When it comes to many parenting cha

When it comes to many parenting challenges with typically developing kids, simple strategies (策略)can go a long way. However, some situations require us to dig deeper. Research suggests that parental12mentalizing — the capacity to seek to understand our own and our child’s behaviors from the perspective (角度) of underlying mental states, like thoughts, feelings, and needs — can help us get to the heart of thetrickiest parenting issues.Parents who have the ability to mentalize can recognize the less immediately apparent causes of theirchildren’s behaviors. When a child is angry, for example, we might tend to respond by removing somethingthe child likes. But a parent who mentalizes may see the hurt underneath the child’s outward anger andrespond in a way that directly addresses that pain — for instance, by slowing down to ask the child whetherhe / she is upset and want to talk about it. In doing so, the parent may be able to remove the reason behindthe anger, and may actually give the child a tool to address this issue in the future: reaching out for support.It turns out that parents who mentalize see a wide range of benefits in their children. For one, their kidsdevelop greater attachment security, which appears when children feel safe and secure in their relationshipswith their parents. Further, in one experiment, parents who mentalized more for their own children persisted(坚持) longer in trying to comfort a pretend crying baby. This vividly illustrates how being able to reflect onchildren’s thoughts and feelings may give us the mental flexibility to try multiple approaches in respondingto their problems.Mentalizing also has advantages for the parents themselves. Mentalizing can allow us to reflect on ourown emotions in the parenting role, providing clarity on why our children’s behaviors activate such strongreactions in us. For instance, after being criticized for incompetence by her colleague at work one day, amother might be able to recognize that her frustration about her child’s limit-testing behavior is exaggerated(夸大的). Such clarity can help us identify the true source of our feelings, which in turn can assist us inregulating them.By now you may think mentalizing is a complicated concept, but in fact you can conduct it with yourchild in simple ways. For example, when your child is exhibiting a behavior that’s upsetting to you, pause toallow yourself to think of all the different potential internal explanations for this behavior. Meanwhile, slowdown and ask your child what he or she is experiencing. Use open-ended questions and convey curiosity inunderstanding your child’s true thoughts and feelings, wherever they may take you. Once you’ve created theright environment to talk about your child’s thoughts and feelings, it’s important to continue to convey astate of openness to new experiences. Just like us, our children’s thoughts, feelings, and preferences areconstantly evolving.