The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child

by Daniel J. Siegel, Tina Payne Bryson

Overview

From the authors of The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline, an indispensable guide to unlocking your child’s innate capacity for resilience, compassion, and creativity.

When facing contentious issues such as screen time, food choices, and bedtime, children often act out or shut down, responding with reactivity instead of receptivity. This is what New York Times bestselling authors Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson call a No Brain response. But our kids can be taught to approach life with openness and curiosity. When kids work from a Yes Brain, they’re more willing to take chances and explore. They’re more curious and imaginative. They’re better at relationships and handling adversity. In The Yes Brain, the authors give parents skills, scripts, and activities to bring kids of all ages into the beneficial “yes” state. You’ll learn

• the four fundamentals of the Yes Brain—balance, resilience, insight, and empathy—and how to strengthen them
• the key to knowing when kids need a gentle push out of a comfort zone vs. needing the “cushion” of safety and familiarity
• strategies for navigating away from negative behavioral and emotional states (aggression and withdrawal) and expanding your child’s capacity for positivity

The Yes Brain is an essential tool for nurturing positive potential and keeping your child’s inner spark glowing and growing strong.

Praise for The Yes Brain

“This unique and exciting book shows us how to help children embrace life with all of its challenges and thrive in the modern world. Integrating research from social development, clinical psychology, and neuroscience, it’s a veritable treasure chest of parenting insights and techniques.”—Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., author of Mindset 

“I have never read a better, clearer explanation of the impact parenting can have on a child’s brain and personality.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D.

“Easily assimilated and informative, the book will help adults enable children to lead physically and emotionally satisfying and well-rounded lives filled with purpose and meaningful relationships. Edifying, easy-to-understand scientific research that shows the benefits that accrue when a child is encouraged to be inquisitive, spirited, and intrepid.”—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399594687
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	67,247
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, the founding co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Siegel is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestsellers Brainstorm, Mind, and, with Tina Payne Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. He is also the author of the bestsellers Mindsight and, with Mary Hartzell, Parenting from the Inside Out. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, with welcome visits from their adult son and daughter.

Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., is the co-author, with Daniel J. Siegel, of two New York Times bestsellers, The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. She is the founder and executive director of the Center for Connection, an interdisciplinary clinical team in Pasadena, California. She is a licensed clinical social worker, providing pediatric and adolescent psychotherapy and parenting consultations. As well, she keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for parents, educators, and clinicians all over the world. Dr. Bryson earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Yes Brain"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Daniel J. Siegel.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Welcome xi

Chapter 1 The Yes Brain: An Introduction 3

Chapter 2 The Balanced Yes Brain 27

Chapter 3 The Resilient Yes Brain 74

Chapter 4 The Insightful Yes Brain 102

Chapter 5 The Empathic Yes Brain 131

Conclusion Rethinking Success: A Yes Brain Perspective 163

Acknowledgwents 181

Refrigerator Sheet 186

Editorial Reviews

Easily assimilated and informative, the book will help adults enable children to lead physically and emotionally satisfying and well-rounded lives filled with purpose and meaningful relationships. Edifying, easy-to-understand scientific research that shows the benefits that accrue when a child is encouraged to be inquisitive, spirited, and intrepid.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This unique and exciting book shows us how to help children embrace life with all of its challenges and thrive in the modern world. Integrating research from social development, clinical psychology, and neuroscience, it’s a veritable treasure chest of parenting insights and techniques.”—Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., author of Mindset 

“In today’s busy, competitive culture, allowing our children the space to be themselves is more important than ever. This book provides an escape hatch from the high-stakes mindset. It’s a parent’s guide to ensuring health, happiness, and genuine success—a blueprint for raising confident, creative kids in a fear-based world. It’s never too late to implement the science-based strategies that Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson share.”—Vicki Abeles, producer and co-director, The Race to Nowhere and Beyond Measure
 
