Dr. Dan Siegel’s Top Parenting Secrets for Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids in the 21st Century

The 4 S’s of Parenting

Seen, Soothe, Safety, all three lead to the 4th S which is Security. Only if these 4 Ss are there, children can do a better job of making sense of the world around them.

Research on child development says that one of the very best predictors for how a child turns out is whether they had at least one person who showed up for them. Showing up improves happiness, social and emotional development, leadership skills, meaningful relationships, and even academic and career success.

As parents, we can foster secure attachment if we remember the following 4 “S”s. Our children need to be:

Seen – this is not just seeing with the eyes. It means perceiving them deeply and empathically – sensing the mind behind their behavior, with what Dr. Siegal calls “mindsight”
Safe – we avoid actions and responses that frighten or hurt them
Soothed – we help them deal with difficult emotions and situations
Secure – we help them develop an internalized sense of well-being

The Healthy Mind Platter

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The Whole Brain Child

Quotes From The Book: The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind By Daniel J. Siegel

“Too often we forget that “discipline” really means “to teach” – not “to punish.” A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioral consequences. When we teach mindsight, we take moments of conflict and transform them into opportunities for learning, skill building, and brain development.”

“Rather than trying to shelter our children from life’s inevitable difficulties, we can help them integrate those experiences into their understanding of the world and learn from them. How our kids make sense of their young lives is not only about what happens to them but also about how their parents, teachers, and other caregivers respond.”

“Sometimes parents avoid talking about upsetting experiences, thinking that doing so will reinforce their children’s pain or make things worse. Actually, telling the story is often exactly what children need, both to make sense of the event and to move on to a place where they can feel better about what happened.”

“Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water, peacefully floating along in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace. Sometimes, though, as you float along, you veer too close to one of the river’s two banks. This causes different problems, depending on which bank you approach. One bank represents chaos, where you feel out of control. Instead of floating in the peaceful river, you are caught up in the pull of tumultuous rapids, and confusion and turmoil rule the day. You need to move away from the bank of chaos and get back into the gentle flow of the river. But don’t go too far, because the other bank presents its own dangers. It’s the bank of rigidity, which is the opposite of chaos. As opposed to being out of control, rigidity is when you are imposing control on everything and everyone around you.

You become completely unwilling to adapt, compromise, or negotiate. Near the bank of rigidity, the water smells stagnant, and reeds and tree branches prevent your canoe from flowing in the river of well-being. So one extreme is chaos, where there’s a total lack of control. The other extreme is rigidity, where there’s too much control, leading to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. We all move back and forth between these two banks as we go through our days – especially as we’re trying to survive parenting. When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health. The longer we can avoid either bank, the more time we spend enjoying the river of well-being. Much of our lives as adults can be seen as moving along these paths – sometimes in the harmony of the flow of well-being, but sometimes in chaos, in rigidity, or zigzagging back and forth between the two. Harmony emerges from integration. Chaos and rigidity arise when integration is blocked.”

“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.”

“As parents, we are wired to try to save our children from any harm and hurt, but ultimately we can’t. They’ll fall down, they’ll get their feelings hurt, and they’ll get scared and sad and angry. Actually, it’s often these difficult experiences that allow them to grow and learn about the world. Rather than trying to shelter our children from life’s inevitable difficulties, we can help them integrate those experiences into their understanding of the world and learn from them.”

The Right And Left Brain

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Daniel Siegel’s Hand Model Of The Brain

Learn how to reason with your child after understanding how the brain works.

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Parenting Without Power Struggles Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/1-9-the-4-ss-of-attachment-with-dr-dan-siegel/id1463601870?i=1000444523413

Other Important Books By Dr. Siegel

Siegel, D.J. & Bryson, T.P. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 proven strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. London: Robinson.
Siegel, D.J. & Bryson, T.P. (2015). No-Drama Discipline: The whole-brain way to calm the chaos and nurture your child’s developing mind. London: Scribe Publications.
Siegel, D.J. & Bryson, T.P. (2020). The Power of Showing Up: How parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired. London: Scribe Publications.

On The Power Of Showing Up

Dan Siegel And Tina Bryson’s 4 Ss: Copyright Ed Psych Insight

Here’s a cool printable of a great reminder of the Power Of Showing Up for our children.

https://drdansiegel.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/POSU-Refrigerator-Sheet.pdf

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