If you are one of the many many mums who is putting off giving me a call about your child because you fear that them coming to a therapist will be an ordeal for them - please read on! 

I have so many years experience of working with children, it's embarrassing and I'm starting to claim fewer in case you work out how old I am! In my market research days of projects for TV companies, toy companies and publishers, I had to find ingenious and fun ways to get kids talking and over the years I've become more and more inventive. Children don't respond well to direct questions and the word 'why' simply sends them into their conscious brain where they won't find the answer because it just doesn't work like that. 

Let me tell you the sort of things your child will do with me...............

Sand Play
Using a sand tray children create their world with dinosaurs, sea creatures, shells and moshi monsters. I get to understand who is in their world, family and friends, how school and home is for them and the main obstacles they have in their life right now. 

They then recreate it as they would like it to be and we have an idea of what we will work on in our sessions. 

Lego Serious Play

This is a set of LEGO designed for therapy use so it has all sorts of interesting bits and pieces rather than simply being blocks to make a set thing.  I invite children to create a model of friendship or confidence or make a happiness machine. As they do this, I observe their process and we can chat without it being direct and without eye contact which children find easier. As they explain how their model works, i learn a great deal about them and what they feel as well as how they'd like to feel. 

Crystal Time Line

By choosing a crystal that represents them, they project onto the crystal, aspects of their own personality which helps me to understand them in a way that a direct question wouldn't. They then choose crystals to represent their family members and friends which enables me to get a feeling for their world and who's in it. 

I also use crystals to get an understanding of what they've experienced in their life so far. We take each school year and they choose a crystal that represents it and talk about what that year was like for them and we can use this as a basis for working on compelling outcomes and overcoming limiting beliefs. 

I'm afraid I can't find any pictures that don't have identifying names etc on them to show you. 

Drawing

Children may be asked to draw themselves as a superhero, draw their dream, a feelings pizza or draw their fear. There are lots of coloured felt pens and the colours all have meanings which tell me more about what we might need to work on. 

Vision boards

Children and young people love to create vision boards from the Visual Explorer cards and then use them as Home screens on their mobile. This could be a vision of their new school year, friendship, their future, their family life or indeed anything I might decide will be helpful. 

Metaprogrammes

NLP explains how we have a number of metaprogrammes which we use to process our world and knowing how we do that, helps children best choose how they work more effectively when it comes to revision, tests or important exams. It also helps parents know how to communicate so their child can process what they are saying quickly without having to translate it into their own metaprogramme. 

So if you feel your child or young person might actually enjoy coming to see me, get in touch and we will start working on whatever they'd like to change in their life. 

​NLP has a number of ground rules or principles that form the basis for all the practical tools and techniques you will learn in this book.
I find that they underpin it in such a way that if I get stuck, just by applying one of these rules I can find a solution.
Each one makes you stop and think differently. It challenges you to assess whether what you do now, works or if by changing it, you could get a better outcome.
NLP is completely focussed on positivity, aiming for a positive outcome, a compelling outcome that is desirable for you. The focus is on what you want, rather than what you don’t want.
There are even some toxic words that by avoiding will steer you a positive, resourceful path.
NLP uses a great deal too much jargon in my opinion and so I have reworded some of the concepts to make them more digestible as you will want to pass them on to your children.
 

This is a great one to start with because it really challenges you to change.

What it says is that if the result you are getting such as your children’s behaviour is not what you want then you must change your own behaviour in order to get a different result.

We tend to think as parents that it is their behaviour that must be changed and we carry on telling them off, shouting at them and getting cross.

So here is a new way of thinking.
Do something different.
If you do something different you will get a different result.

The first way to do this is to decide what result you want. There could be any number of results such as children doing what they are told, not throwing things, shouting and so on. 

Think of a situation that occurs frequently in your family that you’d like to change. Write it down here.
I want to change………..
 
 
 
 
 
 
Now think about what you would like to happen. What is your desirable outcome? Write that down now.
What I want to happen is………
 
 
 
 
 
When you decide on what result you want you need to be quite specific and get to the detail. What exactly do you want, from whom, when and in what way? Write this down here.
I want ………………………….
 
