1. 2016 LAPEN Summit, Kenner, LA February 2016
The Whole-Brain Child &
NO-Drama Discipline:
Develop Kids’ Minds &
Integrate Their Brains for Better Outcomes

2. Where do we begin?

3. Experience Shapes the Brain
Brain is shaped by: genes & experience
Neurons that fire together, wire together
We are brain architects.
Where attention goes . . .
Brain shaped by 2 main things
Fire—wire—too much to drink? WHAT GETS WIRED, SHAPES EVERYTHING THAT WE FEEL, EXPERIENCE, ETC.
Kids—WHAT ARE THEIR BELIEFS ABOUT THEMSELVES, ABOUT SCHOOL THAT ARE BEING WIRED?
SO let’s start with a little about how the brain works.

4. Lise Elliot—What’s Going on in There
Who teaches Kinder/1st? How well do they stay on a topic?
[This is why a six year old begins with a request for a luke skywalker Halloween costume–and quickly moves to darth vader, his breathing noises, asking when he can learn to snorkel and go to hawaii and see volcanos. Everything is connected to everything for a 6 year old. ]
14 yr old will have a more efficient brain.
How does this happen? What determines what gets cut and what stays?
Lise Elliot—What’s Going on in There

5. Pruning and Windows of Opportunity
Blossoming
(overproduction)
USE IT OR LOSE IT
Where attention goes . . .
Pruning
Weak branches cut  better functioning
A SPECIALIZED BRAIN
LESS GREY MATTER (CELL BODIES) BUT MORE WHITE MATTER (CONNECTIONS—MYELIN) WHICH MAKES IT 3,000X FASTER AND BETTER COORDINATED)
ALLOWS BRAIN TO BE MORE DIFFERENTIATED AND BETTER LINKED—MORE INTEGRATED

6. 2 sides of the brain Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere Logic
Linear
Linguistic
Literal
Senses Emotion
Random
Non-verbal
Whole picture-context
Senses body info.
DOMINANT--SPECIALIZES
2 sides of brain (L hem &R hem)—What do you know about R/L?
2 sides anatomically & fx quite differently and are connected by corpus collosum.
Right brain being wired up through conscience/healthy shame
When the right isn’t involved, you just get the literal. Just the facts.

7. Cozolino The Neuroscience of Human Relationships

9. Separate things  working together as a functional whole.
Integration
Separate things  working together as a functional whole.
DIFFERENTIATED (Separate—distinct properties)
LINKED (Whole—working together as a coordinated team –HARMONY)
Dan Siegel Mindsight
What are some of the things that frustrate you most about your students? Working with parents? Colleagues?
Integration is really paradigm to see these issues and find new ways to approach solving.
Define—separate, specialized parts into functional whole. Remember the parts of the brain? Separate functions, brought together.
Human body.
Going to talk about 2 types of integration and apply it and talk about what it has to do with mental, emotional, relational health and intellectual progression in our students and in ourselves.
Right and left (horizontal) one type of integration in brain. I will tell you more in a minute, why this is so powerful in infomring how we function in relationships, w/ students, parents, our own relationships.

10. Integration Flexible Adaptive Coherent Energized Stable
What is it that explains when our kids are great vs. when they’re not? INTEGRATION
So we need the different parts working together.
When they’re not doing well, they need to move toward integration.
This is the survive and thrive—how we both move them toward integration in the moment and build those bridges for later too.
STRATEGIES THAT HELP YOU DO THAT
Flexible
Adaptive
Coherent
Energized Stable
The Whole-Brain Child

11. Promoting Left/Right Integration:
Connect and Redirect

12. Connect COMFORT and Redirect ADDRESS BEHAVIOR CONNECT with the right:
Connect with emotions before redirecting behavior
CONNECT with the right:
nonverbal comfort
touch
tone of voice
facial expressions
Empathy
pausing
Then REDIRECT with the left:
solutions
words
planning
logical explanations
boundaries
Connect
and
Redirect
COMFORT
ADDRESS BEHAVIOR

