Explaining the brain to children: Flipping your lid
This clip is drawn from Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain. It is a metaphor to help explain what might be happening in our brains when distressed. It depicts an ‘emotional’ and ‘thinking’ brain but this does not mean they are separate parts of the brain. The ‘emotional’ and ‘thinking’ brain are descriptive metaphors of brain functioning to explain how our brains may be in a more ‘reactive’ rather than ‘reflective’ mode. The hand model clip is used in Emotion Coaching training to show how Emotion Coaching can help to guide the brain to develop a more reflective mode (thinking brain) rather than remain in a reactive mode (emotional brain).