The Whole Brain Child duo Dr. Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s latest book release is entitled The YES Brain. Based on real neuroscience by leading experts in the developmental field, this book is an invitation create ideal conditions for your child to develop the lifelong skills of resilience, empathy, insight and a sense of balance. With real and down to earth techniques of simple shifts in how one does their day-to-day parenting, this manual is a quick read for changing things up in ones’ home and fine tuning attitude. I am speaking from the perspective of a clinician who works with families,  and as a parent to four children.

A YES environment offers children an opportunity to grow their creativity, curiosity and neural connections toward a healthy brain. Sadly, many factors in our current generation are contributing to children growing up in a NO world. The NO world (that many of us experienced in our own childhoods) is based on fear, rigidity, and anxiety. Sadly, this negative pattern is often perpetuated for generations, and endemic to many institutions across our social landscape.

What we know now, thanks to brain imaging, is that a child’s brain is really a reflection of the environment they are raised in. Brain imaging has also shed light on the level of flexibility of the human brain (a concept known as neuroplasticity), and its ability to change, which negates most of the 20th century’s concept of how a brain works.  An entire genre of thinking has evolved with this new information, and the parenting market is clogged with products and books espousing miraculous techniques for brain growth.  It might be hard to discern what is real and what is fluff when shopping for the right type of book, product, food etc, with so many things crowding this new market. The YES Brain, and everything else written by Dr. Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, are the real deal.