The Whole - Brain Child : 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

Order Now - The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind









NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Simple, smart, and effective solutions to your child’s struggles.”—Harvey Karp, M.D.
 
“Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson have created a masterly, reader-friendly guide to helping children grow their emotional intelligence. This brilliant method transforms everyday interactions into valuable brain-shaping moments. Anyone who cares for children—or who loves a child—should read The Whole-Brain Child.”—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
 
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children. The authors explain—and make accessible—the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,” which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids throw tantrums, fight, or sulk in silence. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth.             
 
Complete with age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.
 
“[A] useful child-rearing resource for the entire family . . . The authors include a fair amount of brain science, but they present it for both adult and child audiences.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Strategies for getting a youngster to chill out [with] compassion.”—The Washington Post
 
“This erudite, tender, and funny book is filled with fresh ideas based on the latest neuroscience research. I urge all parents who want kind, happy, and emotionally healthy kids to read The Whole-Brain Child. This is my new baby gift.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia and The Shelter of Each Other

“Gives parents and teachers ideas to get all parts of a healthy child’s brain working together.”—Parent to Parent.


Information about Author –

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he is the co-author of Parenting from the Inside Out and the author of Mindsight and the internationally acclaimed professional texts The Mindful Brain and The Developing Mind. Dr. Siegel keynotes conferences and presents workshops throughout the world. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
 
Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., is a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist, parenting consultant, and the director of parenting education and development for the Mindsight Institute. A frequent lecturer to parents, educators, and professionals, she lives near Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

 Daniel J. Siegel

Tina Payne Bryson

SOME OF THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS ABOUT THIS HEALTH CARE OR MEDICAL BOOK  [ SAMPLE ]

1) Very Helpful, Easy to Implement Nurturing Strategies - As a new parent, I am just beginning to read up child development, discipline, and parenting. This short book gets right to the point and gives parents twelve key strategies that will help them parent their kids without losing it. The twelve strategies are:

1: Connect and Redirect: Connect emotionally, redirect logically

2: Name It To Tame It: Taming emotions through storytelling

3: Engage, Don't Enrage: Appeal to logic and planning, not to emotion

4: Use It Or Lose It: Encourage planning, thinking, and other left-brain activities

5: Move It Or Lose It: Body over mind method to restore balance

6: Use The Remote Of The Mind: Teaching your child to view his/her memories while maintaining control

7: Remember To Remember: Exercise memory often

8: Let The Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Teaching your kids about temporary feelings

9: SIFT: Using sensation, image, feeling, and thought to help your child understand

10: Exercise Mindsight: Focusing with your mind (For more on this, see one of the author's other books, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

11: Increase The Family Fun Factor: The science behind building in fun family times

12: Connect Through Conflict: Turning conflict into opportunity

Some of the things I really liked about this book include:

* Cartoon explanations and demonstrations of each point. Very helpful.

* Break down at the end of each chapter for kids.

* Chart at the end of the book on how to integrate each strategy for different ages - very valuable, and a great addition to the book.

The only negative thing I can say is that some of the strategies seemed too much alike to warrant another strategy (ex. Remote of Mind and Name It to Tame It). Use the chart at the back, and this little book will help you survive everyday parenting struggles. Highly Recommended.

Another book on redirected parenting, this one with a Christian focus instead of neuroscience: Gospel-Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting

Book that really got me interested on the power of the mind and memory: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

By Bradley Bevers VINE VOICE on September 1, 2011

2) So much more than I expected. - The Whole-Brain Child was so much more than I was expecting. I selected it because my daughter was going through some struggles with her 2 year old twins and my other daughter's 4 year old went through several weeks of separation from his mom and dad and now has to adjust to life with twin brothers. I was looking for things I might be able to do or to pass on to them that might help. What I wasn't expecting was getting some insight into why I feel it necessary to have dessert after a meal or why I have some of the anxieties I have.

I found the book easy to read and understand. There are many specific examples of how each technique can be used. I found these examples to be very useful. Most seems to be directed toward school-age children, but the back of the book has a chart that breaks down how to use each strategy with different age groups. There is 0 - 3, 3 - 6, 6 - 9, and 9 - 12. This makes it easier to see how each technique can be used with the children in your life.

Integrating the brain makes sense, especially the way it is explained here. We have a right brain (emotional) and a left brain (logical) and when we use both our lives are more balanced, meaningful, and creative. We also have an upstairs and a downstairs brain. Downstairs is the more primitive brain, which is intact at birth. The upstairs brain is under construction during childhood and gets remodeled during adolescence. Upstairs can be overtaken by the downstairs especially during high-emotion situations. When we "lose it", our downstairs has taken over. There are also different kinds of memories that need to be integrated as well as self and others. In general, this book is about integrating all the different parts of our brain. Doing so makes it so much easier for us to live happy, productive lives. I am ready to use some of the strategies explained in this book.

ETA: This book must have made a big impression on me. It hasn't been that long since I finished reading it, but I find myself quoting from it frequently. Sometimes it's when I am talking to my children about their children, but I have also had conversations with teachers I used to work with where information I learned in this books added to the discussion.

By reg on September 2, 2011

Less Medicine , More Health : 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care

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The author of the highly acclaimed Overdiagnosed describes seven widespread assumptions that encourage excessive, often ineffective, and sometimes harmful medical care. 
 
You might think the biggest problem in medical care is that it costs too much. Or that health insurance is too expensive, too uneven, too complicated—and gives you too many forms to fill out. But the central problem is that too much medical care has too little value.

