Scorching hot Summer newsletter

Trying to keep cool

The world has gone mad for air conditioning units and fans, everyone's complaining about the heat and many schools have closed so like the snow, the UK just can't cope with extremes of temparature.

This makes me think about children and teens, how they can express extreme emotions and struggle to 'regulate', it's what I hear from clients all the time. They want their kids to regulate their emotions, they complain that children 'over-react', they get angry over 'nothing', they are anxious about 'everything' and they don't understand the 'why'.

One of the NLP beliefs of excellence is that 'the map is not the territory'. What is meant by this is that what may seem completely ridiculour and trivial to us, may in fact feel like a disaster to our child because their perception of their world is far more intense and is quite different from how we see it.

As we draw towards the summer holidays, here are a few ways you might wish to get to understand a bit more about your child or teen's world.

In therapy we use 'clean language', this is where we respond with:

• curiosity

• no judgement

• no assumptions

• no comparisons

• no generalisations - always, never, no-one, everyone

• no distortions - making what they say or do 'mean' something based on your world view

Full body listening

Give them your complete attention and let them do the talking.

Match their body language. Lean in if they are or sit back if they are doing that.

If they are agitated, breathe slower and deeper to help them match you and calm down.

If they are angry, nod to show you understand how they feel and for them to know you hear them and or on their side. Then you can ask them:

• how big is that angry feeling/ that anger?

• what colour is it?

• if there was a colour you could breathe in to calm that angry feeling, a happy colour or a calm colour, what would it be?

• shall we both do that together?

And if they can't find the words....

• let them draw or paint their feelings

• use story cubes to tell a story about what happened, how they feel

• use Lego to express the feeling

• use collage

• ask what colour is the feeling and where it is in their body

• if it had a voice what would it say

You'll find plenty of other ways to engage with your kids over the summer holidays and if you work with children and teens, the ideas in my book 'Understanding children and teens' also consider subscribing free to my Substack and as you know there are loads of free resources on this website.

If you're thinking of training with me, please note that you can pay per module, schedule the training for whenever you're free, have the training geared to how you need to use it in your role as parent, teacher, social worker, coach etc.

Have a great summer!

Judy x

Some snow to cool you down!