The Power of Showing Up: how parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired

THE POWER OF SHOWING UP

DANIEL J. SIEGEL, MD, received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA, where he is currently a clinical professor. He is the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, and the author of numerous books, including the bestsellers Mindsight and Brainstorm, as well as No-Drama Discipline, The Whole-Brain Child (co-authored with Tina Payne Bryson), and Aware. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and occasionally with his launched adolescents.

TINA PAYNE BRYSON, PhD, is a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist, parenting consultant, and the director of parenting education and development for the Mindsight Institute. A frequent lecturer to parents, educators, and professionals, she lives near Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

Scribe Publications

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This edition published by arrangement with Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC

Published by Scribe 2020

Copyright © Mind Your Brain, Inc., and Tina Payne Bryson, Inc. 2020

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

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Illustrations by Tuesday Mourning

9781925849691 (Australian edition)

9781912854714 (UK edition)

9781925938111 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

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DJS: For Alex and Maddi, who inspire me each day to show up as their dad even as they are out and about in the world on the journey of life we continue to share; and to Caroline, for how we continue to show up for each other. Thank you all.

TPB: For Scott, who shows up for me, and for my three attachlings, Ben, Luke, and JP: May you find deep joy and meaning in showing up for others, and being surrounded by people who show up for you.

From Tina and Dan: For the parents and children of the world—you are our hope for the future and our bridge to showing up for Earth.

If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together . . .

there is something you must always remember.

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem,

and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is,

even if we’re apart . . . I’ll always be with you.

—Christopher Robin to Winnie-the-Pooh,

Pooh’s Grand Adventure

CONTENTS

Welcome

Chapter 1: What It Means to Show Up

Chapter 2: Why Do Some Parents Show Up, While Others Don’t? An Introduction to Attachment Science

Chapter 3: Beyond Helmets and Kneepads: Helping Your Child Feel SAFE

Chapter 4: The Value of Being Known: Helping Your Kids Feel SEEN

Chapter 5: Presence Joins Us as Part of a Calming Whole: Helping Your Kids Feel SOOTHED

Chapter 6: Putting All the S’s Together: Helping Your Kids Feel SECURE

Conclusion: From the Playground to the Dorm Room: A Look into the Future

Refrigerator Sheet

Acknowledgments

WELCOME

In our most recent book, The Yes Brain, we answered a question we receive from parents all the time: What are the most important characteristics I should emphasize in my kids? In that book we discussed the primary attributes parents should aim to instill in their children in order to help them grow into adults who live happy, successful, relational, and meaningful lives.

The book you’re now holding answers a different question, one focused less on the qualities within children, and more on a parent’s approach to child-rearing: What’s the single most important thing I can do for my kids to help them succeed and feel at home in the world? Notice that this question focuses less on which skills and abilities you want to build in your children, and more on how you approach the parent-child relationship.

Our answer is simple (but not necessarily easy): Show up for your kids.

We’re excited to explain what we mean by that, and to help you see how crucial the act of showing up is. We can’t wait to strip away all of the child-rearing debates and controversies, and boil parenting down to the one concept that matters most when it comes to helping your kids be happy and healthy, so they enjoy and succeed in life and in relationships. We always try to avoid simplistic formulas or so-called magic bullets that offer the one true way to raise kids. The fact is that parenting is complex and challenging, and the answers to most questions depend on the age and stage of the child, the overall situation, and your child’s temperament, not to mention your own.

That being said, virtually all parenting questions and dilemmas do come down to the idea of relationship, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on here. Those of you who know our other books—The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, and The Yes Brain—will see that this book in many ways completes our quartet of titles, pulling together the various whole-brain ideas and encapsulating what it’s all about. And if you haven’t read the other books yet, The Power of Showing Up can serve as an excellent introduction to all we’ve been writing about over the last several years.

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to introduce you to the importance of showing up.

Dan and Tina

CHAPTER 1

What It Means to Show Up

One message we deliver over and over whenever we write about parenting is that you don’t have to be perfect. Nobody is. There’s no such thing as flawless child-rearing. (We’ll pause while you let out a deep, relieved breath.) So raise a warm, left-in-the-minivan juice box to all of us imperfect parents out there.

