Dr. Dan Siegel on Conscious Parenting
Parental presence grows out of personal presence, and there are plenty of ways to cultivate it. The field of mindful awareness is one rich source of techniques for building presence in daily life. On our website, DrDanSiegel.com, we offer a practice called the Wheel of Awareness. Many parents run through it, or parts of it, each day. Picture a wheel: the practice builds up its central hub, a kind of inner sanctuary where things stay clear. Whatever happens out on the rim (the reactions, the feelings, the worries that keep spinning) you still have that steady hub to return to.
Presence turns out to be a doorway into integration, which means caring for yourself this way pays off twice. The hub you've been developing gives you inner stability and clarity. Being present for yourself produces self-understanding, and that's the insight side of what I call mindsight. Being present with another person, say your child, opens up room inside the relationship, so we parents don't have to snap into reactive mode. And when we do react (because we will), we can go back and repair the rupture that opened up between us.
That spaciousness brings humility and flexibility, the qualities that let us build the kind of relationship we actually want with our kids. On top of that, we're modeling presence for the child, which teaches them they can be present too. Empathy comes out of exactly that. Presence also lets us hold the gap between the child we pictured and the child standing in front of us, honoring who they really are. Honoring those differences, while keeping communication compassionate and respectful, is what produces relational integration.
Here is the part I find striking, and studies back it up: once relational integration is flowing between two people, it starts to cultivate integration inside each person's brain. With a child, you are literally helping build integration in their developing brain. That integrated brain is what allows a kid to flourish. It supports executive functions: the capacity to focus attention, to manage emotions, to connect with other people in ways that reward both sides. My professional and science books go into all the mechanics of how this works.
If you're a parent, though, the one thing to carry with you is simple. By developing presence, you set in motion the process of integration.