Let's take a look at Parenting From the Inside Out by Daniel J. Siegal and Mary Hartzell. At its heart, Parenting from the Inside Out is somewhat of a manifesto statement for attachment parenting. Although it doesn’t call itself attachment parenting, that’s what it is: Dan Siegel, a professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA, and Mary Hartzell, a child development specialist and parent educator, draw deeply from attachment theory and research. Rather than offering specific advice on what to do in specific circumstances, Siegel and Hartzell outline the spirit of how to parent using one’s own nervous system
regulation as a springboard for helping children regulate their own emotions and nervous systems.
Parenting from the Inside Out also provides plenty of good exercise for reflecting on childhood experiences and how they may be affecting us in our roles as parents. If you haven’t spent much time exploring your own childhood or your experiences of being parented, these invitations can be especially interesting and helpful.
Another theme that runs throughout the book is integrating the left and right hemispheres of the brain so that both children and parents can make sense of their experiences fully. We only develop episodic memory between the ages of three and four and so much of our early life experiences become stored in implicit memory. By consciously accessing both hemispheres, with activities such as journaling, we can access and make sense of more of these implicit experiences.
The book is approachable enough that anyone can pick it up and get something from it, while also presenting the science behind the concepts concisely and clearly. It explores concurrent communication between child and parent: responding to your child’s cues accurately and genuinely, and then responding to their responses as well. Basically: having an accurate and genuine connection with your child will help you both stay happy, grounded, and connected.
And finally a note on inclusivity. Parenting from The Inside Out isn’t especially heteronormative, but it isn’t especially inclusive either. Because it focuses squarely on the reader and their own parenting experiences, it sidesteps a lot, but not all of, the assumption of a one man and one woman relationship that so often plagues parenting books. It does a good job of acknowledging that people become parents in many different way and may have non-heteronormative relationships, but it also doesn’t go out of its way to address LGBTQA families.
On a more personal note, this was the first book that I picked up when I found out that I was going to be a father, and it remains one that I refer back to.
You can support a great indie bookstore, Townie Books of Crested Butte, and order it here:
Comentários