Developing Brains: Takeaways from The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

SKIP TO: Key Takeaways from The Whole Brain Child

SKIP TO: Action Items for Parents

You can buy The Whole Brain Child HERE.

FIRST, About the Cover Art: Thank my little Basquiat and her ability to locate sharpies in our home with the skill and accuracy of a bloodhound. It was not my intention to deface the book. But it’s not in the budget right now to buy another one just to photograph. I acknowledge the irony here given this is a book on parenting. But then maybe tiny Basquiat thought that there were some points about her brain that were not adequately addressed.

Anyone who wants strategies to better manage kids. Also people who interact with other adults with kid-like proclivities (a.k.a., most adults). The parenting takeaways from The Whole Brain Child include twelve strategies for approaching common parenting issues. These include anger, tantrums, refusing to do things for unknown reasons, conflicts with siblings, etc. For those of us with strong-willed children, the twelve strategies provide some useful guidance and management techniques.

The professed goal of the book is to teach parents strategies for better integrating the various areas of a child’s brain. It explains how different parts of the brain mature at different times and how there is limited communication between the various structures at times. The keyword in this book is truly “integration.” Integrating the left and right brain, the upstairs and downstairs brain, integrating implicit and explicit memories, integrating the parts of self, and integrating the self with other people.

Below is a break-down of the different forms of integration as explained by the authors:

Young children are right-brain dominant, especially for the first three years of their lives. The good news is that parents can help their children to integrate right-brain emotions with their left-brain logic. Right brain dominance means having difficulty making sense of and expressing feelings, not responding well to logic, and having little concept of time and responsibilities. It is the left brain that enables us to handle emotions and to maintain a big-picture perspective. However, in the long term, keeping the right brain engaged prevents us from becoming too rigid. It helps us maintain some flexibility and openness to new experiences. (Note that linking these characteristics to one side of the brain versus the other may be misplaced.)

• Connect & Redirect – If a child is being emotional and unreasonable, connect right brain to right brain first. You do this by verbally acknowledging emotions and with non-verbal cues (facial expression, tone of voice, touch). Only once the child is calm should you redirect the conversation to logic and reason.

• Name it to tame it – When a child has a bad or emotional experience, bring the experience to the left brain by inviting the child to tell the story. If they are young, you can help them tell the story. This helps the child make sense of what happened by engaging the left brain to sort through the emotions and put the events that led to those emotions in order.

Our “upstairs brain” is comprised of the prefrontal and cerebral cortices (responsible for thinking, imagining, planning, controlling emotions). Parents should encourage children to integrate the downstairs limbic system (which quickly processes events and triggers anger and fear responses and leads us to act without thinking) with the upstairs brain. Good upstairs-downstairs integration means we have good emotional awareness and control. Just to make things fun, our cerebral cortices are not fully developed until we are in our mid-twenties. This means children are limited in their ability to plan and exercise control over themselves. Also fun: when a child’s downstairs brain is activated, it can block the child’s ability to access the upstairs brain. This further limits their ability to exercise control.

• Engage don’t enrage – When your child is on the verge of the downstairs brain taking over, engage the upstairs brain. For instance, suggest that you and they problem solve. This could mean finding alternative solutions to what they want rather than denying them something they want outright.

• Use it or lose it – By permitting a child to make low-risk decisions, parents can help him practice using the upstairs brain. Then parents must let the child live with the consequences. Ask your child questions that promote self-reflection and empathy. Ask your child hypothetical questions about difficult moral situations. (See my reservations on this advice below.)

• Move it or lose it – If your child is losing control of the downstairs brain, physical activity can be helpful to regain control. Physical activity can include running, jumping jacks, etc.

Teach children to identify when a past experience may be warping their current perspective. Implicit memories are those that inform current experiences without us being conscious that we are accessing memories. Implicit memories can affect us in positive or negative ways. When this happens, making implicit memories explicit can be very effective. We make memories explicit by acknowledging them and how they influence our current outlook. Of course, this strategy implies that parents have some knowledge of what the relevant implicit memories are.

• Use the remote of the mind – If a given memory creates problems, walk through the story together. While walking through the memory, the child can pause, fast forward, or rewind through parts of the story. This gives them control over the memory and teaches them they can choose which scene to focus on. It allows them to focus on different parts of the memory, skipping scary parts to focus on a happy ending. However, it is important to return to the difficult bits to talk them through in the full context of the memory together.

• Remember to remember – You can invite kids to talk about their experiences. Their storytelling will assist them in integrating their implicit and explicit memories. By focusing on retelling certain stories, you can make those memories more influential.

Teach children to understand that their minds are complex. The book describes this as a “wheel of awareness.” The self is the hub at the center. Thoughts, feelings, dreams, desires, memories, perceptions, and sensations are different points around the outer rim. They are not all of who the child is. It is possible to choose what to focus on in the outer rim at any given time. The child can learn to retreat to the inner hub to see the bigger picture and refocus on a different point in the outer rim.

test

• Let the clouds of emotion roll by – Teach children that feelings come and go. It’s important for children to understand their feelings. It is also important for them to know those same feelings are temporary, changing conditions.

