Daniel A. Hughes > Quotes

“Mutual defensiveness moves parents and children away from intersubjective experience and joint influence and into a desire to gain control of the situation. To”
― Daniel A. Hughes, Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment

“For every child—and every parent too, hopefully—home is where you can relax and feel safe, laugh and cry, hope and dream, and prepare yourself with a mixture of excitement and fear for the adventures and challenges that beckon. Your home is your secure base. When the world has become too stressful or too stimulating, or when you have just been away too long, your home finds its way into your mind and body and back you come to repair, rejuvenate, and recharge. You return home if you are able, and if you cannot return home, thinking about it comforts you. Your home is your safe haven. When home is working at its best, being a secure base and safe haven equally well, it most likely is characterized by qualities of PACE (playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, empathy).”
― Daniel A. Hughes, Attachment-Focused Parenting: Effective Strategies to Care for Children (Norton Professional Books

“The limbic system is essentially devoted to moving us rapidly toward or away from things in life that are relevant to our survival.”
― Daniel A. Hughes, Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment

“Becoming familiar with your amygdala and the kinds of things it reacts to in life is an important part of learning to regulate your own stress and manage your tendencies to approach and avoid things in your life, including your children.”
― Daniel A. Hughes, Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment

“These growth-suppressing relational dynamics ramp up the stress and defense systems—a brain pattern that”
― Daniel A. Hughes, Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment