Reflective Parenting focuses on the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and desires that underlie behavior. When you engage with your child at this level, mind to mind, she learns that you believe her actions are a meaningful attempt to communicate with you. She learns that you are trying to understand her. Ultimately, she learns that you value her. This knowledge instills a security in your child that is the foundation for all her future relationships.
Hard to overestimate, isn't it?
In our reflective parenting groups we teach you how to do this.
For the past 20 years I've been working with parents to help them understand their children and navigate the transitions that are an inevitable part of growing up. Every stage of your child's development demands a new way of understanding him, as well as your role as his parent. When you understand your child, you deepen and strengthen your relationship with him. Ultimately, this is the single most important thing you can offer your child. Not to mention yourself.
Welcome back to Notes to Self. After two great years as the
Executive Director of Freedom Institute, I am thrilled to
return to Mind to Mind, and Notes to Self. And just in
time for the school year, the BBC reports that British
psychologists have established new medical guidelines for
the end of adolescence, moving the age of entry into
Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might
affect toddlers developmentally. We know our preschoolers
are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning
pace, and we don't want hours spent glued to an iPad to
impede that. But adolescence is an equally important period
of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention
to how our teenagers'...
Are teenagers impulsive? Not really, says Daniel Siegel,
neuropsychiatrist, educator, and author of my hands-down
number one favorite parenting book of all time, Parenting
from the Inside Out. He recently gave a lecture in New York
to promote his new book, Brainstorm: An Inside-Out Guide to
the Emerging Adolescent Mind, Ages 12-24. I couldn’t get
there fast enough.
His first point will...