Mirror Neurons

I wasn't sure which of my two blogs to put this on - it has implications for brain and family.

Scientists are in the very early stages of learning about Mirror Neurons. Looks very interesting. Think about how our infants learn things. I remember for our own and for our grand kids, getting them to smile by smiling at them, or later to clap by clapping with them. Scientists connect it to empathy as well. And some early connections to Autism - perhaps the mirror neurons are misfiring.

Seems to reinforce the important role of parent on instructing the young - and on the importance of doing what we say.

Watch for much more to come. Here is a short video from NOVA on Mirror Neurons if you are interested.

An Unfair Advantage...

Parents have an unfair advantage that they may not be aware of or take advantage of when it comes to influencing their children.

I'm preparing some presentations on current brain research as part of our Fitz Family presentation these days and reminded again about the importance of patterns and the importance of repetition, along with the need for the brain to gear down and process. (you can check out more on the brain at my other blog)

What better time to gain influence with your children, to impart important messages, to show your love, to learn about their lives, than in the regular, simple ritual moments of life - like eating meals and going to bed. We eat and go to bed every day - we just may not be taking full advantage of those for building family. Making a simple change to take advantage of more/most of those times gives the parents powerful time with their children. Repeated patterns, connected to the other senses of smell, taste, and touch, and especially when done at the end of the day just before bed/sleep and major brain processing time... can't get much better than that!

Faith Ink and their Faith Five along with Youth and Family Institute know about that and give lots of resources for parents so they can take advantage of their powerful position for positive influence in the lives of their kids through simple, regular actions.