Posts Tagged ‘right hemisphere’

• Common Discipline Mistakes Even the Best Parents Make: Part 1

  Date: 2012.03.15 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 17

   

  [This is a revised version of the first article in a two-part series.  Click here to see the second four mistakes.]

  Because we’re always parenting our children, it takes real effort to look at our discipline strategies objectively.  Good intentions can become less-than-effective habits quickly, and that can leave us operating blindly, disciplining in ways we might not if we thought much about it.  Here are some parenting mistakes made by even the best-intentioned, most well-informed parents, along with practical suggestions that might come in handy the next time you find yourself in one of these situations.

   

  Common Discipline Mistake #1:  We lay down the law in an emotional moment, then realize we’ve overreacted.

  Have you reacted in a way that was a bit “supersized” for the behavior you were trying to address?  Maybe your child’s actions didn’t warrant such a dramatic pronoucement:  “You can’t go swimming for the rest of the summer!”  Or maybe the consequences even had to do with something you were counting on:  “Stop calling your brother names or you can’t go to Grandma’s house today.”  Of course, she again calls him “stinky-head” and calls your bluff.  Your options at this point are to either miss your lunch with your friends or show your child that you don’t mean what you say.

  In these moments, give yourself permission to rectify the situation.  Obviously, follow-through is important once you’ve set boundaries; otherwise, you’ll lose credibility in your child’s eyes and your child will not have the security of knowing where the limits are.  But there are ways to be consistent and still get out of the bind you’re in.  For example,  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.]

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  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 »

  

• Magic Wand? Yeah, right. (Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do when your child is upset.)

  Date: 2011.06.10 | Category: Parenting | Response: 11

  One day my seven-year-old became furious with me because I told him he couldn’t invite a friend over to play.  He stormed off to his room and slammed the door.  About a minute later, I heard the door open, then slam again.  I went up to check on him, and taped to the outside of his door, I saw the picture you see here.  (You can see from the drawing below that he regularly uses his artistic talents to communicate his feelings about his parents.)

  I went into his room and saw what I knew I’d see:  a big child-sized lump under the covers on his bed. I sat next to the lump and put my hand on what I assumed was a shoulder, and suddenly the lump moved away from me, towards the wall.  From beneath the covers, he cried out, “Get away from me!”

  Often at times like this I can become childish and drop down to my child’s level.  I’ve even been known to say things like, “Fine!  If you won’t let me cut that toenail that’s hurting, you can stay in pain all week!”  (Sometimes I’ll throw in a “See if I care!” for good measure.)

  But this particular day, I maintained control and handled myself pretty well.  I first tried to acknowledge his feelings: “I know that makes you mad that Ryan can’t come over today.”

  His response?  “Yes, and I hate you!”

  I stayed calm and said, “Sweetie, I know this is frustrating, but there’s just not time to have Ryan over.  We’re meeting your grandparents for dinner in just a little while.”

  After that, he returned to the familiar refrain as he curled tighter and moved as far away from me as possible:  “I said get away from me!”

  I reminded him of our rule about talking with each other respectfully, then I went through a series of responses, the ones I regularly talk to parents about.  I comforted; I tried to use nonverbal connection like touch and tone of voice before I tried to problem-solve; I empathized; I tried again to explain.  I even offered an incentive to talk:  a playdate the next day.  But at that moment, he refused to calm down or let me help him in any way.

  The point of this story is a reality that people rarely talk about:  Sometimes Read the rest of this entry »

  

• From Black and White to Technicolor: Helping Your Child Express A Wide Range of Feelings

  Date: 2011.01.05 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 12

  “How was your day, sweetheart?”   We all know the answer we’re going to get when we ask our child this question:  “Fine” (or, if we’re lucky, “Good”).

  Likewise, if we are trying to teach our child empathy, and we ask, “How do you think that made your sister feel?” we will most likely get an obligatory, half-hearted reply:  “Bad.”

  One reason we get these monosyllabic responses is probably that our kids aren’t emotionally invested in this particular conversation.  Even if they were, though there’s another factor that often keeps them from going into the complexity of a particular emotion:  they haven’t yet learned to think about their feelings in a sophisticated way that recognizes the varied and rich emotional life within them.

  As a result, they don’t use a full spectrum of emotions, and instead paint their emotional pictures primarily in black and white.  So we typically don’t hear, “I felt really proud of myself when I hit the winning shot during PE, but I was disappointed with how I did in Science, and I’m irate about what Sarah did at lunch.”  And we don’t hear, “I think that made my sister feel belittled, and that I don’t care about her.”  Instead, we hear “Fine” and “Bad.”

  Ideally, we want our kids to recognize that there’s a colorful rainbow of rich emotions within them, and to pay attention to these different possibilities.  Without this awareness of what’s going on in their right brains, they’ll be trapped in black and white, like the old TV reruns.  When they have a full emotional palette, they are able to experience the vivid Technicolor that a deep and vibrant emotional life allows.

  Making a child aware of the emotional rainbow that exists within them is one of the best ways to help connect the left and right hemispheres of their brain.  When they come to understand their own mind and the minds of others, they can then move beyond a black/white assumption that feelings are good or bad, happy or sad.  Instead, they can begin to understand the broad spectrum of emotions they experience, and learn to name and express them.  Once developed, these skills will last them a lifetime.

  When we promote this type of horizontal integration in our kids, Read the rest of this entry »

  

• Understanding What Your Child is Really Saying

  Date: 2010.05.13 | Category: Parenting, The Brain | Response: 31

  When your child communicates with you, she’s speaking in two languages.

  One is the language of the left hemisphere– you hear the words, and the information of those words, and interpret their meaning with your left hemisphere. “I can’t make this Lego snap on.” This left hemisphere message lets you know that your child is having trouble snapping the Legos together.

  The other language is the language of the right hemisphere—this information is in the form of emotion and non-verbal messages. For example, how loud, energetic, or intense was the message?  What tone of voice was used? The right hemisphere also communicates through Read the rest of this entry »