Parenting from inside out

The best predictor of a child's security of attachment to a caregiver is the way that adult has made sense of his or her own childhood experience.

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Making sense of your life is the best gift you can give your child, or yourself.

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Secure attachment is but one piece of a large developmental puzzle that includes many factors that influence how our children grow into their adolescent and adult years.

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Attachment is one factor we, as parents, can influence directly in our children's lives because of this crucial inside-out idea: it isn't what happened to you in your childhood that is the critical factor --- it is how you make sense of how those experiences have influenced your life.

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Your child will thrive, your interpersonal relationships will prosper, and even your relationship with yourself will blossom and become filled with more self-compassion.

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Contrary to what many people believe, your early experiences do not determine your fate. If you had a difficult childhood but have come to make sense of those experiences, you are not bound to re-create the same negative interactions with your own children. Without such self-understanding, however, science has shown that history will likely repeat itself, as negative patterns of family interactions are passed down through the generations.

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When we become parents we are given an incredible opportunity to grow as individuals.

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Understanding how we remember and how we construct a picture of ourselves as a part of the world we live in can help us to make sense of how the past continues to impact our lives. ...... Having knowledge about the science of development and human experience can prepare your mind to build a deeper understanding of the emotional lives of your children and you yourself.

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Being mindful. When we are being fully present as parents, when we are mindful, it enables our children to fully experience themselves in the moment. Children learn about themselves by the way we communicate with them. When we are preoccupied with the past or worried about the future, we are physically present with our children but are mentally absent. Children don't need us to be fully available all the time, but they do need our presence during connecting interactions. 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. It is within our children's emotional connections with us that they develop a deeper sense of themselves and a capacity for relating.

Lifelong learning. The connections among neurons determines how mental processes are created. Experience shapes neural connections in the brain. Therefore, experience shapes the mind.

Response Flexibility. Response flexibility is the ability of the mind to sort through a wide variety of mental processes, such as impulses, ideas, and feelings, and come up with a thoughtful, nonautomatic response.

Under certain conditions, response flexibility may be impaired. When tired, hungry, frustrated, disappointed, or angered, we can lose the ability to be reflective and become limited in our capacity to choose our behaviors. We may be swept up in our own emotions and lose perspective. At these times, we can no longer think clearly and are at high risk of overreacting and causing distress to our children.

Children challenge us to remain flexible and to maintain emotional equilibrium. It can be difficult to balance flexibility with the importance of structure in a child's life. Parents can learn how to achieve this balance and nurture flexibility in their children by modeling flexible responses in their own interactions. When we are flexible, we have a choice about what behaviors to enact and what parental approach and values to support. We have the ability to be proactive and not just reactive. Response flexibility enables us to contain a wide array of emotions and to think through how we will response after we consider another's point of view. When parents have the ability to response with flexibility to their children, it is more likely that their children will develop flexibility as well.

Mindsight. Parents often respond to their child's behavior by focusing on the surface level fo the experience and not on the deeper level of the mind. ....... Parents who focus on the level of mind with their children nurture the development of emotional understanding and compassion. talking with children about their thoughts, memories, feelings provides them with the essential interpersonal experiences necessary for self-understanding and building their social skills.

Being sensitive to nonverbal communication helps us to better understand our children and allows us to consider their point of view and to relate with compassion.

Joyful living. Enjoy your child and sharing in the awe of discovering what it means to be alive, to be a person in a wondrous world, is crucial for the development of your child's positive sense of self. ..... Remembering and reflecting on the experiences of day-to-day life creates a deep sense of feeling connected and understood.

Children need to be enjoyed and valued, not managed. We often focus on the problems of life rather than on the possibilities for enjoyment and learning available to us. When we are too busy doing things for our children, we forget how important it is to simply be with them.

When we become parents, we often see ourselves as our children's teachers, but we soon discover that our children are our teachers as well.