that your child is finally old enough to actually be reasonable and discuss things logically.  All of a sudden, though, you’re interacting with a being who becomes over-the-top upset about something completely ridiculous and illogical, and it seems that absolutely no amount of reasoning on your part will help.

  This is one of those times when knowing a little bit about the brain can help us parent in more effective (and more empathic) ways.

  You probably already know that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.  The left side of your brain is logical and verbal, while the right side is emotional and nonverbal.  That means that if we were ruled only by the left side of our brain, it would be as if we were living in an emotional drought, not paying attention to our feelings at all.  Or, in contrast, if we were completely “right-brained,” we’d be all about emotion and ignore the logical parts of ourselves.  Instead of an emotional drought, we’d be drowning in an emotional tsunami.

  Clearly, we function best when the two hemispheres of our brain work together, so that our logic and our emotions are both valued as important parts of ourselves and we are emotionally balanced.  Then we can give words to our emotional experiences, and make sense of them logically.

  Now, let’s apply that information to the interaction above.  My son was experiencing an emotional tidal wave.  When this occurs, one of the worst things I can do is jump right in trying to defend myself (“I do nice things for you!”), or to argue with him about his faulty logic (“That’s just not true, and your birthday is actually only nine months away”).  My verbal, logical response hits an unreceptive brick wall and creates a gulf between us:  he feels like I’m dismissing his feelings and that I don’t understand; I feel frustrated that he’s being so ridiculous and impossible.  It’s a lose-lose approach.

  So I have to come to an important recognition:  Logic will do no good in a case like this until a child’s right brain is responded to.

  How do we do that?  I suggest that we use the “Connect and Redirect” method. Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Increase the Family Fun Factor: Making a Point to Enjoy One Another

  Date: 2011.09.13 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 11

  My new book with Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, comes out on October 4, three weeks from today!   Below you’ll find the second in a four-part series where I post excerpts from the book.  I hope you enjoy it.

  ————-

  Do you ever feel like you’re spending most of your time disciplining your kids and carting them from one activity to the next, and not enough time just enjoying being with them?  If you do, you’re not alone; most of us feel this from time to time.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget to just have fun as a family. Yet we are hardwired for play and exploration as well as for joining with one another.  In fact, “playful parenting” is one of the best ways to prepare your children for relationships and encourage them to connect with others. That’s because it gives them positive experiences being with the people they spend the most time with:  their parents.

  Of course children need structure and boundaries and to be held accountable for their behavior, but even as you maintain your authority, don’t forget to have fun with your kids.  Play games.  Tell jokes.  Be silly.  Take an interest in what they care about.  The more they enjoy the time they spend with you and the rest of the family, the more they’ll value relationships and desire more positive and healthy relational experiences in the future.

  The reason is simple.  With every fun, enjoyable experience you give your children while they are with the family, you provide them with positive reinforcement about what it means to be in loving relationship with others.  One reason has to do with a chemical in your brain called dopamine.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, which means that it enables communication between brain cells.  Your brain cells receive what some people call “dopamine squirts” when something pleasurable happens to you, and it motivates you to want to do it again.  Scientists who study addiction point to these dopamine surges as factors that lead people to maintain a certain habit or addiction, even when they know it’s bad for them.  But we can also Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Ten Bites of a Quesadilla: Transforming Moments through Creative Discipline

  Date: 2011.09.06 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 14

  My new book with Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, comes out on October 4, four weeks from today!  So starting today, and for the next four Tuesdays, I’ll post an excerpt from the book, so you can get a sense of what you’ll find there.  The story you’ll read below, about the ten bites of a quesadilla, appears in the new book (although there, Dan and I make a slightly different point from the one that appears here). This post’s main point, about viewing everyday parenting challenges as opportunities, is one of the principles central to The Whole-Brain Child.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

   

  —————

  Few experiences any of us undergo are as transformative as parenting.  By definition, parenting is about transformation.  One of our most important jobs as parents is to witness and influence the evolution of our children from wrinkly newborns with raw nervous systems into integrated, whole humans who know who they are and how to be in the world.  And parenting obviously transforms us as well.  There are smaller transformations—we learn to do most things “one-handed” while carrying a baby on our hip; we begin to eat at McDonalds; we memorize the names of dinosaurs; we learn to play video games again; we even buy a mini-van (which for some is a bigger transformation than for others).  And there are huge, life-changing transformations—we adjust our priorities; we make sacrifices that cost us greatly; we learn to live with worrying and “what ifs”; we forever expand our hearts.

