The first step to decreasing your child's aggression

0:00 and that when you offer this sense of respect and warmth and um and and attention you know full fullon attention to a child their mind sees that you're there that feels that this is what's offered and it settles in and what a child's mind does um is that sense of connection goes straight to a part of the brain called the lyic system which is the social emotional Center of

0:31 ourselves it's the part of the Mind several complex structures in the mind we don't know very much about these structures but what we do know is that the lyic system is what processes all the non-verbal signals we give every day we are giving 95% of the information about ourselves that our children receive is nonverbal how we hold ourselves the tone of voice that we carry um the expression on our face um the Motions that we make all of this

1:02 shows whether we're thinking and our mind is open and we're ready to connect or it shows that we're tense preoccupied worried we've got things on our mind um we're trying we have an agenda and we want to make make things happen in a certain way at a certain time right now the way we want it and what what children thrive on is this open open mind open communication Highway towards us and away away from us so in a way if

1:32 you think of um building connection what we're thinking of is kind of an eight Lane Highway you know and let's say there's usually four lanes of us communicating towards our children and we'd want to give them four lanes back for communicating towards us and so when our child is playing on the floor and we come and kneel down you know and just watch we actually are opening up seven Lanes of communic ation from them to us

2:01 because we're being very quiet on our side we're just letting our non-verbal reassurance and our presence and our attention flow in towards them so they're getting lots of non-verbal communication but very little verbal communication from us lots of acceptance and they can show us a lot about themselves when we offer them you know all the communication Lanes except a a small verbal one oh wow that one fell off the

2:32 top you going to put it back and then you just watch you're open whatever happens is interesting to you you don't have an agenda it's not like well aren't you going to put it back it needs a top I think that one's that one's the right block for the top it's not like that it's like oops huh what you going to do now so that's the kind of connection that we're talking about it's called contingent communication it's US Open

2:59 opening our minds to whatever our child wants to show us and then they show us and then we respond a little bit and then we open everything up again and we wait and see what they want to do that's the kind of connection that tells a child's lyic system it's safe here I'm well regarded I've got the attention I need now I can learn and that allows the mind to really build intelligence and build judgment