To Live is to Learn

One day during a counseling session, I mentioned my bewilderment from my daughters tantrums and outbursts. He recommended a different way to parent a child based off of their brains development. Being a nurse, I was intrigued. I came home and devoured the book he gave me called The Whole Brain Child  by Daniel Siegel.  The book gives scientific evidence of how a child's brain isn't developed enough to understand anything during a tantrum. It states that the part of the brain responsible for reasonable thought 1. isn't developed and 2. Is in fight or flight during a tantrum and cannot hear or understand anything that is being said. The book recommends affirming a child's feeling or frustration that led to the tantrum. I was skeptical about this but I tried it and what do you know it works.  Something that was helpful for me to understand is that kids are people just like me. They have feelings and they desire to be heard and validated in those feelings. As a p...

So, I've been thinking about this post for a few weeks now. Our little Henry is super fussy and I'm amazed at how a fussy babe can just eat up an entire day and before you realize it, it's three weeks since you blogged. This post will be long and detailed and I believe will need to take place in multiple entries,we'll see. My decision to seek a more gentle and grace based parenting style came after my first revelation of grace through books like TrueFaced with John Lynch and  Grace Walk by Steve McVey. I knew I wanted to do something different than what I had experienced in my own life and what I believe is the commonly accepted and promoted Christian style of parenting, my husbands preference, authoritative. I didn't understand how to do this but I knew I wanted to do something different. I started with Loving Our Kids On Purpose by Danny Silk. It helped to understand some of the concrete day to day ways to implement natural consequences and to put your relation...