At some level we all know this, but many of us—especially committed, thoughtful, intentional parents—consistently fall prey to feelings of anxiety or inadequacy. We worry about our children and their safety, of course, but we also worry that we’re not being good enough in the way we’re raising them. We worry that our kids won’t grow up to be responsible or resilient or relational or . . . (fill in the blank). We worry about the times we let them down, or hurt them. We worry that we’re not giving them enough attention, or that we’re giving them too much attention. We even worry that we worry too much!

We’ve written this book for all the imperfect parents who care deeply about their kids (as well as for imperfect grandparents and teachers and professionals and anyone else who cares for a child). We have one central message full of comfort and hope: When you’re not sure how to respond in a given situation with your child, don’t worry. There’s one thing you can always do, and it’s the best thing of all. Instead of worrying, or trying to attain some standard of perfection that simply doesn’t exist, just show up.

Showing up means what it sounds like. It means being there for your kids. It means being physically present, as well as providing a quality of presence. Provide it when you’re meeting their needs; when you’re expressing your love to them; when you’re disciplining them; when you’re laughing together; even when you’re arguing with them. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to read all the parenting bestsellers, or sign your kids up for all the right enrichment activities. You don’t have to have a committed co-parent. You don’t even have to know exactly what you’re doing. Just show up.

Showing up means bringing your whole being—your attention and awareness—when you’re with your child. When we show up, we are mentally and emotionally present for our child in that moment. In many ways, there is no other time but now—this present moment of time—and you are in charge of learning how to show up in ways that will both greatly empower you as a parent and promote resilience and strength in your child. It’s this power of presence that enables us to create an empowered mind for our children—even if we mess up on a regular basis.

Depending on your background and what kind of parents you had as a child, showing up for your own kids might come naturally. Or, you might find it difficult. You might even recognize at this moment that you’re not showing up for your kids in a consistent way, either physically or emotionally. In the coming pages we’ll discuss how, regardless of your own childhood experiences, you can be—and continue to become—the kind of parent you want to be.

Of course we all make better and worse decisions as parents, and there are all kinds of skills we can attain to help our children develop in optimal ways. But when you get right down to it, parenting is about simply being present for our kids. As we’ll soon explain, the longitudinal research on child development clearly demonstrates that one of the very best predictors for how any child turns out—in terms of happiness, social and emotional development, leadership skills, meaningful relationships, and even academic and career success—is whether they developed security from having at least one person who showed up for them. Across cultures around the globe, these studies reveal a universal finding about how we can parent well, if not flawlessly.

And the great news is that these empirical findings can be synthesized and then made accessible for all of us imperfect parents all over the world. That’s what this book is about.

What Showing Up Looks Like: The Four S’s

When a caregiver predictably (not perfectly) cares for a child, that child will enjoy the very best outcomes, even in the face of significant adversity. Predictable care that supports a healthy and empowering relationship embodies what we call the Four S’s—helping kids feel (1) safe—they feel protected and sheltered from harm; (2) seen—they know you care about them and pay attention to them; (3) soothed—they know you’ll be there for them when they’re hurting; and (4) secure—based on the other S’s, they trust you to predictably help them feel at home in the world, then learn to help themselves feel safe, seen, and soothed.

When we can offer kids the Four S’s, making repairs whenever the inevitable ruptures in these connections with our children may occur, we help create what’s called secure attachment, and it’s absolutely key to optimal healthy development.

As in our other books, everything we present here is backed by science and research. And as we’ll soon explain, these ideas emerge from the field of attachment science, where for the last half century researchers have been conducting careful studies. If you know our earlier work—from Dan’s title with Mary Hartzell called Parenting from the Inside Out and through our books The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, and The Yes Brain—then you’ll immediately see, as you read the coming pages, how this book expands on what we’ve written before by going deeper into concepts vital to understanding the science behind whole-brain parenting. We’ve even added a few new twists here and there, since our understanding of parenting and the brain, along with the field of attachment science in general, continues to grow and evolve. So readers who know our work well will both see something new and feel right at home, recognizing familiar concepts while also gaining a richer understanding of them. We’ve worked hard to make the scientific information as accessible as possible, so that even someone approaching these ideas for the first time can follow along and immediately apply them in their personal and parenting lives.

