Modern Day Parenting Series - Perspective 1

Perspective 1

Book Reference - The Whole-Brain Child

Authors - Dr. Daniel J. Siegel and Dr Tina Payne Bryson

This is an awesome book that explains the hues and cries of modern day parenting and how today's parents at every stage of their child's life can do a better job of nurturing their child's developing mind and ensure a holistic development of the child. You can get a copy of the book from here - https://amzn.to/47lkbhG

The authors have devised 12 absolutely phenomenal strategies that would cater to most of the real life tough situations faced by parents in handling their kids emotionally, in addition to driving their point of learning across the kid's understanding. I am sharing some personal parenting experiences which are very relatable to the points explained by the authors and how it helps parents like us to try better approaches while dealing with today's kids.

Brain as an Integrated Functioning Organ!

A human brain has different functions to perform. One side focuses on logical reasoning, it's linguistic and orderly, likes precision, whereas, the other side of the brain deals with the emotional aspects, it's more abstract and focuses on the expressions and a bigger picture of things instead of a lot of detailing. For a fruitful brain function, both the parts of the brain need to work in conjunction. This operation which happens as a result of combined effort of both the sides of the brain is termed as 'Integration'. If any one of the functions is superimposing the other one, that is when an imbalance is created in how we as humans deal with the situation. Kids are developing brains and it is imperative that in their scenarios, this integration within the two halves of the brain needs to happen in order to see a balanced behavior.

River of Well Being - Can we stay afloat?

We, as parents, are not just aware, but have been through all sorts of tantrums, frustrations, anger that our kids exhibit in a variety of scenarios or repetitive scenarios on a day to day basis. For example - In my case, my son throws tantrums everyday morning to get ready for school as he does not like to change his clothes and dress up in the school uniform. So yes, this is a daily tantrum episode from the guy and we have to just deal with it come what may as we are all bound by time. What does his behavior signify? It signifies 'Rigidity'! Then, to tackle this situation, I urge him to change his clothes and at times, also make him do this activity forcefully. His reaction suddenly aggravates into yelling, screaming and running away from me to the farthest corner of the house and not ready to listen to anything else. What does this signify? This behavior signifies 'Chaos'!

So, to put in brief, River of Well Being is a state of mind at peace. We feel good when we are riding in our canoe at the central portion of this river, equidistant from the banks of this river. Chaos and Rigidity are the two banks of this river. Whenever our boat inclines to one side of the river, we enter into a disturbed state of mind where either we become very stubborn and don't let things go or don't give away control over things OR we get into a chaotic mode where we just want to react and not listen and there's no control over things at all.

The whole idea is to stay afloat and if we are deviating towards either of the banks, then how to come back again in the Centre i.e. a stable state of mind.

Strategy 1 - Helping your child work from Both Sides of the Brain - By connecting and redirecting the Emotional Waves

When we come across a situation where the child is constantly complaining about something that seems very weird and non sensical to us, we need to still acknowledge the fact that it is still a real concern for the child and hence, valid. It also implies that the right brain of the child is superseding it right now and this is not the time to directly get into explaining the child logically on why he or she is acting wrong.

First step here is to connect with the child's right brain by using our right brain. In short, connect emotionally. Give in to the kid's thoughts, acknowledge and say that yes whatever you are saying makes sense, can we try doing the same thing in another way and can the situation be re-done by avoiding the not so good part of it? Avoid commanding at this time.

Once the child agrees to the conversation, then redirect to the Left brain. Now, when things have started to settle down, it's time to explain about why some things are not possible and why we shouldn't think or do them. The child will hopefully be in an integrated state of mind to now listen to you and gain learnings for next time.

Alright, I hear you! In spite of this, there would be a day or a situation wherein nothing from the above will work out. The child will be so heavily embodied with the right brain emotions that it will be difficult to perform this approach. In that case, the only thing is to wait and try and bring in some fruitful distraction which will ease out the problem and bring him back into a neutral zone.

Strategy 2 - Name it to Tame it! - Try telling stories to ease out bigger emotions

Ever felt disgruntled as a parent after your child went through a fearful or unpleasant experience?  Both you and the child are now in a state of some shock and confusion which is not paving way for new thoughts to come in and hindering you from feeling happy and enjoy other things nonetheless. There's a way to overcome this kind of phase and make the situation better.

I shall explain with another example. We once went to the first and newly opened Grand Store IKEA in Bangalore. Thought we will have some great time with kids looking around for what's trending nowadays in the décor field. Not much time had passed when my son just disappeared from our sight as we were little engrossed in checking out the crockery sets. I just looked around and he was nowhere to be found! The place was filled with lots of people and the crowd was just spinning in my head. I left everything and started searching him by running in all directions. After almost 10 minutes (which otherwise might just be quick 10, were actually the most harrowing 10 mins I will ever experience), we found him as he was also heading back with tears in his eyes after realizing that he has lost us too and glad we found him soon in that crowd.

Now how do we recuperate from this fearful experience? The only way to calm our emotions down and prevent them from recurring is to sit and process that incident as a story once again with the kid and take him through it as to how it happened, and what would have avoided that from happening. An emotional closure needs to happen in the child's mind. Story telling is a very nice way to connect with the child's right brain and making him/her understand about the problem and how to look at it with a complete picture. This will ensure some fruitful outcomes as learnings that the child should be alert, not leave hands or lookout for the parents and not get carried away. This applies to parents as well!

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