  Along the way, we become more creative than we ever knew possible.  I’m not talking about the creativity of artists, song-writers, or novelists.  I’m talking about the creativity that’s required for survival for anyone caring for children.  I knew I’d been forever transformed by my role as a parent when, in my attempt to get through to my non-compliant little streakers, creativity sprung forth from desperation and I made up a song with a chorus that began, “No naked butts on the furniture.”  (Unfortunately, it was so catchy that one day I actually Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Is Over-Scheduling Really a Problem for Kids?

  Date: 2011.08.03 | Category: Parenting | Response: 11

  People talk a lot about the dangers of the over-scheduled child.  Kids doing too many activities become tired and grumpy.  They don’t have time to spend with their family.  They get burned out and begin to dislike whatever activity the parent was hoping they would embrace.  They don’t have time to just play and be kids.

  Before I had my own children, all of this made sense to me.  That’s why I decided that my kids would participate in only one activity at a time.  If they wanted to take a dance class, that’s all they’d do until the class was over.  If they wanted to play a sport, they wouldn’t be involved in anything else until the end of the season.  I wasn’t going to have my kids dealing with all the problems facing over-scheduled children.

  That was before I had kids of my own.

  Then my first son came along, and I was giddy with all the opportunities available to him, and all of his many different interests, all of which increased with each passing year.  Especially once he entered elementary school, I quickly came to see that my one-activity-at-a-time commitment was going to be tested.  My husband and I wanted him to learn piano.  He wanted to be involved in Cub Scouts with his friends from school.  Plus, it was immediately apparent that his passion was athletics.  He wanted to play every sport in season.

  Piano.  Scouts.  Sports.  Add in playdates, homework, family outings, and “unstructured play time,” and how were we supposed to fit all of that in?  And he was just our first child!  We now have three, all with their own opportunities and passions.

  These days, as my oldest approaches adolescence, I still believe that over-scheduling kids really is a legitimate concern.  Children can become anxious and pressured and miss out on the benefits of boredom, down time, and the freedom of childhood.  But I no longer believe Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Does Your Discipline Ever Move From Consistent to Rigid?

  Date: 2011.07.05 | Category: Parenting | Response: 15

  There’s no question about it:  consistency is crucial when it comes to raising and disciplining our children.  Many parents I see in my office realize that they need to work on being more consistent – with bedtimes, limiting junk food, or just in general – when they interact with their kids.  But there are others who have placed such a high priority on consistency that it’s moved into a rigidity that’s not good for their kids, themselves, or their relationship.

  Let’s begin by getting clear on the difference between the two terms.  Consistency means working from a reliable and coherent philosophy so that our kids know what we expect of them, and what they should expect from us.  Rigidity, on the other hand, means maintaining an unswerving devotion to rules we’ve set up, sometimes without having even thought them through.  As parents, we want to be consistent, but not rigid.

  Kids definitely need consistency from their parents.  They need to know what the rules are, and how we will respond if they break (or even bend) those rules.  Your reliability teaches them about cause and effect, and about what to expect in their world.  More than that, it helps them feel safe; they know they can count on you to be constant and steady, even when their internal or external worlds are chaotic.  In this way, we provide them with safe containment when they’re exploding because they want an extra scoop of ice cream.

  So how do we maintain consistency without crossing over to rigidity?  Well, let’s start by acknowledging that there are some non-negotiables.  For instance, under no circumstances can you Read the rest of this entry »