In addition to attachment science, the other primary scientific framework underpinning our work is interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), an approach in which we combine various fields of science into one perspective on what the mind and mental thriving are all about. IPNB looks at how our mind—including our feelings and thoughts, our attention and awareness—and our brain and the whole body are deeply interwoven within our relationships with one another and the world around us to shape who we are. The field of IPNB has dozens of professional textbooks (now over seventy) exploring the science of mental health and human development. Within those fields synthesized by IPNB is the study of attachment as well as scholarship on the brain, including a focus on how the brain changes in response to experience, called neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity explains how the actual physical architecture of the brain adapts to new experiences and information, reorganizing itself and creating new neural pathways based on what a person sees, hears, touches, thinks about, practices, and so on. Anything we give attention to, anything we emphasize in our experiences and interactions, creates new links in the brain. Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.

What does this have to do with showing up? Well, your reliable presence in the lives of your children can significantly impact the physical architecture and connectivity in their brains, creating mental models and expectations about the way the world works. A mental model is a summary the brain makes that creates a generalization of many repeated experiences. Such mental models are constructed from the past, filter our current experience, and shape how we anticipate and sometimes even sculpt our future interactions. The mental models are formed within the architecture of neural networks underlying attachment and memory.

No kidding—the experiences you provide in terms of your relationship with your child will literally mold the physical structure of her brain. Those connections in the brain in turn influence how her mind will work. In other words, when parents consistently show up, their children’s minds come to expect that the world is a place that can be understood and meaningfully interacted with—even in times of trouble and pain—because the experiences you provide shape the ways the brain processes information. The brain learns to anticipate certain realities, based on what has happened before. That means your children will predict what’s coming next based on previous experience. So when you are present for them, they come to expect positive interactions—from others, and from themselves. Kids learn who they are and who they can and should be, in both good times and bad, through their interactions with us, their parents. Showing up thus creates in our kids neural pathways that lead to selfhood, grit, strength, and resilience.

In doing so, it offers children the opportunity to be not only happier and more fulfilled, but more successful emotionally, relationally, and even academically. Then parenting becomes much easier as well, since children are better balanced emotionally and handle themselves better when things don’t go their way.

Introducing the Four S’s

We explain the Four S’s in detail in the coming chapters, but first, here’s a general idea of where we’re headed. All four S’s dovetail or overlap at times, because when kids feel safe, seen, and soothed, they will develop a secure attachment to their caregivers. That secure attachment is the outcome all caring parents are striving to help create in their children’s lives. A securely attached relationship enables a child to feel at home in the world and to interact with others as an authentic individual who knows who she is. She approaches the world from what we’ve called a Yes Brain, interacting with new opportunities and challenges from a position of openness, curiosity, and receptiveness, rather than rigidity, fear, and reactivity. Her whole brain is more integrated—which means she can employ the more sophisticated functions of her brain even when confronted by difficult situations, and respond to her world from a position of security, demonstrating more emotional balance, more resilience, more insight, and more empathy. That’s what we mean when we talk about a whole-brain child. As a result, the child will not only be happier, but also much more socially adept, which means she’ll be better able to get along with others, collaboratively solve problems, consider consequences, think about other people’s feelings, and on and on. In short, a securely attached child is not only happier and more content, but also much easier to be with and to parent.

For example, think about the first S. An absolute requirement for feeling secure is to feel safe. Kids feel safe when they feel protected physically, emotionally, and relationally. This is the first step toward a secure attachment, since a parent’s first job is to keep his or her kids safe. They need to feel and know that they’re safe. They have to believe that their parents are going to protect them from physical harm, but that, also, their parents are going to keep them safe emotionally and relationally. This doesn’t mean that parents can’t ever make a mistake or say or do something that leads to hurt feelings. We’re all going to do that, a lot more than we’d like. But when we mess up with our kids—or when they mess up with us—we repair the damage as soon as we can.

This is how they learn that even when mistakes are made and harsh words spoken, we still love each other and want to make things right again. That message, when consistently delivered, leads to a feeling of safety. Remember, the key is repair, repair, repair. There’s no such thing as perfect