• SIFT – Help your child to understand that there are many things that affect how they are feeling. One way to do this is to “sift” through these inputs. It can help a child to talk through their current awareness of Sensations (Butterflies in the tummy? Hot in the car?), Images (a child may be fixating on certain images which affect how he is feeling), Feelings (teach children to be as precise as possible about the feeling), Thoughts (what is the story the child is telling himself about what is happening?).

• Getting back to the hub – If child understands the factors affecting how she is feeling, she can shift her focus. This enables her to control what she focuses on and how she chooses to think about an experience.

Children should learn to enjoy relationships with others while not losing sight of their individual self. To succeed, children must develop insight into themselves and the ability to see and connect with the minds of others.

I’m glad that this chapter is in the book as it is one of the most valuable parenting takeaways from The Whole Brain Child. Today we are so focused on children becoming the best and most successful versions of themselves. But developing and nurturing rewarding relationships may be one of the skills that is most relevant to lifetime happiness. What good is success if the child doesn’t have anyone to share it with (including you!)?

• Increase the family fun factor – Find ways to have fun and play with your children. Your relationship will model what a close relationship is like. This will also encourage your child to value the relationship with you. It will encourage your child to desire more positive experiences with you in the future.

• Connection through conflict – You should help your child recognize other points of view and to be receptive to nonverbal cues from another person. It’s also important to teach children to make things right after a conflict.

Despite my reservations about some of the strategies, there were some gems that I plan to keep in mind for my own parenting. Below are my actionable parenting takeaways from The Whole Brain Child.

The first of my takeaways from The Whole Brain Child is that children (especially toddlers) primarily perceive the world via their bodies, experiences, and emotions. They are not naturally attuned to reason. This means that if your child is angry or upset or scared or worried, she is not going to respond naturally to logic. It’s a second language to her right now. You need to meet her where she is. Once she is calm, address her with that second language and lead her to the logic. It’s an action item for me because I don’t naturally respond very well to strong emotions. And because it provides good advice regarding timing for important conversations.

Strategies

Reactive Strategy for in-the-Moment Crises: The “connect and redirect” strategy dictates that if your child is acting out, you first address the emotion. Only once the child is calm should you introduce logic and reason to the conversation. Your child is unlikely to be receptive to this approach until she is calm.

Proactive Strategy: You can use the “name it to tame it” strategy to help a child process scary or difficult events. You do this by encouraging activities (storytelling, drawing, making a book) which help the logical part of the brain to process the events.

I was skeptical about some of the advice in this section which seemed to advocate for parents to manipulate their children (with good intentions of course) in order that anger and fear responses are avoided as much as possible. Given my skepticism regarding this approach, the second of my takeaways from The Whole Brain Child is a little more narrow than the book’s proffered advice.

I plan to teach my children the strategies that I have learned to manage my initial fear or anger responses productively. It took me a long time (too long) in my own life to understand that sometimes I’m more prone to an emotional response and that going for a run or a walk or eating a snack helps me to process the situation calmly and come up with an action plan. So my action item here is to make a point to teach my children the strategies that it took me too long to suss out for myself.

Strategies

Reactive Strategy for in-the-Moment Crises: The “move it or lose it” strategy is one that has massively benefitted me in my own life. I think that the key here would be to encourage them to do some activity in order to take their mind off of things or to help process, but with the understanding that my children are unlikely to be able to start this themselves when they most need it. So that I’m not always pushing, I think signing them up for some type of regular sport to help them blow off steam at regular intervals may be helpful. It may also help them form the connection between activity and feeling better in their own minds. My role would be to help them cement the connection between the activity and feeling more clear-headed.

Proactive Strategies Managing the Downstairs Brain: The “use it or lose it” strategy of letting a child make relatively low-risk decisions and letting them live with the consequences seems like a good way to encourage children to understand the costs of decision-making. There are some risks, of course. The primary one I think is making sure that the possible outcomes my child might choose are ones I’m actually willing to live with, without interfering in the choice-making process in a way that makes my children feel manipulated.

Second Proactive Strategy: Some of the techniques described in the section on integrating parts of self seem like they would come in very handy here — discussing how feelings come and go (“let the clouds of emotion roll by”) and how there are many different inputs to the outer wheel of awareness.

The third of my parenting takeaways from The Whole Brain Child is that no matter what you do, you are teaching your child about close relationships and setting up a lifetime of expectation about what a close relationship looks like. So it is vital to ensure your relationship is respectful (on both sides), joyful, and solid.

Strategies

Reactive Strategy: Teach your children that it is important to resolve conflicts, which means that you must also make a point to show them that you resolve any conflicts that they witness, because you are teaching them what they should expect.

