Dan Siegel

What produces deep and lasting success for kids? A secure attachment to a caregiver who shows up. How do we provide that secure attachment? First, by developing a coherent narrative that makes sense of our own early life experiences.

When parents consistently show up, their children’s minds come to expect that the world is a place that can be understood and meaningfully interacted with—even in times of trouble and pain. Showing up thus creates in our kids neural pathways that lead to selfhood, grit, strength, and resilience.

Even if we didn’t have secure attachment from our own caregivers, we can still provide it to our own children, if we’ve reflected on and made sense of our own attachment history. You really can provide a loving, stable foundation for your child, even if you didn’t receive one from your own parents.

Anything we give attention to, anything we emphasize in our experience and interactions, creates new links in the brain. Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.

Your job as a parent is not to prevent them from experiencing setbacks and failures, but to give them the tools and emotional resilience they need to weather life’s storms.

We have a message of great hope: Even if you didn’t receive secure attachment from your parents, you can still offer it to your own children. Secure attachment can be learned and earned.

Parents have two primary jobs when it comes to keeping their kids safe and making them feel safe. The first is to protect them from harm. The second is to avoid becoming the source of fear and threat.

When you react to your kids from a threatened brain state, you can still repair the breach in the relationship. In doing so, you can provide your kids with all kinds of valuable experiences—even if you’re not acting exactly how you’d like.

None of us do this right all the time. Life is hard and complex, and having the intention to create clear and consistent connection is the best we can offer—repairing when it doesn’t go well, and maintaining the mindset to show up as best we can as life unfolds.

Notice that we’re not describing some kind of superparent here. You don’t have to be able to read minds and transcend all your shortcomings or achieve some sort of spiritual enlightenment. You just have to show up. Show up with presence, and with the intention to let your kids feel that you get them and that you’ll be there for them, no matter what. That’s what it means to see—really see—your child.

Simply put, children with secure attachment—those who have been fortunate enough to acquire a secure internal working model of attachment—develop the characteristics and skills that allow them to live happier and more successful lives. The benefits of security are striking.

The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.

Within each of us is an inherent drive toward health—a push toward integration.

An old, dear and now-departed friend, the poet, philosopher, and all around wonderfully wise John O’Donohue, captured the essence of this emergent flow when he said that he’d love to live like a river, carried by the surprise of his own unfolding.

How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.

With practice, a mindful state becomes a mindful trait.

The observational distance that allows us to watch our own mental activity is an important first step toward regulating and stabilizing the mind.

Exercising attention is like building a muscle.

People with mindfulness training have a shift in their brains toward an “approach state” that allows them to move toward rather than away from challenging situations. This is the brain signature of resilience.

One of the key practical lessons of modern neuroscience is that the power to direct our attention has within it the power to shape our brain’s firing patterns, as well as the power to shape the architecture of the brain itself.

There are specific activities and experiences that can nurture mindsight throughout the lifespan... mindsight is a form of expertise that can be honed in each of us, whatever our early history.

How you make sense of your childhood experiences has a profound effect on how you parent your own children.

How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.

Exercising attention is like building a muscle.

When something inevitably goes wrong in a relationship we want to repair it as quickly as we can.