The Best Predictor of How Your Children Will Turn Out

Dan Siegel is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist whom I follow and admire greatly. He has written a bunch of books in which he articulates how the brain, relationships, and society work in a lovely blend of science and spirituality. He links interpersonal behaviors to what actually happens in the brain (electrically, biochemically, etc.).  

One of Dan’s major areas of research has involved trying to figure out why we parent the way we do and what determines our child’s attachment to us as his/her parent. A child’s attachment to parents (or primary adult caregivers) is crucial for healthy development and serves as a template for other future relationships in the child’s life. Attachment is huge.

Dan and his researchers hypothesized that a parent’s early life experiences would be the best predictor of how they behave with their own children. It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? What happened to you becomes a part of you and thus influences your future life experiences and relationships. 

It turns out that this is not quite true. The best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is NOT what happened to the parent during his/her childhood, but how the parent has made sense of what it is that happened—“how their minds have shaped their memories of the past to explain who they are in the present” (Dan Siegel). 

This is good stuff to know, especially when thinking about people who have endured early trauma. You are not defined by and your future is not determined by what happened to you or what someone did to you or what you were subjected to. You are not doomed as a parent because you suffered as a child. Though attachment patterns tend to get passed down through generations, they don’t have to. 

We have the power to shape how our children relate and attach to us if we work on ourselves, giving our past much less influence over our future. With awareness and understanding, we can create what Dan Siegel calls a “coherent life story”—an open and honest narrative of how your life experiences have affected you and continue to affect you both negatively and positively. Making sense of your own past could be the best investment in your child’s future. 

****For a quick read, check out: 

http://www.psychalive.org/the-importance-of-making-sense-of-our-pasts-by-daniel-siegel-m-d/

“Yes, It’s Your Parents’ Fault” https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/yes-its-your-parents-fault.html?_r=0&referer=https://news.ycombinator.com/

**For more on attachment, check out Mary Ainsworth’s and John Bowlby’s work (keywords: Attachment Styles, the Strange Situation)

**For more on Dan’s research and how to make sense of your life experiences, check out his book called Mindsight 

Other great books by Dan: 

The Whole Brain Child 

The Mindful Brain

The Mindful Therapist

Parenting From The Inside Out 

Healing Trauma 

The Awesome Jar

The Awesome Jar

Four years ago, I found the best idea ever on Pinterest—“the awesome jar.” Here’s how it goes…Beginning on January 1st and ending on December 31st, you write down awesome things that happen throughout the year, fold them up, and put them in a jar. You can write anything down, from new jobs to babies being born to your favorite song coming on the radio to something funny someone said. The only requirement for what you put in the awesome jar is that it’s something awesome and positive. On New Years Day of the following year, you read through the folded up papers. This is such a treat that I look forward to at the end of every year! Ian and I just read through our fourth awesome jar. It was awesome as ever. Lots of hysterical quotes from our two year old that we totally would have forgotten had it not been for this exercise. We archive the awesome jar entries after we read through them. I find it impossible to throw them out and it’s refreshing to pull one out from a previous year if I need a pick-me-up at some point.

It’s amazing how many good things happen to you that you forget. Our brains are wired to remember scary, bad, threatening, negative things and our media is doing nothing to help steer us in a positive, calm, trauma-sensitive direction. The awesome jar is a great way to remind yourself of how much good is in your life and in the world; even if there’s a bunch of bad in there, too. It’s free. It’s something the whole family can contribute to in some way. It guarantees smiles to start the new year. It creates good energy and is healthy for the soul. I encourage you to do this. If you fall off and go for quite some time without putting an entry in, just pick it back up! 

Some personal tips:

1. Date your entries. It seems like you wouldn’t care to know the date or you may think you’ll remember when it happened. You won’t. Date them! 

2. It’s the little things in life! You have a good chance of remembering big life events, but maybe not the details of these events. I’ll never forget my daughter’s birthday, but I might forget how awesome it was when the doctor held her up after delivery and said, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, QUINN!” Put little things in the jar, too. For example, a great meal you made, a nice comment from a teacher on a paper, finding ten bucks in the pocket of your winter jacket.

3. Keep the awesome jar in a centrally located spot in your house with a pen and papers next to it. It should be visible and ready for entries at all times. It’s fun when people see it and ask you about it, too. 

Find, focus on, and remember the good. Happy New Year.