122 Quotes by Daniel J. Siegel

You don’t have to try too hard to have fun with your preschooler. Just being with you is paradise for him.

Imagine the last time you felt really sad or angry or upset. How would it have felt if someone you love told you, “You need to calm down,” or “It’s not that big a deal”? Or what if you were told to “go be by yourself until you’re calm and ready to be nice and happy”? These responses would feel awful, wouldn’t they? Yet these are the kinds of things we tell our kids all the time. When we do, we actually increase their internal distress, leading to more acting out, not less.

Using only the right or left brain would be like trying to swim using only one arm.

Loss of someone we love cannot be adequately expressed with words. Grappling with loss, struggling with disconnection and despair, fills us with a sense of anguish and actual pain. Indeed, the parts of our brain that process physical pain overlap with the neural centers that record social ruptures and rejection. Loss rips us apart.

Children are much more apt to share and talk while building something, playing cards, or riding in the car than when you sit down and look them right in the face and ask them to open up.

That might mean giving a warning five minutes before having to leave the park, or enforcing a consistent bedtime so your kids don’t get too tired and grumpy.

Consider the difference between saying “I am sad” and “I feel sad.” Similar as those two statements may seem, there is actually a profound difference between them. “I am sad” is a kind of self-definition, and a very limiting one. “I feel sad” suggests the ability to recognize and acknowledge a feeling, without being consumed by it. The focusing skills that are part of mindsight make it possible to see what is inside, to accept it, and in the accepting to let it go, and, finally, to transform it.

Attunement requires presence but is a process of focused attention and clear perception. We.

Children need to understand the way the world works: what’s permissible and what’s not.