Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive: 10th Anniversary Edition

One of the best books I have ever read.

If you are a person, a parent, a grandparent, a friend of a friend ... someone who is seeking to decode the mysteries of compassionate understanding of self and others, someone who is seeking to participate in the growth and encouragement of others who are human path of engagement in personal development and the growth of others ... teachers ... psychologists ... therapists ... spiritual directors ... physicians ... this book is a doorway to an expanding universe of 2011+ technical, science based knowledge of how 'self' emerges from the 3 pounds of jello sitting in your skull in the process of interpersonal transactions in the first twenty four years of our (their) life. If you possess a 'scientific' point of view and passion ... great! If you possess a humanistic point of view ... great! If you possess and theological point for view ... great! You already know that wisdom and true knowing is a process of differentiation and integration ... of sifting and discarding ... of sharing and forgiving one's self for the errors and misconceptions one has cultivated for far too long. This is a good beginners book! It is a good middle of the road book to be used as a gift to those whom you know are in distress over the prospects and tribulations of parenting ... inside and out ... past and present.

Must have!

This was a good read.

I liked this book overall. I thought the explanations for why kids behave like they do were good, and how our reactions as adults can overwhelm us also makes sense. But some of the "deeper" explanations were either overwhelming or questionable. Specifically I am talking about1) The scientific explanations overall were quite dense and overly detailed. I did appreciate them, just thought they should have been paired down.2) The notion of attachment theory is not universally accepted these days by the scientific community. This book presents it as absolute fact and then basically says it's your fault as a parent if your child is not securely attached by age 1. Not sure if that's the right message to give to new parents.3) Same with the left/right brain dichotomy. It's a useful way of thinking about things, but at the same time it's been somewhat debunked (there doesn't seem to be a complete isolation, like the author claims) and in my opinion was presented too dogmatically as well.That being said, this book was written a while ago, before some of the new research came out for #2/3. So it's not as much the author's fault necessarily, more just something to keep in mind as the reader and something that makes this book less useful in my opinion.But overall I thought it had good advice on how to de-escalate interactions with children and how to think about them, and it's worth reading for that.

At last psychology and psychiatry have got off Freudian nonesense. (Freud was pretty sensible until he underwent a fairly sudden change of mental state and his close colleagues such as Reich and Jung thus parted ways. This indicates to me some sort of psychotic break, which neuroscience now goes a long way toward identifying and explaining. I mean, really, all little boys just want to have sex with their mums? and psychologists just accepted that witout question?) I found this book helpful for sorting out my own childhood and life as well. After sixty years I discovered all my attempting to make sense of my life was nothing but "flooding" and "preoccupation" on what was wrong (leading to self-negation, blame, depression). If you want to finally understand the understanding that passes blaming, try this book and this author. Learn what constitutes actually "making sense" of your life. If you want to have confidence as a parent whom whose kids won't grow up blaming, what could be simpler and more natural than caring "contingent response"? Just let yourself love them and them love you! My first exposure to the work of Dr. Siegel was a six-hour audio series called "The Neurobiology of We" (published by Sounds True). It really makes this psychology backed by real science understandable, at which this book, unfortunately, doesn't do as much for me. Nevertheless, it has its very valuable contributions to make as well. This new science gives me real hope for our world. Imagine a world of, say, just eighty percent "secure attached"!

I found this to be a great read. It helped me understand that in order to gain more patient I first must regulate my own emotions and triggers. My greatest take away is to take care of ones self first and it will spill over into creating a healthy connections with my little one.