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch is worried about too much medical care. It’s not to deny that some people get too little medical care, rather that the conventional concern about “too little” needs to be balanced with a concern about “too much”: too many people being made to worry about diseases they don’t have—and are at only average risk to get; too many people being tested and exposed to the harmful effects of the testing process; too many people being subjected to treatments they don’t need—or can’t benefit from. 

The American public has been sold the idea that seeking medical care is one of the most important steps to maintain wellness. Surprisingly, medical care is not, in fact, well correlated with good health. So more medicine does not equal more health; in reality the opposite may be true. 

The general public harbors assumptions about medical care that encourage overuse, assumptions like it’s always better to fix the problem, sooner (or newer) is always better, or it never hurts to get more information. Less Medicine, More Health pushes against established wisdom and suggests that medical care can be too aggressive. Drawing on his twenty-five years of medical practice and research, Dr. Welch notes that while economics and lawyers contribute to the excesses of American medicine, the problem is essentially created when the general public clings to these powerful assumptions about the value of tests and treatments—a number of which are just plain wrong. 

By telling fascinating (and occasionally amusing) stories backed by reliable data, Dr. Welch challenges patients and the health-care establishment to rethink some very fundamental practices. His provocative prescriptions hold the potential to save money and, more important, improve health outcomes for us all. Shop Amazon - Top Rated in Health & Personal Care

Author

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch is an academic physician, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School, and a nationally recognized expert on the effects of medical testing. He has been published in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on Today. Dr. Welch is the author of three previous books, including the highly acclaimed Overdiagnosed. He lives in Thetford, Vermont.

SOME OF THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS ABOUT THIS BOOK [ SAMPLE ]

1) Pretty much covers the same ground that the author's previous two books covered - This is the third book in a series of books either authored or co-authored by Welch making the argument that we suffer potentially serious consequences from overdiagnosis and overtreatment. I've now read all three of them. The central points Welch makes in all of them are important ones, for both our personal health and the country's fiscal health: overtreatment is rife, dangerous, and hard to avoid. Welch makes the points persuasively, using the right blend of anecdote and (quasi-) technical explanation. (Think VERY hard before you have that prostate exam, that mammogram, that back surgery, and before you sign on to take statins for slightly elevated cholesterol.) But I don't think that it takes three books to make the argument; there is a lot of repetition and overlap. I would certainly recommend reading ONE of the books, and have in fact made that recommendation to friends, students and colleagues. But I can't recommend buying or reading all three: In my opinion, there simply isn't enough material to justify writing three books on the topic all directed at a popular/non-specialist audience. This third book is the most personal of the three books. But middle book, the co-authored OVERDIAGNOSIS, is the best.

By worddancer VINE VOICE on January 13, 2015

2) Glad I didnt't read this book before my mother's back surgery - I wish I wouldn't have read this book. I say that not because the book was bad, but because it was too good. Some of the chapters just hit a little too close to home. One chapter in particular filled me with fear and another filled me with sorrow.

I started reading the book when my 80 year-old mother went in for major back surgery. I breezed through the first four chapters during her five hours of surgery and two hours in post-op care. The chapters were educational and enlightening. Dr. Welch makes a very compelling case about how we are being over-diagnosed and over-treated. The tone of the book was witty, so I was chucking and nodding my head as I read about data overload, U-shaped curves, the general uselessness of screening, the harm that false alarms can cause, the analogy of types of cancers to barn-yard animals: cancer that will never cause a problem are turtles, cancers that can be fought are rabbits, and cancers you can do nothing about are birds.

Then I got to Chapter 5 and the assumption: Action Is Always Better Than Inaction. First Dr. Welch gave some statistics on hospital infections after surgery: 1.7 Million "health care associated infections" associated with 98,987 deaths in 2002. Whoa doggie, my mom was in surgery. Next he talked about "postoperative cognitive dysfunction" after surgery particularly in the elderly. (Getting scare now - does 80 count as elderly?) Then he talked about needless surgery due to back pain, and how the majority of the time it doesn't work. I wanted to cry at this point, was mom doing this all for nothing? But I felt better when I read the statement: "Back surgery should only be done on patients who don't have back pain". My mom's surgery was to relieve nerve compression caused by severe scoliosis. But then the section on "invasive surgery" had me worried again: her cut was 15 inches long. And the section "Inaction = Allowing the Body to Heal" had me second guessing the decision to have the surgery. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions. I had to stop reading at this point.

I started reading again a few weeks later only to begin Chapter 7 and the assumption: It's all About Avoiding Death. The central theme of the chapter is that sometimes the quality of life is more important than prolonging life by a few months. Particularly with painful, debilitating cancer treatments. This chapter had me sobbing with tears pouring from my eyes. It brought back so many sad memories that are still raw and close to the surface. Three years ago my little brother was diagnosed with colon cancer that had moved to his liver. He fought the "cancer" battle for two years (MD Anderson). He went through all the pain and suffering because he wanted to see his son graduate from high school, he wanted to see his daughter go to her first dance, he wanted to go to the beach one last time. During one treatment (they inserted a tube through his groin and were pumping chemo drugs directly into his liver) he went into cardiac arrest. The doctors brought him back, but later he told me he wished they would have let him die. He said the treatments were too much for his wife, his kids, his family, and him; that sometime the quality of life is more important than quantity. He said it is better to quickly die with dignity than to wither away in excruciating pain. All my brothers' words were being echoed back to me by Dr. Welch.

I'm crying again. Excellent book but like I said I wish I had not read it.

By TooManyHobbies TOP 500 REVIEWER on February 21, 2015