The Psychology Of Parenting | Dr. Dan Siegel

Michael Gervais (0:00)

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Dan Siegel (1:05)

So the human baby is designed to have more than just the mother as an attachment figure. So issue number one is we live in an individualistic culture, the United States, especially, and that is totally not scientific. Our human family is meant to live in a village.

Michael Gervais (1:22)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. We dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais.

SPEAKER_3 (1:30)

A high-performance psychologist named Michael Gervais, who head coach Mike McDonald and former head coach Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks.

SPEAKER_4 (1:38)

Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos Project.

SPEAKER_5 (1:42)

Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent.

Dan Siegel (1:46)

They have to stay mentally tough.

Michael Gervais (1:48)

Today's guest is Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, Harvard-trained clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, neuroscientist, and one of the leading voices helping us understand how relationships shape the developing mind. He's also authored over 20 books, five of them being New York Times bestsellers, including co-authoring The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline.

Dan Siegel (2:11)

We study parents before a child is born. We can predict with huge amounts of predictability across different cultures, a year later when the baby is born, how this baby will do what's called attach to parent A or parent B.

Michael Gervais (2:26)

Parenting is full of mistake-making for all of us. Dan focuses on best practices to repair as opposed to desperately trying to be the perfect parent.

Dan Siegel (2:36)

We've never seen rates of anxiety, depression, suicide like we see now. There's a reason for that. It isn't just social media.

Michael Gervais (2:43)

With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Dan Siegel.

Dan, I've wanted to sit down with you for a really long time. I have been a student of yours without you knowing it. The commitment that you've made over the last, let's say maybe four decades, I'm kind of making that up, about understanding brain and behavior and an integrated approach to living a full good life has been really important for me. And so I want to thank you in advance for the investment you've made in me and our community. And you've done it in a very astute, academic, learned, grounded way from a science standpoint. And you've made it very applied. You've made it, you're reading very easy to understand.

Dan Siegel (3:33)

Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. And I deeply appreciate the experience, because sometimes it gets lonely when you're busy alone typing away. So when I hear it's actually useful and helpful, it actually has a lot of real big impact on me. So thank you so much.

Michael Gervais (3:52)

What do you hope that I will better understand from this conversation? And or like you could proxy me for the listener. What do you hope the listener will better understand from our time together today?

Dan Siegel (4:05)

Well, you know, I do think starting here with potential is so important.

So, you know, it's hard to describe this because I was just doing the math the other day. You know, I've been a practicing therapist for 40 years, over 40 years actually. When I became an educator in this field, I asked that question, you know, like, what do I want my new students? Anyone working with kids and adolescents in the field of mental health, from any discipline, I was in charge of their education at UCLA in the psychiatry department.