“Bottom line: Every parent wants to raise a strong-minded, resilient, caring child. We just don’t know exactly how; we open our mouths and we sing our parents’ tired refrain, ‘No . . . no . . . no.’ In The Yes Brain, Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson teach us how to cultivate a receptive, curious brain in our children. I have never read a better, clearer explanation of the impact parenting can have on a child’s brain and personality.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of Raising Cain
 
“Today’s parents find their children’s behavior mystifying. ‘I never would have spoken that way to—or refused to cooperate with—my parents!’ Using refreshingly clear explanations of neuroscience and child development, coupled with practical, straightforward guidance, The Yes Brain arrives just in time! Siegel and Bryson lead parents and children out of puzzling impasses and into mutual understanding and appreciation. The book gives them the tools and courage needed to face the challenges of our rapidly changing world.”—Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee and The Blessing of a B-
 
“In the flurry of activity that makes up our day-to-day parenting lives, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture: we aren’t just raising children; we’re raising adults. The Yes Brain offers clear strategies for fostering balance, empathy, and self-regulation in our children to not only help them manage today’s bumps and tumbles, but to nurture in them the resources that will allow them to enjoy happy, healthy grown-up lives. An invaluable resource that I’ll be recommending to parents for years to come!”—Susan Stiffelman, MFT, author of Parenting Without Power Struggles

From the Publisher

10/02/2017
Siegel and Bryson dive deeper into the ideas introduced in their bestselling The Whole-Brain Child to offer parents the tools needed to develop a child’s “yes brain”—a receptive state of mind that encourages curiosity, compassion, and adaptation, qualities identified here as critical life skills that will lead children to “do more, learn more, and become more.” Buoyed by neuroscientific research, Siegel and Bryson’s plan focuses on fostering four crucial components of resilience—balance, resilience, insight, and empathy, with a single chapter devoted to each—and extols the importance of nurturing these traits while helping your child integrate all in order to “live meaningfully and find success.” Each of these chapters concludes with cartoons illustrating that section’s content that are meant to be shared with children, as well as tips to promote the same traits in oneself as a parent and individual. Siegel and Bryson have taken a high-level concept and broken it down into an approach that is easy to understand and implement. Parents, grandparents, teachers, clinicians, and other caregivers will find something in the plan that they can use to help the children in their care to excel. (Jan. 2018)

Publishers Weekly

2017-10-02
Techniques to help your child grow and develop from a reactive to a receptive state.In their latest collaboration, Siegel (Psychiatry/UCLA School of Medicine) and Bryson, authors of The Whole-Brain Child (2011) and No-Drama Discipline (2014), continue their discussion on how to help a child grow into a healthy, productive adult. The authors emphasize the importance of integrating the entire brain, so all the different regions "become more connected, both structurally (meaning the way they physically connect via neurons) and functionally (meaning the way they work, or function, together)." Integration encourages communication and cooperation, producing constructive outcomes that increase flexibility, adaptability, coherence, energy, and stability in a child's outlook on life. In each chapter, the authors use concrete examples to demonstrate the techniques needed to create and maintain a balanced, resilient, insightful, and empathic brain, and each section is backed by various cartoons adults can use to teach these methods to children. Siegel and Bryson also encourage adults to follow their methodology to further aid the developing child. They illustrate the harm done when an adult dismisses, criticizes, and shames a child's feelings, the disadvantages of an overbooked schedule, and the necessity of adequate sleep. They discuss when to push a child beyond his or her comfort zone and when to offer comfort, how adults can remain calm during a difficult moment with a child, and how to encourage empathy on multiple levels. They also explore how the current cultural norms and expectations of "success" are creating stress, exhaustion, anxiety, and depression, and they suggest the definition should be refined. Easily assimilated and informative, the book will help adults enable children to lead physically and emotionally satisfying and well-rounded lives filled with purpose and meaningful relationships.Edifying, easy-to-understand scientific research that shows the benefits that accrue when a child is encouraged to be inquisitive, spirited, and intrepid.

Kirkus Reviews

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