Do you talk with your children about their feelings, thoughts and memories?
Research suggests that by reflecting on this kind of inner experience, parents can help children develop important skills that allow them to be more in tune with their minds and the minds of others.
If a 3-year-old falls off her tricycle, for example, a parent can respond by saying, “Get up,” and simply help the child off the ground and back onto the tricycle. Another parent might lean down and say, “Oh that must have been scary to fall off your trike! Let me help you up.” It sounds simple, but the second response includes reflections on the inner experience (being scared), not just on external action (getting up). Such communication can be called “reflective dialogues” and includes putting words to the inner nature of the mind. This “languaging” of the mind, in many ways, makes the inner life of the private mind something that can be shared. As Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, said in her autobiography, the moment she could share language with her teacher Anne Sullivan, she felt her mind was born.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
In addition to providing the words to talk about mental activities, such interactions show the child that the parent places importance on sensing the mind of the child. The inner subjective experience of the mind — meanings, felt textures, emotional waves, thought patterns and images pictured in the mind’s eye — are now shared. These inner experiences become more distinct in the sharing, and — in some ways — more “real” as a result of talking about them. Teach your child to SIFT through her mind and the mind of others by focusing on sensations (S), images (I), feelings (F) and thoughts (T).
One important outcome of naming the inner mental sea and then sharing it is that the mind becomes, in a sense, observable. We presume that everyone has a mind, but not everyone has what I call “mindsight,” or the ability to see one’s own mind or another’s mind. How can this be? You can have sensation, images, feelings and thoughts, but not have the perceptual skills to see these as mental activities. You would simply be immersed in your mental life without the perspective needed to sense that life clearly.
[Read: Secure Attachment: Parenting From the Inside Out.]
Having the ability to perceive our minds and the minds’ of others is the foundation for emotional and social intelligence that enhances our lives. When we see our minds, for example, we have insight into how our emotions shape our thinking and our behavior. With mindsight, too, we can learn to sense how the inner mental life of another influences how that person behaves. With such mindsight skills, we can learn to problem-solve in our interactions with others in helpful ways. That’s emotional intelligence. Using these capacities to sense the inner mental lives of others, we learn to navigate through the maze of subtle and rapid social communications in a way that promotes prosocial behavior — or voluntarily doing things to help others — the foundation of social intelligence.
When I was in medical school, I had very bright professors who seemed to lack, or at least not use, mindsight skills. They might offer a patient a terminal diagnosis, say “I’m sorry,” and then leave the room. I’d tug on their white coat and ask why they didn’t talk to the patient about how he felt. “Why would I do that?” was the common response. I had learned in college on a suicide prevention service that when someone was in crisis, the way to compassionately keep hope alive was to connect with that person’s internal experience. My professors in medicine had no idea what I was talking about, and it wouldn’t be until decades later that a study would reveal that even if you come in with a common cold, a brief empathic comment from your physician results in you having a more robust immune response and getting over your cold a day sooner. Empathy heals, in part, because it allows us to “feel felt” by another, to be joined with someone and become part of a larger whole.
Mindsight is the skill that enables children to have the ability to sense and respect the importance of their own mental lives and the inner mental lives of others. This is the basis for insight and empathy, and for kindness and compassion.
[See: 8 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life.]
We learn to sense our minds and the minds of others through our relationships with others we’re closest to, like parents. As a parent, you can confer this important basis of social and emotional skills to your children by regularly engaging in the simple but profoundly effective practice of reflective and attuned communication. As you SIFT the mind with your child, you may find that you, too, begin to feel a deep sense of connection and belonging that we all long to have in our lives.
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Teaching Children to Be More in Tune With Their Minds originally appeared on usnews.com
