This book IS actually a workbook, complete with room to write one's responses after thinking them through. It refers numerous times to the book “The Whole Brained Child” which makes perfect sense, but which I was unaware of when I requested to review the workbook. Still, there is much to be gained in using the workbook as a standalone. Also, when referring to significant quotes from the main book, it does replicate them within the workbook to bring us up to speed.
The workbook begins with a description of left brain (facts) and right brain (emotions) and the goal of helping your child to use BOTH sides of their brain – their whole brain – to process their thoughts and responses. The first step towards this goal is for us, the parent to evaluate how WE respond to the child. Then we are shown how to connect with our right brain and redirect with our left brain.
Numerous “big feeling” situations are suggested and we're invited to look at various options to help our child through them. We're also invited to look at how effective our typical response is. Whole brain strategies are suggested along with discussions and some hands-on projects to help your child understand the concept of the “upstairs” (rational) and “downstairs” (reactive) brain functions.
We're called to be aware of explicit memories (conscious recollection of a past event) and implicit memories (expectations based on past happenings) in order to help our child overcome problematic auto responses. Ways are suggested to help a child talk through these memories and there are even several ideas for games one can create to work through these feelings.
We're called to look at the significant people in our child's life and the effect they have on them. Are there any actions we should take based upon these reflections?
One of the final thoughts is to look at our family “fun factor.” Often just taking ourselves less seriously helps where the child is concerned!
This is a book where you will want to pick and choose activities. Some of the deep breathing and imagery were a bit much for my particular tastes, but there are lots of ideas to be found here and I think you'll find many of them helpful. From my viewpoint of parenting children from “hard places” I plan to implement several of their ideas.
