Most of you have probably heard about the left-brain, right-brain concept, our right brain being our emotional side and our left-brain being our logical side.  In his new book, “The Whole Brained Child,” due out in early October, Daniel Siegel introduces the concept of the upstairs and downstairs parts of our brain.  The downstairs part of our brain is with us when we are born and never leaves us.  It’s the very primitive part of our brain that keeps us breathing, our heart beating, and other basic systems — the systems that we cannot control — going.  It contains our survival reaction like fight or flight, or freeze. For our first 2-3 years of life, it holds our earliest type of memory — sensory memory.

Constructed throughout childhood, the upstairs part of our brain goes through a major remodel during adolescence.  This is why teenagers are so illogical and impulsive; their cortex has gone “offline” for a few years.  Some researchers now believe that Continue reading Emotional Regulation: The Upstairs/Downstairs Brain

Your child’s aggressive outbursts, clumsiness, inability to dress herself, or constant meltdowns may be due to a condition called Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD).  About 5-15% of school-aged children have it, and the rate it’s believed, is higher for internationally adopted children.  It can run in families, and there is also evidence that prenatal stressors can contribute.  A lack of proper stimulation in a child’s first years may also impact the brain’s ability to process sensory information.

Sensory integration is a person’s ability to automatically sort and organize the multitude of sensory messages our brain constantly receives. Continue reading Emotional Regulation: Sensory Processing Disorder