The “refrigerator sheet” found here has a nice summary of the 12 strategies presented in this book.
This was a great book full of really insightful strategies to approaching mental integration. My only complaint is that they claim the strategies are neuroscientific, when in fact what they’re doing is using brain metaphors to teach real concepts. The left- and right-brain metaphor is taken too far in popular culture, and I think this book over-emphasizes the importance of these metaphors in order to argue for the parenting strategies here. I was especially bothered by how they used the concept of mirror neurons to argue for the sociality of the brain, as if that alone were a sufficient argument that we should teach kids to think about other people. The recommended strategies for teaching kids to see others are “enjoy each other” and “connect through conflict” which, while probably useful, do not depend on mirror neurons in any particular way.
The value of the 12 strategies in this book does not come from the correctness of neuroscientific theories like brain lateralization, the “downstairs/upstairs brain”, or mirror neurons. They simply rely on the brain’s ability to learn from observation and experience. I get that people like learning through metaphors, but claiming this is a neuroscience-based book leads people to believe that these strategies are scientifically grounded to a level that they really are not.
All that said, I do think integration is a real tool from psychology that can help us teach our kids to process emotions and understand themselves. The 12 strategies are mostly based on this concept, and seem like useful ways to achieve the goal of raising healthy, adjusted, thoughtful kids. The stories and ideas in the book inspire me to take a refreshed approach to parenting, and that alone made it worth reading.