{"id":5271,"date":"2011-04-14T15:24:12","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T19:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ccpa.scottbuckingham.ca\/blog\/?p=218"},"modified":"2015-07-03T16:30:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T20:30:36","slug":"part-2-of-the-high-road-how-mirror-neurons-play-a-role-in-helping-to-understand-our-childrens-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ccpa-accp.ca\/fr\/part-2-of-the-high-road-how-mirror-neurons-play-a-role-in-helping-to-understand-our-childrens-emotions\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 2 of the High Road: How Mirror Neurons Play a Role in Helping to Understand our Children\u2019s Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Why is it that we can be having a perfectly good day as a parent juggling life: kids, their homework and school commitments, play dates and activity schedules, up keep of the house, the dog, work demands, etc, and then we can come in the door from any of the 95 places we often squeeze into our day before 10am, and sometimes we are even miraculously unstressed, unfettered, in fact in a good mood. We are pretty much, super hero parents on theses days! And then we return home. The change that sweeps over us is like a large meteor falling from the sky of significant weight crashing in at astonishing speeds; our children have turned us completely mad! Mad like crazy people mad, as well as mad like angry raging mad! Seems rather unfair. What just happened?<\/p>\n

Well, our brains are equipped with these fancy things called mirror neurons. Usually they are quite a helpful group. Explained, they are\u00a0 \u201cmonkey see, monkey do\u201d neurons. Mirror neurons function to prepare to mimic someone else\u2019s intentional action. For example if you stick your tongue out a few times at a newborn (don\u2019t let the mother see you do this, she may think you are mean and odd) that newborn will do the same thing back to you. Fabulous party trick. Or, when you see someone yawn you often have to suppress yourself from yawning. So these neurons are really helpful when it comes to motor learning.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scientists have discovered (Siegel & Shore), that mirror neurons not only work for motor learning, they also connect us to our emotional centers. What does this all mean? When we are able to see another person\u2019s face we are able to experience the same or very similar emotion.<\/p>\n

So, when you are bursting into the living room, in good spirits and are bombarded by mad angry faces that need you to sort out for them the root of their anger, sorrow, jealousy or many other raw emotions, watch out for your mood to be hijacked from you. Mirror neurons work fast!<\/p>\n

Or the exact opposite, our children more importantly, they are the ones that this time are playing quite nicely and the sound from them is harmonious. However, you have had one of \u201cthose\u201d days. In this scenario, your face enters the room and it reads pressure cooker on it; you have been keeping it together all-day and walking up the drive way and all the toys scattered takes the last of your tolerance away. And before you know it, your children are feeling intense anger and acting out: defiance, yelling, resisting, fighting with each other etc. This is the worst outcome, because they are unable to source what happened for them; a minute ago they were engaged in some pretty awesome play, now they are angry, acting out and left feeling after it all, usually confused, sad, or worse yet, shame.<\/p>\n

So what can we do as parents to help prevent these unfortunate \u201cmental collisions?\u201d The tips from last weeks article are one option, recognizing the signs in your own body when you are getting angry will help de-escalate your emotions. We can also pay attention to our children to notice the signs that they are getting heated up:<\/p>\n