Episode Details

Tina Payne Bryson: The Power of Showing Up

Tina Payne Bryson is a psychotherapist and the Founder/Executive Director of The Center for Connection, a multidisciplinary clinical practice, and of The Play Strong Institute, a center devoted to the study, research, and practice of play therapy through a neurodevelopment lens.

Tina is the author with Dan Siegel of two New York Times bestsellers, The Whole-Brain Child* and No Drama Discipline*, each of which has been translated into over forty languages. She’s recently released with Dan their newest book, The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired*.

In this conversation, Tina and I explore what it means to show up for kids and why it’s more than just being physically present. We discuss the distinction between being seen vs. being shamed. Plus, practical actions that parents, family members, and other caregivers can take to empower children.

Key Points

Our research and experience suggest that raising happy, healthy, flourishing kids requires parents to do just one key thing. It’s not about reading all the parenting best sellers or signing your kids up for all the right activities. You don’t even have to know exactly what you’re doing. Just show up.

• Intensive parenting is problematic not only because of the pressure it puts on parents, but because some research suggests that all this exhausting parental striving may not be the best way to raise children.
• Showing up is more than just being physically present.
• Many people don’t have the advantage of relationships. They grew up in families where almost all of the attention was focused on external and surface-level experiences.
• Let your curiosity lead you to take a deeper dive and make space and time to look and learn.
• A child’s brain is changing and changeable.

Resources Mentioned

• The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired* by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
• Tina Payne Bryson
• The New Adolescence: Raising Happy and Successful Teens in an Age of Anxiety and Distraction* by Christine Carter
• Wildhood: The Astounding Connections between Human and Animal Adolescents* by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers

Related Episodes

• How to Reduce Drama With Kids, with Tina Payne Bryson (episode 310)
• Align Your Calendar to What Matters, with Nir Eyal (episode 431)
• Family Productivity, with Bonni Stachowiak (episode 453)

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.