 
 
 
 
The more specific you can be about what you want to happen the easier it will be to decide how to change what you are currently doing in order to achieve it.

Your current behaviour pattern is dictated by your beliefs. The reason you are shouting or using the words you are using, telling them to do certain things is because you have a belief that it is important for them to do what you ask.

This belief stems from your own childhood and how you were brought up, what you consider to be of value and important about how to bring up children. This may also have come from the mores of the culture you are from, the area or region and who you spend time with in your environment.
​
If what you are doing is not working then look at the underlying belief for this behaviour.
Are you sure your underlying belief is sound? Could you be carrying forward into the present a belief that belongs in the past?
Look back at the situation you have written about and list all the beliefs that underpin your thinking. What do you hold in your head about what should happen in that situation?
I believe that…………
 
 
I believe that………….
 
 
I believe that…………..
 
 
Where have those beliefs come from?
Are they valid for you today? Are they serving you well or making life more difficult?
Could you re-think a belief so that you could make other choices of behaviour?
Whenever you find yourself thinking ‘I should do….’ - change it to, ‘I could do…’ so that you give yourself permission to do something different. 
Do your beliefs limit your choices of behaviour? Increase your options and change your behaviour to get the result you want.
 
 
This is of course an excellent challenge for children. How often do they repeat the same behaviour, get the same result and wish they’d got another one. They have the same choices as you.
Ask them what they want to happen in the situation and ask them to describe it in detail, even act it out if that helps.
Then ask them what they could do differently to make this result happen for them.
Discuss with them their different options and how likely each one would bring about the outcome they desire.
This process requires that they step into the shoes of the other people involved in the situation rather than just look at it from their point of view. This is an enormously powerful tool that they can learn as a toddler and apply throughout their life. 

There are a number of factors in parenting style that can contribute to low self-esteem in adults.

*  Focus on the negative
If your parents or teachers/carers noticed what you did wrong or where you fell short of their expectations (which may well have been unrealistic) but didn’t praise you for what you did achieve.

* High expectations
Some high achieving parents assume their children will also be brilliant, clever and do well at school but this is not always the case of course. You might have been differently excellent in your own way but if it was not what was expected for you it may not have been recognised.

* Negative comparisons
When parents or teachers constantly compare you with other brighter pupils or siblings and feel that you are ‘not good enough’.

* Neglect
When parents’ busy lives and stressful occupations, frequent absences and lack of contact result in a child not receiving the emotional and physical support they need when growing up.

* Abuse
Children who have been physically or verbally abused find it difficult to feel valued.

* Being different
If you were very different from your peers or siblings through being a different colour, size, culture, religion or temperament this can lead to feelings of low esteem. Sometimes just wearing glasses, having a stutter or a skin condition can make a child feel different.
 
These situations do not necessarily lead to low self-esteem. It is not the facts in themselves that create it but your perceptions of the facts. You may have a perception that whatever you do is wrong or notice the negative responses rather than the positive ones and this can be the result of a pattern in parents. For example, if a parent constantly puts themselves down or has low self-esteem themselves, their child could therefore almost look out for situations or experiences that would lead them to have this themselves. Similarly you can have biased interpretation such that you subconsciously distort the meaning you attach to the situation. For example, if your parent says something positive you still decide that they didn’t mean it or were just trying to be nice. 

​Who we are is not so much about the roles we play, what we do for a living or how we spend our time. We are who we are because of how we respond to what we experience. Take a group of people and expose them to the same experience and they will each respond differently. This difference is explained by the fact that we will base our response to events and people on a number of factors such as:

• Childhood – how we were brought up, where, by whom and in what culture
• Our age – attitudes change with time our response will be different to anyone younger or older than us depending on the environment we were brought up in, the mores of our generation
• Gender – men and women are different!
• Past experience of the event or person
• Values – what we feel is important in life
• Beliefs – what we hold to be true about the world

 
How our parents brought us up, their values and beliefs will have been passed on to us both subconsciously and directly in terms of spoken instructions. They in turn will have been influenced by their parents of course. If you were brought up by one parent this will have affected you and be different from say your partner who may have been brought up by two parents. The area in which you spent your childhood will affect who you are and the cultural environment. One only has to witness two colleagues suddenly discovering they went to the same school or lived in the same town to experience the sense of kinship they have from this shared environment.

We are unique, we are the result of the beliefs of our parents, their parents, our teachers and the environment itself. We are special people and we need to love ourselves so our children can love themselves. 
 

You can read more about self-esteem and how to get more of it in my book 'Self-Esteem Workbook' and I run a self esteem programme for adults and a Confidence and Resilience course for children and teens. 

Feedback is the response we give and get from communication, either verbal or non-verbal. Distortion is the effect of mind reading and making assumptions about a person’s behaviour rather than checking it out with them. 

When we give feedback it needs to be clear and specific and it needs to be what we think based on what we have observed rather than assumptions we make based on our view of the world. Distortion occurs when we make 1+1=3 , where the evidence doesn’t point to the conclusion we’ve drawn because we’ve added in something of our own into the mix. An example of this is ‘my children are fighting to annoy me’ or ‘my boss has given me extra work because he doesn’t like me’. You can also recognise this type of distortion where you have sentences divided by the word ‘so’ or ‘therefore’ for example ‘he hasn’t told me he loves me recently so he must be having an affair’ or ‘she is playing on her computer therefore she isn’t doing her homework’. When we add our own meaning we are distorting the original meaning. It assumes we know better what the intention of the behaviour or communication was. We compare what they say and do with our own map of the world and it becomes our truth. Feedback needs to be given in the spirit of curiosity and respect for the other person’s map of the world.  What else could they mean? Where someone has presented two linked statements for them there is an association or meaning in their map of the world. We need to challenge this using clean questions such as ‘in what way…’ or ‘and how is…and that’s like what?’ we’re looking to understand how 1+1=3 in their map.

When we are given feedback the same thing applies. Be curious about the content, what they have observed and question any assumptions they have made which have distorted it. This is all part of the feedback because you need to know what it was that you communicated that gave them this impression because you are responsible for your communication.

Reverse mind reading is also distortion. This is when someone says ‘if you knew me …..’ or ‘if you cared about me you would……’ or ‘you should know that………’. Here you are criticising someone for not responding in the way they should yet you have never told them what you wanted.

Another type of distortion is cause and effect when we feedback to someone that they ‘make’ you feel a certain way. This isn’t true because someone can’t make you feel something, this is your choice however what interests us is how this can be so for the other person so we’d ask ‘how exactly did I do that?’ or ‘how did x do that exactly?’ 

Parents frequently distort feedback to and from their children partly because the relationship is so intense and emotional that it becomes difficult to objectively observe behaviour. There is a huge amount of mind-reading that goes on because parents unecologically assume that they can do this because the child is theirs, of their own flesh and blood therefore they ought to be able to read their mind. Of course they can’t.
When children disobey their parents it isn’t usually because they want to ‘make ‘ them angry or upset even thought his is often what parents say. Parents often take the action of their children at a very personal level assuming they are involved when usually they are not. Next time you respond to your child feedback what you have noticed without putting any interpretation on it from your own very different map of the world. Be curious about their map as you feedback to them how you feel about what they have done or said. By taking this slightly more disassociated stance you allow for improved rapport and connection. You also model for them how to give feedback and how to receive it.
When you children are giving you feedback that seems distorted , question the assumptions using clean questions such as ‘and how exactly did I do that? or ‘and how exactly did I make you feel this?’  

Everything we experience is filtered through our beliefs and values, experiences and memories. This gives us a unique perception, ours. It is called our ‘map of the world’. But there are several different ways of looking at your world. In NLP we call them positions, they are also called perspectives. They relate to perceptions from three different points of view. A CCTV camera has no emotion but simply records what it sees without judgement.  It notices everything and records it exactly. It can’t be fooled, it is impartial. By being able to access this state for ourselves we get to see what is actually happening in our world when we take away the emotions. This can be instructive in a number of situations.

“What people say they do or believe they do is often far removed from what they actually do”.
Richard Bandler

“Wisdom comes from multiple perspectives, and there is a lot that the athlete can learn from seeing him/herself doing the particular event (disassociated) from different angles and perspectives.” Jeremy Lazarus.