13. Integrating the Left & Right
Name it to Tame it

14. Help them Tell Their Story for little “t” trauma and big “T” trauma
L: explain, put things in order, and assign words +
R: autobiographical info, whole context & emotional info
WHEN CHILD HAVING A REALLY HARD TIME WITH SOMETHING—SWIM LESSONS, EA WOO WOO
WHEN UPSET , SCARY, ETC.
2.. TELL STORY: Just like when something happens to us, we want to know WHY?, our children do too--need to make sense of our world. We are wired this way.
So, when something happens (little trauma or big), their right hemisphere becomes like an emotional tidal wave.
Upset and can’t make sense of it. NO language or the logic capacity to put it together. This can cause problems.
Can even start in infancy. (JP STORIES)

15. Building the Staircase of the Mind: Integrating the Upstairs and Downstairs Brain

16. Middle Prefrontal Cortex
Regulates body (autonomic nervous system)
Regulates emotions
Sound decision making
Impulse control
Empathy
Flexibility
Personal Insight
Overcoming fear
Executive functions
Intuition
Morality
What do you notice about where it is?
only area of brain that is one synapse away from all three major regions of brain. Integrates into functional whole.—
So this front part of the brain which is one of the last to fully mature (into early 20’s), is really important to understand.
What this means is that they are vulnerable to loosing these abilities easily.
Do any of these things sound like things that your students don’t do well sometimes? If they did them better, would it solve some of the issues you named earlier?
What this means for teachers: If teachers can help their students develop this part of their brains, they offer them quite a gift. Now go back to the list of 9 things. Anything you do to promote these helps. Remember the brain is a use-it-or-lose it type of thing. Give them experiences to develop. Like what? What are some things you guys do to help your kids with these things?
Because when a person can use both their downstairs and upstairs, things are good.
I’ve got young kids at home, whose MPC aren’t fully developed yet. Some of your students may be similar. You can think about the problems that can come from this part of the brain not being fully developed yet: impulsive, unkind, rigitd etc.
So what does this have to do with behavior?

17. USE IT Where attention goes, neurons fire. MINDSIGHT TOOLS Movement
Where neurons fire, they wire.
What can we do to develop the
upstairs brain—to integrate it?
USE IT
MINDSIGHT TOOLS
Movement
Discipline!
Play/Curiosity
Relationships

18. Building the upstairs brain
Mindsight
tools

20. The Marshmallow “Sentence”
Marshmallow Video
1972—preschoolers asked to wait 15 minutes
1988—(teenagers) the delayers=greater academic, emotional, & social competence, higher SAT scores
2011—four decades later—still differences in resisting temptation, mental health, competence, success
2011—significant brain differences found (mPFC)

21. They might need a better strategy

22. Building the upstairs brain
movement

23. Integrating brain with body
Move it or
Lose it:
How moving the body shifts emotional states

24. Building the upstairs brain
discipline

25. Two Most Studied Dimensions
high limits/boundaries
AUTHORITARIAN
AUTHORITATIVE
low nurture/responsive
high nurture/responsive
PERMISSIVE
NEGLECT
low limits/boundaries
Baumrind,

26. “extinction thinking” How do I stop this?
THE TYPICAL APPROACH=
“extinction thinking”
How do I stop this?
So we ask:
WHAT CONSEQUENCE DO I GIVE?
WHAT PUNISHMENT WILL BE MOST EFFECTIVE?
Let’s begin today by defining discipline. Is it about punishment? Giving consequences? Obviously not.
We may FEEL like punishing our kids sometimes, and if we haven’t thought about it before, we might assume that discipline is all about giving consequences.
But that’s not our goal.
Jen telling you, “I’m teaching Liam all the time, but when do I discipline?”

