I don’t know if you are aware that I wrote a children’s book last year. It’s about lots of things like flexibility in problem solving and helping/feedback; it’s designed to encourage and sustain creativity in kids (hopefully for the rest of their lives).
One of my friends, Jo, asked me to base the next kid’s book on those limiting words, “I can’t”. I fired off a quick reply to her making a couple of immediate suggestions which she used and got great results with her son. I thought I would share them with you.
What do you do when child says: “I Can’t”…?
1. Really? How do you know you can’t? (causes confusion – get the helpful suggestion in quickly)
2. Show me how you can’t… (they will either surprise themselves by being able to do it, or pretend not to be able – if they do the latter play along – attempt to show them and mess it up yourself to get them laughing – make it into a game – you will soon run out of ‘wrong’ ways to do it and then it’s easy to get them to do it successfully)
3. That’s right, you can’t do it YET…. (make the impossibility temporal) You can add to this by suggesting that they imagine what it will be like when they can… and how they will do it.
4. Don’t stop thinking you can’t until you work out how you can. (This pattern has more than a whiff of Milton Erickson about it)
5. What would Sporticus do? (or whoever their current hero is)
Have a go – it’s fun! (which is, from my perspective, the whole point)
Our kids both learnt to ride their bikes last weekend without stabilisers…in the space of half an hour. We’re not sure what worked. It might have been that Caroline told the kids ‘if you learn to ride your bike without stabilisers we’ll take you to Centerparcs’. It might have been because they were watching a friend ride and they wanted to play with her. And in part it was probably because the eldest child felt embarrassed that at the age of eight she still hadn’t learned, and we helped her with that. And starting with the seat very low and gradually raising it also seemed to help as they gained confidence, to the point where they longer noticed when we didn’t drop the seat back down. So maybe it was a little bit of all of it. Either way the speed at which they learned surpassed our expectations. Not sure what their expectations are, they’re too busy playing and having fun..
Interesting blog post. What would you say was the most important factor in using NLP?
Hi Henry – There are many helpful considerations, I would need a little more of an idea of what ‘using nlp’ means. If i were to make some sweeping statements they would be something like; intervene as little as possible and focus on accessing resource states and developing sensitivity in all rep systems (with sensory specific observation). Stay away from the traditional nlp patterns with very young kids and just play games.
so what children book have you written? What’s the name and where can it be purchased? I would love to learn more about it….