Do you desire to build healthy and secure relationships with your children?
Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell’s book Parenting from the Inside Out is an excellent place to begin to achieve this goal.
Their approach to parenting is based on the belief that a parent’s own childhood experiences impact how the individual parents his or her children. The authors encourage readers to increase their self-understanding about the approach they take to parenting, which then assists with building more secure, deeper relationships with one’s children that are based in emotional well-being.
Creating positive relationships with one’s children greatly serves their development; positive connections in a child’s life are “a source of resilience for dealing with life’s challenges” (p. XVII).
To help readers increase their self-understanding about their childhoods and create secure relationships with their children, Siegel and Hartzell present the main points of their approach (mindfulness, lifelong learning, response flexibility, mindsight, and joyful living) as well as neurobiological and psychological concepts (e.g., attachment) in an easy to follow and practical manner that allows parents to apply the concepts to their lives.
This is aided by “inside-out” exercises that help parents in the self-exploration process. There are also sections called “spotlight on science” that present additional information on the research base of the ideas discussed in each chapter.
I would highly recommend this book to parents of children of all ages. I believe that Parenting from the Inside Out would offer parents insights into how their childhoods are impacting their reactions to and connections with their children.
The book would provide them with the opportunity to increase self-awareness, and as a result, not repeat cycles of abuse that may have occurred in childhood.
Even if you did not experience abuse as a child, I would still recommend the book because deeper self-understanding and acknowledgment of who you are as a parent prompts an authentic, caring, and responsive relationship between you and your children.
At The Refuge Center, we are ready to help you begin the process of learning more about you, your history, and your relationship with your children.
Siegel, D. J., & Hartzell, M. (2013). Parenting from the inside out: How a deeper self understanding can help you raise children who thrive. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