27. Discipline = Teaching (skill-building) What is Discipline?
Discipline is about teaching. Root of the word is “disciple.” Nothing about punishment.
TRANSITION: It comes down to two overall goals:

28. Replace OUR assumptions with curiosity
The purpose behind behavior?
Chase the “why?”
Reinterpret problem behavior as an adaptation
“Oppositional Defiant Disorder”
 What is the meaning of the behavior?

29. “Turn FRUSTRATION into FASCINATION”
BE DETECTIVES.
“Turn FRUSTRATION into FASCINATION”
Barbara avila, m.s.

30. STRUGGLESOPPORTUNITIES
TOTALLY SHIFT OUR LENS:
Behavior is COMMUNICATION.
And, it leads to “discipline”.

31. The brain is either receptive or reactiveU S L
Hyper-arousal
Most of problems you’ll encounter are problems with behavior and emotion
Most of the time they’re in green zone, but all kids go into red and blue
How do you know when they’re outside the window (get their input)
READING CUES
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT CIRCUITRY
What’s responsible for keeping them in green? mPFC
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO STEP IN? WHEN IS TOO MUCH ADVERSITY?
Hypo-arousal
Inspired by Porges, Ogden, Siegel, Kuypers, Williams&Shellenberger, and Lillas&Turnbull

32. THREAT & “THREAT” A R O U S L
THREAT

33. What about a kid with lots of red and blue?
What is causing the arousal?
Temperament
Trauma
Sensory
Learning discrepancy
Environmental discrepancy
Caregivers who amplify distress/arousal
Organic disorder
Etc.?
But what produces the reactivity?
CAN’T VS. WON’T
Mismatch between capacity and demand (real or experienced)
Often just looked at as an emotional or psychological issue of disregulation (Bt very much a body issue)
Manifestations of anxiety that parents don’t’ think of as anxiety.

34. discipline approaches
Is the response counter-productive? Is the response building skills? *can’t vs. won’t

35. Common Discipline Practices through a new lens
Yelling
Threatening/Humiliating
Spanking
Punitive isolation
Punishment for the sake of punishment
Fear-based control
INSTEAD: practice self-regulation, playful, connection, things that help them move into the green zone!
30% of 1-year-olds were spanked at least once in the past month.  N=2788 Child Abuse and Neglect March 2014
 A national survey conducted by the Gallup Organization in 1995 finds that nearly all (94%) parents report having ever used some form of corporal punishment by the time their child is age 3 or 4, with 72% reporting using spanking sometime in the past year (Strauss & Stewart, 1999)

36. Common Discipline: Fear-based control
The Story of
Little Suck-a-Thumb
Milder common versions
I’m leaving.
The man is coming over.
Santa/Elf
Using ghosts, spiders, bad guys . . .
Struwwelpeter 1858
by Heinrich Hoffmann
The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb
One day, Mamma said, "Conrad dear,
I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don't suck your thumb while I'm away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys that suck their thumbs.
And ere they dream what he's about
He takes his great sharp scissors
And cuts their thumbs clean off, - and then
You know, they never grow again.”
Mamma had scarcely turn'd her back,
The thumb was in, alack! alack!
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissorman.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast;
That both his thumbs are off at last.
Mamma comes home; there Conrad stands,
And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;-
"Ah!" said Mamma "I knew he'd come
To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb."

37. Jaak Panksepp
In his landmark book Affective Neuroscience, Panksepp (1998) described the results of a previously unpublished experiment where rats were given an opportunity to play in the presence of a small tuft of cat fur. Play disappeared on the day that the cat fur was placed in the testing chamber, and even though the cage was thoroughly cleaned after testing, the rats did not play in the space for three to five days after the exposure.
Play for 4 days, then cat hair introduced, and then taken away. Then, play never returns to the same level

38. The overall approach:
Connect and Redirect
WITH KIDS
WITH PARENTS

39. Why Connect and Redirect?
It moves people from reactivereceptive
It works in the moment—
Gets them back into green zone
It works in the long run –building the upstairs brain
Widens their green zone
TIMING!