“The skill lies in choosing an associated or a disassociated state for a purpose. The appropriate choice depends on your desire outcome. You might choose to disassociate to protect yourself from painful emotions, or you might choose to associate in order fully to experience all the feelings of the situation.” Sue Knight

“As you practice the technique of changing perceptual positions you will find that moving to third position brings with it a new perspective and calmer insights into any dilemma that you are facing.” Jeff Archer

“Some people believe that this perceptual position allows us to manage our emotions more effectively by ensuring that our prefrontal cortex is engaged in a logical and rational way, as opposed to being at the mercy of our amygdala with all the associated risks of emotional excess.” Richard Churches and Roger Terry

First position is us. When we use the word ‘I’ we are engaging with our ‘first person’. It is from this position that we think and talk about our thoughts and feelings our beliefs and values, experiences and window on the world. It is important to associate into this position and be fully aware of it so you know that it is your opinion you are expressing and your choice of what you are doing. You can’t always stay in first position though because you need to appreciate other people’s point of view and consider their feelings. Be aware when you are in first position and acknowledge that it is one point of view and that it isn’t the only one.

Second position is the other person you are talking to or in a relationship with. You need to step into their shoes to understand the world from their perspective. It will be different from yours, not least because they may be another gender, age or ethnic group. You will be most successful at this if you can imagine and be curious about what life would be like if you were them. Acknowledging the second position is the way you can empathise with someone else and consider their feelings because by putting yourself in their shoes you will know what these are without having to ask them.

Third position is the CCTV camera or some people say ‘the fly on the wall’ or ‘impartial observer’. This third position can observe what is going on between first and second position but cannot intervene and cannot feel the emotion, it just observes the body language and hears what is said. It can only communicate this without there being any judgement or emotion. In order to understand this position, imagine yourself as a fly on the wall or a CCTV camera watching you right now as you read this book. When you are that camera what do you see? What is happening?

This ability to see things dispassionately can be enormously beneficial when emotions are getting high and being able to second and third position in order to see the other person’s map and see what is going on between you both from an outside perspective can take the heat out of the situation.
 
​Become aware of when you are in first , second and third position and practice moving deftly between them to check out what the other person may need or want (second position) what you want (first position) and then check in with third position to view the interaction from a disassociated place where the emotions are quietened. That way, you become flexible, give yourself choices and are more likely to achieve your desirable outcome. 

This extract is from 'Secrets of the NLP Masters' by Judy Bartkowiak. 

When we give up on things very quickly and call it failure it is often because of a belief we have that we should find things easy and succeed first time. This could be because in the past we have done so. Maybe as a child we used to find things easy but then as work at school became harder and we couldn’t do it so easily we decided we were not so bright after all and gave up instead of finding other ways to understand the subject.

Apart from past experience informing how we frame failure we can also blame our upbringing. Parents and significant adults in early life can make it difficult for us to pick ourselves up and get going again after disappointments. They can suggest that it’s inherited “I wasn’t any good at maths either” or “no-one in our family ever went to University and it didn’t do them any harm”. They might tell you that it isn’t important “what do you want to speak French for?” or “exams aren’t everything you know.” In trying to make you feel better they may even persuade you that you didn’t want to succeed anyway and that it’s even an advantage to have failed “you’re better off staying where you are” or “you wouldn’t want the stress of that job”.

In those ways we get into the habit of accepting defeat and we bow to the pressure of other people wanting to make our life easier or for us to feel good about ourselves instead of persevering until we succeed. It is well known that even a successful novelist like J.K.Rowling was rejected many times before being published and what a loss it would have been not to have experienced Harry Potter. Sportsmen train daily to achieve success and study their form in minute detail to see where they went wrong and discuss with their trainer how to do it differently next time. This is what we need to do too. 

Where you choose to place your focus will also have an influence on the outcome. When we feel deflated and focus on what has not worked out we can sometimes fail to notice and learn from what has been successful. We get the balance all wrong. Instead next time you think something has failed, stop and track through the process picking out the things that went well so you hold onto them for next time. Take time to learn from what went well. What skills did you apply? Could you have done anything differently to get a better result?

