The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Proven Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

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Featuring clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child will help your children to lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives using 12 key strategies, including:

Many “scientific” books tend to be overly wordy and The Whole-Brain Child is no exception. Although there are many very interesting and useful points, there are also many repetitions whose relevance is not always clear. As a result, some sections of the book come off as boring.Similarly, when your child is upset, we should first connect right brain to right brain. Yes, with empathy. Then, once they are more receptive, we are able to redirect with the left brain. Redirect does not mean to distract. It means to involve the child in making amends and finding solutions together. The Whole-Brain Child is a practical and insightful book to help parents navigate the turbulent waters of parenthood. By providing 'twelve revolutionary strategies to nurture your child's developing mind,' this book will enable you to 'survive everyday parenting struggles, and help your family thrive.' Their premise is that these twelve strategies help “integrate” children’s brains, that is, “coordinate[] and balance[] the separate regions of the brain” so as to optimize mental health. Using the image of a child inside a canoe floating down a river, they explain that veering close to the bank of chaos leaves the kid feeling too out of control to relax whereas drifting close to the bank of rigidity makes the kid too rigid to function ideally (instead “imposing control on everything and everyone”). “By helping our kids connect left [brain] and right [brain]” - as well as their “upstairs” and “downstairs” brains and implicit and explicit memories - “we give them a better chance of [finding] . . . harmonious flow between the[] two extremes,” which in turn will minimize tantrums and other results of “dis-integration.” Of course, they warn, the results won’t be perfect both because we should expect imperfection in ourselves as parents and because kids are biologically unable to always “be rational, regulate their emotions, make good decisions, think before acting, and be empathetic.”

The bad part is that the whole rest of the book, ie 80% , is the pseudo-scientific explanation based on a over-simplistic model of the brain that the authors seem to be so proud of that they need to explain it to us in detail. When your child has flipped their lid, the “upstairs” part of the brain is not available. The upstairs part of the brain is where we can make decisions, show empathy, have self control etc.Therefore, we need to wait until the child calms down or help them calm down, before we start trying to rationalise with them. Watch this short video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm9CIJ74OxwIn this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson demystify the meltdowns and aggravation, explaining the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,” which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids can seem—and feel—so out of control. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth. Raise calmer, happier children using twelve key strategies, including Felt more than a bit pseudoscientific or at least just kind of "eugh, dumb pop psychology" for a book theoretically by scientists.