Help Parents Connect and Redirect with their Child During Tough Moments
You can help parents thrive with this whole-brain strategy if you remember the strategy contains two steps:
Step 1: Connect with the Right
When your child is upset, logic often won’t work until we’ve responded to the right brain’s emotional needs. Acknowledging feelings in a nonjudgmental way, using physical touch, empathetic facial expressions, and a nurturing tone of voice, are all ways you use your right brain to connect. By starting with this act of attunement, you allow your child to “feel felt” before you begin trying to solve problems or address the situation.Step 2: Redirect with the Left
Once you sense that your child’s brain has settled enough that it can handle a left-brain, logical approach, you can then redirect by problem-solving with your child or making suggestions on what he can do now that he’s feeling calmer and more in control of himself.What Connecting Does Not Look Like
Where we most often see Connect and Redirect go awry is when parents become triggered by their child’s tone of voice or “irrational” demands, so the parents are less able to connect with real attunement. As a result, their words sound like they’re connecting, but the overall response doesn’t feel warm and nurturing.For example, do you ever hear yourself saying, “I can tell you’re really mad right now,” but you say it with tone of irritation or like a robot instead of warmth? Or have you caught yourself frowning, hands on hips, as you say, “I know you’re mad at me, but I told you to hurry three times!” Connection requires more than just kind words or an acknowledgement of an emotion. The overall feel of the interaction needs to be full of warmth and affection for connection to occur. Our goal is for him to “feel felt” and experience that we “get” what he’s feeling. We want him to know that we’re there for him.
Use these free worksheets straight from The Whole-Brain Child Workbook to help your clients learn more about this whole-brain strategy and connect with their child in the way the child needs to bring their brain back to a state of integration.
The more parents witness their child responding positively to the Connect and Redirect strategy, they more liekyl they will be to use it. And the more they practice using it, the more it will become one of their default responses when their child is having a hard time.
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conference
Live in Orlando, FL, and broadcast virtually, this is your chance to learn the latest strategies, techniques and interventions to grow your therapeutic toolbox. You’ll walk away with evidence-based strategies from today’s most popular modalities like Play Therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), Interpersonal Neurobiology, Polyvagal Theory, Attachment-Focused Play, and more - to support your young clients.
You'll learn from:
- Tina Payne Bryson, co-author with Dan Siegel of two New York Times bestsellers including The Whole-Brain Child, on the power of showing up for kids and rethinking challenging kid behavior beyond the diagnosis
- Carmen Jimenez-Pride, developer of Diversity in Play Therapy, Inc and certified IFS therapist, on practicing cultural humility and addressing protective systems with IFS therapy in the clinical setting
- Steve O’Brien, author of The Essential Guide to Treating Child and Adolescent Anxiety, on treatment tips for socially anxious youth and kids in the thick of post-divorce conflict
- Dafna Lender, author of the popular Integrative Attachment Family Therapy, on a powerful mental health intervention to reduce attachment trauma in families
The Whole-Brain Child Workbook has a unique, interactive approach that allows readers not only to think more deeply about how the ideas fit their own parenting approach, but also develop specific and practical ways to implement the concepts—and bring them to life for themselves and for their children.
Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry. He is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, founding co-director of UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center, founding co-investigator at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational center devoted to promoting insight, compassion, and empathy in individuals, families, institutions, and communities.
Dr. Siegel's psychotherapy practice spans thirty years, and he has published extensively for the professional audience. He serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which includes over 70 textbooks. Dr. Siegel's books include his five New York Times bestsellers: Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence; Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, and two books with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D, The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. His other books include:The Power of Showing Up also with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., The Developing Mind, The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology, Mindsight, The Mindful Brain, The Mindful Therapist, Parenting from the Inside Out (with Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.), and The Yes Brain (also with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D). He has been invited to lecture for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, and TEDx.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Dan Siegel is the medical director with Lifespan Learning Institute and is the executive director with Center for Human Development and Mindsight Institute, and the founding editor with Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology. He has employment relationship with the University of Washington and UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Siegel receives royalties as a published author. He receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Dan Siegel is an honorary member of the Austrian Federal Association for Mindfulness and serves on the Garrison Institute Board. He is an advisory board member with Gloo, Blue School, and Convergence.
Dr. Tina Payne Bryson (she/her) is the co-author (with Dan Siegel) of two New York Times bestsellers - The Whole-Brain Child selling over a million copies. Dr. Bryson is also the author of The Bottom Line for Baby (Random House 2020) and co-author (with Dan Siegel) of The Power of Showing Up (Random House 2020) and The Yes Brain (Random House 2018). Her upcoming book, The Way of Play (Random House 2025), co-authored with Georgie Wisen-Vincent, will be released January 2025.
Tina is an LCSW, and the founder/executive director of The Center for Connection (“CFC”), a multidisciplinary clinical practice with an interpersonal neurobiology lens; of the Play Strong Institute, a center devoted to the study, research, and practice of play therapy through a neurodevelopment lens; and The Center for Connection and Neurodiversity, a wing of the CFC devoted to celebrating neurodifferences and providing brain-based occupational therapy, and interdisciplinary clinical work across the lifespan.
Tina keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for kids, parents, educators, clinicians, and industry leaders all over the world, and she makes frequent media appearances (for example, in TIME Magazine, Good Morning America, Huffington Post, Redbook, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Real Simple). When she isn’t teaching, she consults with various companies and organizations, including the Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) where she was project director for mental or emotional performance, offering direct support to athletes and supporting research. She also works as a child development specialist at St. Mark’s School in Pasadena, CA. A graduate of Baylor University, Tina earned her LCSW and PhD from the University of Southern California, where her research explored attachment science, childrearing theory, and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology.
Tina emphasizes that before she’s a parenting educator, or a researcher, she’s a mom. She limits her clinical practice and speaking engagements so that she can spend time with her family. Alongside her husband of 30 years, parenting her three boys is what makes her happiest.
Tina’s professional life now focuses on taking research and theory from various fields of science, and offering it in a way that is clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful. As she puts it, “For parents, clinicians, and teachers, learning about how kids’ (and their own) brains work is surprisingly practical, informing how they approach discipline, how they help kids deal with everyday struggles, and ultimately how they connect with the children they care about.”
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Tina Payne Bryson has employment relationships with The Center for Connection, The Play Strong Institute, and Saint Mark's Episcopal School. She receives royalties as a published author. Tina Payne Bryson receives a speaking honorarium, book and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Tina Payne Bryson serves on the advisory board for Austin Interpersonal Neurobiology and Fuel Ed. She is a member of the National Association of Social Workers, is a distinguished member of the San Gabriel Valley Psychology Association, and a member of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