Write down what you’ve learned from the successes and what you plan to do next time and only when you feel good about what went well should you look at areas which need a different approach.

Those things that went less well, what have you learned? Could you have used these skills you’ve just identified in those areas to get a different result? How? Run through the structure of what happened, the process rather than the content. How could you change the process next time? 

One of the NLP Beliefs of Excellence is 'we already have all the resources we need'. One of these is to learn from failure how to improve next time. 

“There’s only one thing that makes dreams impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” Paulo Coelho

I see lots of mums in my therapy room who have picked up a fear of failure in their own childhood, perhaps even inherited it from their mother's childhood. With this fear deeply embedded in their subconscious, everything that happens in their parenting where they are reminded of it, creates a much more emotional reaction. It might only take a child refusing to do something for them to feel they've failed. If you'd like to work on your own fear of failure, please get in touch. I offer Skype or Whatsapp online therapy at £250 for four one hour sessions.  

NLP & EFT for Back to work - a four week course for female entrepreneurs

This is a four week course via Zoom for women in the early stages of setting up their own small business. It will cover
* overcoming blocks around confidence about putting yourself 'out there' 
* getting to know your skills and applying them to be your best self
* emergency treatment for those panicky moments
* anything else you need!
The course will be £25 for all four sessions. It will include membership of a whatsapp group just for this course so you can support each other. 

Judy Bartkowiak runs her own business NLP & EFT Kids, from home in Burnham, South Bucks, UK. Before training in NLP she ran a Market Research company specialising in kids research. Over the years she has also run a Montessori school, taught English as a foreign language, worked as a freelance writer and manages several Airbnb rooms in her house. So she has some experience setting up and running businesses whilst also parenting four children. 

If you'd like to arrange a private consultation or a free 15 minute intro chat, get in touch using the contact form please. 
​

I've seen a lot of teenagers this week, both on Skype and here in my therapy room (my dining room in fact!) at home. The pressure is on, motivation is low and there's a lot of depression and anxiety in the air. 
So if this is what your home feels like right now, here are a few top tips to share with your kids.
#Alevels #gcse #revision #anxiety #stress #depression #teenagers#examstress
1. The fastest way to change state (mood) is to change your breathing so instead of going into your head and trying to battle it out there through reason and logic, instead - exercise (just run round the block, up and down stairs, skip) sing and dance to some music, laugh at a comedy show, breathe deeply do some yoga. 
2. Eat and sleep, drink plenty of water. Spend some time doing something for yourself that you love. Meet up with a friend, look after your emotional and physical needs. 
3. Visualise what a good result will look, sound and feel like. Can you imagine looking at your grade sheet, what would you like to see there? What will your parents say? How pleased will they be? How will you feel? Proud? Relieved? 
4. Chunk down (take your revision a bit at a time, one topic, one aspect) and take these small bites with a break in between. Then chunk up - what does it mean to have done that chunk? You're a step closer to being prepared for the exam. Chunk up again - you're on your way to college, uni apprenticeship. 
5. Set your compelling outcome for the day, what topics you want to do (be specific) set achievable goals factoring in some 'me time' and focus on what you want to achieve, set 'towards' goals. 
6. Instead of comparing yourself with others (external referencing) focus on how much more prepared you are yourself as each day passes. 
7. To gain extra focus do the 9 step gamut process. Eyes up, eyes down, eyes left, eyes right, roll eyes clockwise, eyes anticlockwise, hum, count 1-9, and hum. This will wake up both left and right side of your brain. Healthier than coffee or Red Bull!

Some people thrive on choice and enjoy the element of selecting from a number of options, whether it be what to wear, what to buy, what to cook or eat or even what to say but others prefer to just pick something and go with it. In NLP terms we call it choices or process to indicate that those who don’t like choices want to work their way down a list of task as a process rather than branching off or pausing to make decisions. It isn’t really a bipolar scale, these are just the two ends of it. 

