I'd like to share the introduction to my new book so you understand where I was writing from and my purpose in writing it.
When I started to write this book, pre Covid-19 in January 2020, it was my intention to share with you all my experience and learnings so that you would have a wide range of tools and modalities at your fingertips as professionals working with children, teens, parents and families. It had not been my intention to write for parents as I had done with Be a happier parent with NLP.
Then Covid-19 turned our lives upside down. We all had to face almost wartime restrictions on our liberty, our finances and our ability to work. Schools closed and children were home-schooled while parents tried to continue working with nobody able to draw on extended families and friends for support. Many of us lost our jobs, homes and livelihood. Thousands lost loved ones. It would be fair to say that we all struggled, along with other families, all over the world.
As I was writing the book, parents were telling me how they and their families were suffering, how they were experiencing mental and emotional problems they hadn’t had before and they didn’t know what to do. I realised that what I was writing for professionals was also relevant for parents, many of whom would, in any case, be working in a professional capacity with children. I also recognised that teachers were also facing extreme challenges and would continue to do so for many months or even years. So, parents and teachers, this book is very much written with you in mind.
Whether you use these exercises for your own children or for those you work with, they are all fun to do and yield great insight. They enable healing through showing children and teens that they have other possibilities. They are no longer stuck and can change their patterns.
My guiding principles when working with children are:
- Observe the body language
- Listen and notice the language patterns
- Listen specifically for the limiting beliefs
- Be curious about where they might have the skills to overcome them
- Find their models of excellence
- Help them ‘join up the dots’
- Make the learning and skills ‘portable’ so they don’t need me
Joining up the dots may be through:
- Reflecting back using ‘clean language’
- Feedback of a pattern you’ve noticed
- Guiding them in an exercise which enables them to disassociate and see the pattern for themselves
- Addressing a limiting belief through a technique from NLP or EFT
The analogy I use is this:
Imagine your client is stuck in the mud. They can’t get out on their own, and by holding out your hand to them, they can make their first few steps until they are back on the dry ground where they can run and play again.
You will have your own metaphor or analogy of how you work with your child clients or with your own child, and I think it’s helpful to have one, because there can be a tendency when you love children to ‘rescue’ them rather than coach them. As parents, we do still need to have access to that inner coach as children move towards independence. This is a time when you can’t be ‘fixing' or ‘rescuing them’ and they need to be forming their own coping strategies.
Finally, it is my intention that this book contains all the skills and expertise I have acquired over the last 20 years or so while working with children. We continue to learn all the time, and I share what I know with my students. You can book training courses with me via my website www.nlpfamily.com and I have listed resources at the back for modalities that I mention but in which I am not an expert.