40. Middle Prefrontal Cortex
Regulates body (autonomic nervous system)
Regulates emotions
Sound decision making
Thoughtful communication
Empathy
Flexibility-adapting
Personal Insight
Executive functions
Intuition
Morality
What do you notice about where it is?
only area of brain that is one synapse away from all three major regions of brain. Integrates into functional whole.—
So this front part of the brain which is one of the last to fully mature (into early 20’s), is really important to understand.
What this means is that they are vulnerable to loosing these abilities easily.
Do any of these things sound like things that your students don’t do well sometimes? If they did them better, would it solve some of the issues you named earlier?
What this means for teachers: If teachers can help their students develop this part of their brains, they offer them quite a gift. Now go back to the list of 9 things. Anything you do to promote these helps. Remember the brain is a use-it-or-lose it type of thing. Give them experiences to develop. Like what? What are some things you guys do to help your kids with these things?
Because when a person can use both their downstairs and upstairs, things are good.
I’ve got young kids at home, whose MPC aren’t fully developed yet. Some of your students may be similar. You can think about the problems that can come from this part of the brain not being fully developed yet: impulsive, unkind, rigitd etc.

41. Engage, Don’t Enrage
Appeal to the Upstairs Brain vs. triggering the downstairs brain? ESPECIALLY WITH DISCIPLINE
MOM IN AUSTRALIA

42. Try getting below eye-level.
Reactive vs. Receptive
Try getting below eye-level.
Really.
One of our most important discipline/behavior/brain-changing tools is connection/relationship.

43. Be impossible because I get so angry
Objections: Yeah, But Won’t being so emotionally responsive . . .
Make them fragile
Reinforce negative behavior by giving them attention when they’re being bad
Make them spoiled
Be impossible because I get so angry

44. How do we build skills? The role of guilt Redirecting
“How can I help?”
Sports-casting (describe)
Move ON!
See if you can get them to set the limit or correct
Collaborative problem-solving
Reflective dialogue
Playfulness

45. Empathic connection + Boundaries
This requires parents to have some capacity for:
Self-regulation
Mindsight/attunement
Empathy
Tolerating their child’s negative emotions
Walking the line between “giving in” and “working with”
Turning down the “shark music”
This may require that we “do our own work”.

46. Building the upstairs brain
relationships

47. What is Attachment? Organizational system activated by fear/threat.
Child seeks proximity (safe haven.)
SAFE
SECURE
SEEN
SOOTHED
Before go over these—past set in stone, but present attachment is not fixed—research
Primary attachment formed from 6 mos-3/4 years, & then throughout the lifespan
Period of attachment activation at same time as right brain spurt of development. Right brain in mom-baby dyadic interactions
(frequency of interaction and whomever is available.)
From early days, there is a preference for familiar, but at 6 mos. is when they say the behavior to elicit the caregiver’s response is goal-directed.
Organizational system that gets activated when we are feeling threat or fear. Allows child to seek proximity, to go to the parent at times of distress (safe haven.)
Key is repeated, predictable, sensitive care. This leads to a “secure base”, from which the child is free to begin to explore.
CONNECTED AND PROTECTED.
Secure base to explore the world.

