Dan Siegel

Sleep is brain hygiene. ... We are a nation of chronically sleep-deprived people. In young people, we continue to see far too much anxiety and depression, and many of the symptoms associated with these two diagnoses may result from or be amplified by chronic sleep deprivation.

For us, ultimately, it’s pretty simple (though not necessarily easy). Helping kids develop a Yes Brain comes down to two objectives: 1. Allowing each individual child to grow into the fullness of who he or she is, as opposed to imposing our own needs, desires, and designs. 2. Watching for times our child needs help with skill-building and developing the tools necessary to thrive.

One of the key practical lessons of modern neuroscience is that the power to direct our attention has within it the power to shape our brain’s firing patterns, as well as the power to shape the architecture of the brain itself.

People with mindfulness training have a shift in their brains toward an “approach state” that allows them to move toward rather than away from challenging situations. This is the brain signature of resilience.

With practice, a mindful state becomes a mindful trait.

Anything we give attention to, anything we emphasize in our experiences and interactions, creates new linking connections in the brain. Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.

When parents consistently show up, their children’s minds come to expect that the world is a place that can be understood and meaningfully interacted with—even in times of trouble and pain. Showing up thus creates in our kids neural pathways that lead to selfhood, grit, strength, and resilience.

The observational distance that allows us to watch our own mental activity is an important first step toward regulating and stabilizing the mind.

What produces deep and lasting success for kids? A secure attachment to a caregiver who shows up. How do we provide that secure attachment? First, by developing a coherent narrative that makes sense of our own early life experiences.

We have a message of great hope: Even if you didn’t receive secure attachment from your parents, you can still offer it to your own children. Secure attachment can be learned and earned.

How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.

Human development isn’t predictable and linear; it’s more of a ‘two steps up, one step back’ kind of thing, and sometimes it’s upside down and sideways.

When you react to your kids from a threatened brain state, you can still repair the breach in the relationship. In doing so, you can provide your kids with all kinds of valuable experiences—even if you’re not acting exactly how you’d like.

Exercising attention is like building a muscle.

Another way to say it is that we want to avoid bubble-wrapping our kids. Our kids are precious, but they’re not fragile. When we bubble-wrap our children and protect them from any discomfort, distress, or potential challenge, we actually make them more fragile, leaving them less capable of achieving balance on their own.

Exercising attention is like building a muscle.

When something inevitably goes wrong in a relationship we want to repair it as quickly as we can.

None of us do this right all the time. Life is hard and complex, and having the intention to create clear and consistent connection is the best we can offer—repairing when it doesn’t go well, and maintaining the mindset to show up as best we can as life unfolds.

There are specific activities and experiences that can nurture mindsight throughout the lifespan... mindsight is a form of expertise that can be honed in each of us, whatever our early history.

Even if we didn’t have secure attachment from our own caregivers, we can still provide it to our own children, if we’ve reflected on and made sense of our own attachment history. You really can provide a loving, stable foundation for your child, even if you didn’t receive one from your own parents.

An old, dear and now-departed friend, the poet, philosopher, and all around wonderfully wise John O’Donohue, captured the essence of this emergent flow when he said that he’d love to live like a river, carried by the surprise of his own unfolding.

Notice that we’re not describing some kind of superparent here. You don’t have to be able to read minds and transcend all your shortcomings or achieve some sort of spiritual enlightenment. You just have to show up. Show up with presence, and with the intention to let your kids feel that you get them and that you’ll be there for them, no matter what. That’s what it means to see—really see—your child.

If you want to help your child grow into a person who’s able to live meaningfully and find success throughout his life, there’s virtually nothing more important than helping integrate his brain.

Parents have two primary jobs when it comes to keeping their kids safe and making them feel safe. The first is to protect them from harm. The second is to avoid becoming the source of fear and threat.

All the lessons we want to teach our kids, along with all the outcomes we’d like to see—meaningful relationships with family and friends, effective sleep, success in school, a general sense of happiness in life—depend on balance. So one of our primary jobs as parents, regardless of the age of our children, is to help them be more balanced.

The primary focus, when our kids are struggling, should not be on getting rid of bad behavior or extinguishing red-zone chaos and blue-zone rigidity, but on figuring out what we want to add—the skills to handle things better next time.

Within each of us is an inherent drive toward health—a push toward integration.

Simply put, children with secure attachment—those who have been fortunate enough to acquire a secure internal working model of attachment—develop the characteristics and skills that allow them to live happier and more successful lives. The benefits of security are striking.

Equanimity doesn’t mean someone is always calm—it means they’ve learned to ride the waves of their emotions with skill and agility.

Anything we give attention to, anything we emphasize in our experience and interactions, creates new links in the brain. Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.

How you make sense of your childhood experiences has a profound effect on how you parent your own children.

If you want a single reason to be patient with your child when he’s melting down or being unreasonable in some way, this is it: his brain isn’t fully formed yet, and he is, at least at times, literally incapable of controlling his emotions and body.

How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.

Your job as a parent is not to prevent them from experiencing setbacks and failures, but to give them the tools and emotional resilience they need to weather life’s storms.

The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

In your role as a parent, right now is all you have to focus on.