The Whole-Brain Child

continue to try making sense of an experience until it succeeds. As
parents, we can help this process along through storytelling.
That’s what Thomas did with Katie, the preschooler who was
screaming about dying if her father left her at school. Even though
he felt frustrated with the situation, he resisted the urge to dismiss
and deny Katie’s experiences. Because of what he had learned, he
recognized that his daughter’s brain was linking several events
together: being dropped oʃ at school, getting sick, having her
father leave, and feeling afraid. As a result, when it came time to
pack up and go to school, her brain and body started telling her,
“Bad idea: school = feeling sick = Dad gone = afraid.” From that
perspective, it made sense that she didn’t want to go to school.
Realizing this, Thomas used his knowledge about the brain’s two
hemispheres. He knew that small children like Katie are typically
right-hemisphere dominant and haven’t mastered their ability to
use logic and words to express feelings. Katie felt the strong
emotions, but she wasn’t able to understand and communicate
them clearly. As a result, they had become overpowering. He also
knew that autobiographical memory is stored in the right side of
the brain, and understood that the details of her getting sick had
become linked in her memory and caused her right hemisphere to
shift into overdrive.
Once Thomas grasped all of this, he knew he needed to help
Katie make sense of those emotions by using her left hemisphere—
by bringing in logic, putting the events in order, and assigning
words to her feelings. The way he did this was by helping her tell a
story about what had happened that day so that she could use both
sides of her brain together. He told her, “I know you’ve been
having a hard time going to school since you got sick. Let’s try to
remember the day you felt sick at school. First, we got ready for
school, didn’t we? Remember, you wanted to wear your red pants,
we had waʀes with blueberries, and then you brushed your teeth?