Reflection Paper
Brian Jay Johnson
Liberty University

Over the last nine months my wife and I have been fretting because we have no experience raising children. Our first child is due within the next four days. Thankfully this book by Siegal & Bryson has shed some light on the subject. To be honest, this class is an answer to our prayers. Every night I have been taking notes and sharing all these profound and revolutionary techniques for developing a child’s brain with my wife before we go to bed. I have always known that my current actions and beliefs could be traced back to the way I was raised! My parents loved and provided for me but they had a very crazy relationship. There was parties, drugs, adultery, fighting, as well as physical and verbal abuse. It is obvious to me now why I have always struggled in relationships. According to Siegal & Bryson, the dysfunction I witnessed between my parents gave me an insecurity about myself, them, and relationships (2011). I am even confident enough to say that, as an alcoholic, my mirror neurons began connecting with their poor behaviors at an early age. Today, I am saved by His grace and being made new! One of my objectives in life is to have a lasting and influential effect on people. It is easy to understand how happy I was ten months ago when my wife told me that we were going to be parents. That meant, I was going to be given an opportunity to have the kind of influence on people that I had longed for!! If you couple that experience with my life objective, hopefully you can see how important it is for me to export all this information to the daughter. I truly love to experience growth through mind and brain training! I am excited to have a chance to offer my daughter the things that I did not have as a child. I am going to center this paper around: how these new understandings of brain development and parenting will help me raise my daughter so she can regulate her emotions (Siegal & Bryson). .As a young child I saw my mother have an emotional flood every time my father did not meet her expectations. It was scary to me! There are a few strategies in our text that show how we can teach our children to regulate their emotions. The first strategy is called: “Connect and Redirect” (Siegal & Bryson, 2011). I was familiar with this method because of my Stephen’s Ministry training at the church. I did not know that the same technique could be used to teach a child how to regulate her emotions. I like to think of this style of parenting as the “meet them where they are” method. When our children are losing control, upset, or angry we have to first connect with our child’s right brain. The right brain is full of their raw emotions (Siegal & Bryson, 2011). We have to make them feel loved, accepted and heard during times of an emotional flood!! In another words we have to meet them right where they are and love them! Even if they are being irrational and driving us crazy, we have to comfort them. This part of the strategy should calm them down to a point that their left brain can come in to play. The left brain is responsible for logic and reason. The left brain is also good for helping us see things from a good and healthy perspective. By guiding them to using their left brain, we can help them overcome being angry, upset, and out of control. But first we must connect with our child’s right brain. Then we can redirect with the left brain to help the child see the situation from rational perspective (Siegal &Bryson, 2011). I love the next strategy!! I have actually been using this method in my own inter-personal relationships. It’s called: “Getting Back to the Hub”. This is a mindsight exercise that involves helping the child be aware of alternative positive things in their mind that they can focus on during difficult times. This method integrates the “Direct and Redirect” method while combining a new strategy. First our child has to develop a wheel of awareness in their minds. That means the child has to construct a bicycle wheel in their head. The wheel must have a hub, spokes and an outer rim. The hub has to be an image of a safe place that the child can go. It has to be an image of something that calms the child. My hub is an image of the three- dimensional-word: “GOD”. I envision that word in big block letters while I climb up in to the “O” and just sit. There I feel safe. I will for sure share this example with my child! From that point on the wheel there are many spokes that extend to the rim of the wheel. Each spoke leads to an image or thought that is going on in the life of the child. I believe it is important for the child to construct his/her own outer rim of positive thoughts and images. That way the child will for sure have positive images readily available to refer to in times of panic, anger, or distress. The whole wheel can be considered parts of the child’s life. The trick is, that when the child is becoming stressed about something they first need to become aware of that feeling, thought, or image (Siegal & Bryson). From that place of awareness the child now has the option to retreat to their “Hub”. The hub is the safe place. From the hub the child should have an array of positive thoughts and images to choose from that will change the way they are thinking and feeling. This change in focus will change the child’s mental state (Siegal & Bryson, 2011). I actually practice this all the time on myself! It would be good to teach this to my child during a time when she is receptive. In order for her to be receptive to this brain-training exercise I have to meet her where she is during her time of distress. So to begin with I have to use part of the “Connect and Redirect” strategy. I love this stuff!!!!!! All the strategies outlined in the text were powerful but the last one I would like to share with my daughter is short and sweet. It is called: “Exercising the Upstairs Brian”. The upstairs brain is the executive functioning part of the brain. It is responsible for planning, logic, and reason. It is essential that my child develops this part of her brain so they she can control times of emotional floods. The upstairs brain is like a muscle. If it is going to be functional, it has to be exercised. So how am I going to teach my child to exercise her upstairs brain? I am going to give her practice at making decisions like: “Do you want to wear the blue or red shoes today?” or “Which park do you want to go to today” or “What would have been the better decision to make?” (Siegal & Bryson). I will give her activities that stir her mind as well as her positive emotions like: crossword puzzles, fun projects, and silly games that require decision making skills etc… I wish that I had been parented by these “revolutionary strategies.” Siegal & Bryson have a very positive perspective on that topic as well! How I thrive as an adult is dependent on how I make sense of all my childhood experiences. A life narrative that is not coherent will limit what I can accomplish relationally, vocationally, and academically. I have to make sense of my mother and father’s limitations and try to break the cycle of handing down that kind of pain. It is up to me to write a narrative that I can learn from and build on!! By using the “Direct and Redirect”, “Getting Back to the Hub”, and “Exercising the Upstairs Brain” methods of parenting, I fully intend to pass down a positive emotional life to my child and give to her the attributes that I did not receive from my parents!! Thanks to Siegal & Bryson for a attuning me to all this information. I know now that the work starts with me and not my child. I am still working on writing a healthy life narrative for myself (Siegal & Bryson, 2011)!!!

References: Siegal, D., Bryson, T. (2011). The whole brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your Child’s developing mind. New York: Mind Your Brain Inc.