Thursday, January 10, 2013

Parenting from the Inside Out


If you're looking for a good book to read, I just finished "Parenting from the Inside Out" by Dan Siegle.  What an AMAZING book to help you better understand the way we as a parents and caregivers may be affecting our children both positively and negatively.  I really appreciated the gentle way Dan helps us learn to be self-reflective and change ourselves in order to be better for our children.  LOVED it.  A few gems from the book?

"Children don't need us to be fully available all the time, but they do need our presence during connecting interaction.  Being mindful as a parent means having intention in your actions.  With intention, you purposefully choose your behavior with your child's emotional well-being in mind.  Children can readily detect intention and thrive when there is purposeful interaction with their parents."  -p. 7-8

"Communication that involves an awareness of our own emotions, an ability to respectfully share our emotions, and an emphatic understanding of our children's emotions lays a foundation that supports the building of lifelong relationships with our children." -p.57

"When parents have conversations with their children in which they reflect on the internal processes of people's minds, children begin to develop mindsight.  If parents focus only on their children's behavior and do not consider the mental processes that motivate that behavior, they often end up parenting for short-term results and do not help their children learn about themselves." -p.231

Anyway, hope you grab it from the library and eat it up!  It's just lovely :)

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