Notes on Parenting from the Inside Out by Dan Siegel

I enjoyed the other parenting books by Dan Siegel, and I just finished reading Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel and Mary Hartzell.

It was written before the others I read, and it actually seemed to me to be more about therapy/self-reflection for the parent as opposed to strategies and tactics for better parenting and responding to children. The authors' main point is that parents who have unresolved emotional/psychological issues (such as from childhood) are more likely to struggle through parenthood and be more easily triggered into "low-road" emotional responses and states. And the more work parents can do on themselves to come to terms with and work on their own "issues," the better parents they can be.

I thought this was a good point, and it's something I've thought about a lot before. I just personally didn't as much out of this book (as opposed to the others by this author) in terms of parenting principles and strategies.

My full notes on the book are below (not as extensive of notes as on the other books of his).

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Intro
Resolve and make sense of your own childhood experiences to be a better parent and not repeat mistakes of your parents
Process early childhood experiences
Mindfulness and intention in actions 
Lifelong learning
Response flexibility
Mindsight
Joyful living

​1 how to remember: experience shapes who we are
Unprocessed issues from our childhood can become triggered by our kids
Traumas from past can be autobiographical from childhood or just experiences as adult before became parent
Implicit memories from youth and mental models
explicit memories: semantic/factual and autobiographical
Write down traumatic experiences in journal to resolve them
Write when emotions are heating up
Reflect on implicit elements of your memories

2 how we perceive reality. Stories of our lives. 
Children stress reduces when u tell story explaining what happened to them and Best when done with props
Ways of knowing
Senses
Interpersonal
How we perceive influences how we behave
Integrated sides of Brain work better
Left and right modes of thinking
Narratives blend left and right modes
Coherence and integration
Horizontal, vertical, and temporal integration

3 how we feel. Emotions, interpersonal and internal
First resonate with child’s emotional experience on his level and then change unwanted behavior
Emotion, meaning, and social connection by same neurons
Primary emotions can get shut off in early childhood
Resonance in connection with others
Perceiving others’ emotions via mindsight
Basis for empathy
Helping child feel felt
Choosing our responses to children
Don’t respond based on own desires but on child’s experience 
Integrative communication 7 levels 
Awareness
Atunement
Empathy
Expression
Joining
Clarification
Sovereignty

4 how to communicate
Active listening
Being in present
Contingent communication
Coherence in connection between self and other
Connect first with kid when coming home instead of just doing own agenda
Sit and read book and talk for a few min
Co-construction of self with parent
Interpersonal contingency creates coherence
Respect the child’s experience
Incoherence and mismatch between verbal and nonverbal is hard for child
I see how much you want that toy. What do you like about it? Let me write it down so I know what u want when it comes time to buy a present. 
Receive, process, and respond
Show that you received the signal and processed it from another person
Be aware of the process and the content of the connection

5 how we attach. Relationships between parents and children. 
Primary attachment figure creates secure base
ABCs: Attunement, balance, coherence
Different levels and types of attachment

6 how we make sense of lives and adult attachment
Parents making sense of their lives
Reflect on your childhood experiences

7 how we keep it together and fall apart. High and low road
Low road driven by unresolved experiences and triggers
Trigger, transition, immersion, recovery
Use a journal to reflect and work with adult professional

8 how we disconnect and reconnect. Rupture and repair
Oscillating disconnection
Benign rupture
Limit setting rupture
Toxic ruptures

9 how we develop mindsight. Compassion
Putting ourselves in others shoes
Reflective conversation
Thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, beliefs, perceptions, Attitudes, intentions
Reflective dialogues
Representational diversity
Difference between reality and appearance
Children develop all these over time and with help in discussions with parents
What do you feel in this part of your body
Why do you believe x feels y
Label emotions for child and discuss how they felt
Discuss mental processes that lead to various emotions and situations of kids and those around them
Culture of compassion in your family. Stories of what each person felt. 
Reparent ourselves and make sense of our pasts