48. Categories of Attachment
“state of mind with regard to attachment” or our mental models about relationships
Secure
Dismissing
Preoccupied
Disorganized/
Unresolved
AN expectation for relationships. The kind of relationships we have had with our attachment figures creates our mental models for relationships. These styles correspond to how we are with others. Adaptive mechanisms become prison.
SENSITIVE RESPONSIVESECURE
REJECTION, EARLY PROMOTION OF INDEPENDENCEDISMISSING
UNPREDICTABLE, INTRUSIVE, NEGLECTFULPREOCCUPIED
PARENT IS FRIGHTENED OR FRIGHTENING DISORGANIZED (usually parents have unresolved trauma, gets triggered and they display frightened, frightening, threatening, dissociative behavior.: growling, stalking, trance, canine exposure, fearing infant, dissociative sounds)
(“fear of breakdown, based on original agony” winnicott)
Dismissing: AS A CHILD—parents were repeatedly unavailable and rejecting; child adapts by avoiding closeness and emotional connection to parent. Parent-child relationship has an emotionally barren quality in tone of communication. AS ADULT--The inner world of these adults is marked by “independence”. Being disconnected from intimacy and maybe emotion and body signals of their own. Minimize the importance of relationships.
Preoccupied: AS A CHILD--experienced parent’s communication as inconsistent and sometimes intrusive. Child can’t depend on parent for attunement, connection, regulation. Can’t be sure what to expect, so anxiety and insecurity about r 'ship w/parent and world at large. AS ADULT, high need for intimacy to the degree of clinginess, hard for them to trust others, highly emotionally expressive. Negative feelings about self and blame self for partner’s unresponsiveness. lot of anxiety regarding relationships, difficulty managing their need to be close, but anxiety about it too. Ambivalent about self and relationships. Can have difficulty by being flooded by emotions. Still enmeshed in issues from childhood. Preoccupied with the past.
UNRESOLVED--AS CHILD- parent becomes source of terror. Child has 2 simultaneous brain states—turn to parent, flee from parent. Fright without solution—biological paradox. No regulation. Repeated experiences where parent’s behavior is chaotic, overwhelming, and frightening parental unresolved trauma, AS ADULTS. When topic of threat or loss comes up, they get disorganized.. I.e.: spacing out when child distressed, becoming suddenly enraged and threatening to child who is excitedly skipping down the hallway for singing too loudly or hitting a child who asks for another bedtime story.

49. Research of HOPE
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CREATE POSITIVE CHANGE IN A CHILD
Attachment is not fixed: we know brain is influenced by experience—these parts are still open to change by experience.
IT ONLY TAKES ONE!!!!
(Mary Dozier –5 mos. after adoption)
Earned security after 5 years in relationships with secure person (Roisman)

50. 3 final messages There is no magic wand They benefit when we mess up
It’s never too late to make change

51. What you do matters.
One last point to remember: Neuroplasticity Experience changes the brain (Hope for kids, and for parents, and for ourselves.)
One last thing I want to discuss is how the discipline would affect his brain. Neuroplasticity
The reality of neuroplasticity offers us all kinds of hope—for our kids, and for ourselves as well. [explain]

52. Attachment Resources for Parents
Parenting from the Inside Out, by Siegel & Hartzell
Brain-Based Parenting by Hughes and Baylin
The Whole-Brain Child, by Siegel and Bryson
How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child, by Gottman
You Are My World, by Amy Hatkoff

53. Attachment Resources For clinicians/researchers:
Handbook of Attachment, eds. Cassidy & Shaver
Clinical Applications of the Adult Attachment Interview, eds. Steele &Steele
The Development of the Person, by Sroufe, Egeland, et. al.
Future talks
Cards
Mail slides/attachment protocol

54. Resources for parents It’s a Boy! By Dr. Michael Thompson
Parenting from the Inside Out by Siegel and Hartzell
How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child by Gottman
Playful Parenting or The Opposite of Worry by Lawrence Cohen
Mindset by Dweck
The Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser-Greenland
or innerkids.com
Lost at School by Greene

55. Resources for professionals
The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
The Master and His Emissary by McGilchrist
The Brain-Wise Therapist by Badenoch
The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, by Cozolino
Mirroring People, by Iacoboni
The Developing Mind by Siegel
The Mindful Child by Kaiser Greenland
SPDFoundation.net

56. Tina Bryson, Ph.D. www.TinaBryson.com