Proactive Strategy to Build a Solid Relationship: The “increase the family fun factor” strategy suggests that parents should make a point of having fun experiences with their children. The idea is to build a solid relationship foundation and good memories. This extends to siblings – try to find ways to encourage the siblings to have good experiences together to set them up for a strong lifetime bond. Sometimes you can use fun or silliness to snap them out of an angry or defiant mood.

While the book provides useful strategies for managing your child in the moment, I wonder if it may overpromise on long term results. I don’t see any evidence in the book regarding long term outcomes for children whose parents implement its strategies for whole-brain integration. Also making me cautious: some books suggest that these strategies may in fact be detrimental depending on how they are implemented. See my post regarding Abigail Shrier’s concerns regarding the long term outcomes of some of today’s popular therapy-based parenting approaches (discussed in her book Bad Therapy).

For a Book Grounded in How the Brain Develops, Where’s the Science?

I also found the book simultaneously irritating and condescending at times.

The Whole Brain Child promotes itself on the basis that it is a book grounded in how the brain works. However, it makes a number of imprecise claims. For example, “The upstairs brain is like a muscle: when it gets used, it develops, gets stronger, and performs better.”  Where are the citations? What is the backing for this claim and what research are we relying on for it, specifically? Are we generally extrapolating from studies that show that the brain is elastic? Which structures, specifically, are we talking about here that perform better? Intuitively, it makes sense that you “use it or lose it.” I also thought that the divide between the logical left and emotional right had been set aside, but maybe I’m mis-remembering?

Regardless, for a book that is supposedly grounded in the science of the brain, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of evidentiary support provided.

Long-Term Benefits for Children or Immediate Self Help for Parents?

The second thing that bothered me was that, in many ways, this is a self-help book for parents. It teaches parents to interact with their children in ways that will not trigger a child’s emotional response. Parents learn how to appeal to the better parts of their children. It does this under the guise of integrating the brain, but I’m not sure that these approaches achieve the suggested results. Are there studies on whether these strategies actually result in humans with better integrated brains?

I’m also not sure avoiding pain points when talking to your child actually enables them to appropriately handle those pain points when they are, inevitably, pressed by someone. In other words, this book feels at times like it is teaching parents how to curate their exchanges with their children in order to manufacture the most cooperative, most emotionally even-keeled response. It is not teaching how to stress test children in order for them to be able to endure the stressful situations they will inevitably encounter in their lives.

Parenting Style

I also found myself skeptical of whether implementing all these strategies and being the omniscient parent that the book seems to indicate we parents should aspire to be is actually good for children. First of all, I’m not omniscient. There’s a very good chance I’m not going to know if or what memory from over a year ago is triggering my child’s current anxieties or stubbornness.

Even if I have this extraordinary insight and then if I manage to become the calm facilitator of my child’s introspection and integration, would my child lose something? Isn’t there some good in children learning to deal with frustration and calming themselves down in difficult circumstances rather than learning to trust and follow the sagacious instructions of a well-intentioned authority figure? Is it good for my child to avoid a frustration entirely because I circumvented the conflict by opting to “engage” my child’s upstairs brain, rather than to “enrage” the child’s downstairs brain? Don’t children learn through practice, not curated exchanges?

This is why I say this is a self-help book for parents. Sure, avoiding an argument will likely result in an easier day for the parent. But will it be better for the child, in the long run? I’m not sure. And the book doesn’t provide a clear answer.

The Gardener and the Carpenter, by Alison Gopnik

Given my skepticism about whether some of these strategies are actually beneficial for children in the long term, I may want to do some further research on this question. Naturally, I just plugged in my criticisms above into Chat GPT and asked it what book I should read to follow up on these criticisms. Out popped The Gardener and the Carpenter, so I’m adding it to the list. I’ll see if it lives up to Chat GPT’s promise!

The Triple Package, by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

The Whole Brain Child gives the following advice: “Ask your child hypothetical questions about difficult moral situations.” This struck me as advice to take with some caution. My concern is the following. You talk through the scenario. Your child makes the correct moral choice. You praise her for being good and moral for making the right choice in a hypothetical situation. The child feels good about herself.

But in this hypothetical, it doesn’t cost anything to make the correct choice. She gets a pat on the back, and you feel good about her. It does not make her morally insecure. As I understand from The Triple Package (see the discussion here), insecurity encourages children to strive. An insecure child is more likely to push through to achieve good results in a difficult situation. At least in the academic area, The Triple Package makes the point that children with high self esteem regarding their intelligence are more likely to underachieve. Couldn’t the same be said about children taught to have a high opinion of themselves morally? So perhaps the lesson is to be cautious here about praising your child for making the correct choice. You want to encourage some insecurity about how she would actually perform when there are costs.

---

Disclaimer: This is part of a series of practical takeaways on books that influence how I parent. My takeaways from The Whole Brain Child are my own interpretations and may not reflect the authors’ views. If you want to read more in-depth on the topic, I strongly encourage you to buy The Whole Brain Child.

This blog contains affiliate links. So, if you purchase a book through one of the Amazon links, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting this project!