“Having just one choice is no choice at all. The more choices you have, the more freedom you have to be in the driving seat of your car.” Steve Bannister

“The whole point of NLP is having more choice.” Richard Bandler

“You’re not just a leaf on the wind.” Anthony Robbins

“We are making hundreds, thousands even millions of unconscious choices every day about what we pay attention to and what we don’t. And this is fine, provided those choices work for us. However, if we are not getting the results we want, we can learn to make new choices until we find what does work.” Sue Knight

“Identifying, acknowledging, examining, and employing our parts, rules, and inner wisdom help us transform our internal process and deal with present circumstances. By removing our self-made limits, we expand our choices.” Virginia Satir

In a family it is very important to make it clear to your children what are options and which are not. There has been a growing trend to encourage children to make choices even at a very young age, whether to drink out of a red mug or a blue one, whether to wear this or that dress. This is inclined to make children capricious as they assume they can make decisions about everything which isn’t of course the case and can lead to some very lengthy preparations for leaving the house! You need to prepare your children for accepting your decisions and make it clear when they can choose and when it isn’t possible or appropriate. You can signal this by asking ‘would you like to choose?’ when there is a choice.

It is useful to know whether the person you are talking to likes choices or not in each situation because you will have greater rapport if you give choices to someone who wants them and not to someone who doesn’t.  You would similarly offer false choices to children who want choice so “would you like to do your homework with a cup of tea or a glass of milk?” Note that not doing homework wasn’t an option! Also, with ‘like’ and ‘homework’ close together in the sentence you are giving them a slightly hypnotic connection which might not have been present for them.
  
Parents need to know how to give choice when there is none because offering choices is not always an option when you want your children to get dressed to go to school by a certain time, eat healthy meals or do their homework. If you have older children you may not want to give them choices about what time to come home or where they go and with whom.

First decide on your compelling outcome. What end result do you want from the discussion or negotiation? What will you concede and what is non-negotiable? Simply going through this process has a remarkably calming effect and puts you in the driving seat. If for example the pick-up time is non-negotiable you can give them a choice of how they come home, with whom and by what means of transport. If the time you have to leave for the school run is non-negotiable give them a choice about getting dressed before or after breakfast or whether to wear a jumper or not, whether they need to give their shoes a clean.

 Even when there appears to be no choice in the ‘what’ that we have to do, there is always a choice in the ‘how’. There is a choice also in how we communicate, what we choose to believe about a situation and a choice in how we frame it. We can use anchoring to choose our most resourceful state and we can choose to communicate in rapport. These choices give us flexibility which puts us in control if we choose to be. 

This extract was taken from 'Secrets of the NLP Masters' by Judy Bartkowiak. 

Is anyone else experiencing kids saying they have this disorder or this syndrome, that issue, or some other condition?
These are called 'nominalisations' in NLP. They are labels, collective names for a large group of symptoms. It is a way of putting how they feel 'out there' at a distance from themselves, where it's safe and not about them and their own personal feelings.
When you child or teen does this, you can help them best by asking them these questions:
1. What exactly do you feel?
2. What's it like? 
3. When does it happen?
4. What happens just before the feeling? 
5. What would you like to have happen?
6. Is that within your control?
7. What could you do that is in your control? 
8. What seems to work best? 
9. Have you noticed how your friends respond in that situation, what could you try that seems to work for them?
10. Reassure them that it's OK to feel ........(child's word) and it's part of learning how to cope with a range of emotions that happen at their age.
Do not tell them it's nothing. They are trying to connect with you and want you to listen. It is every child/teen's right to be heard by their parents. Hug them and reassure them that you understand and are there for them.
Do not rescue them. Rescuing is when we take over and take responsibility for resolving their situation. It is not clean. By this, I mean that we are making assumptions about how it could best be resolved. But the map is not the territory. They already have the resources to solve their situation.
Trust that you have brought them up with the values they need and that if they need your help, they will ask for it.

Learn how NLP can really assist you and add to your parenting skills with 'Be a happier parent with NLP', It's full of ideas, NLP content and specific guidance with issues such as birth of second and subsequent children, moving house, moving school, death of a pet, help with learning etc 

Email me for your free extract of the first part of the book as a PDF