I have met and worked with thousands of K-6 children and teens in multiple school systems in Northern and Southern California for over fifteen years.
I have worked with children as young as four and into their teens about to go off to college. In that time, I have helped children and teens deal with abuse, anger, anxiety, bullying, depression, school issues including ADHD, Autism, dyslexia, APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), fear of going to school, pediatric bi-polar and problems at home, with siblings and with parents.
One of the most effective techniques that creates change for children is the use of “Sand Tray” in which children (and teens) create a scene with miniature soldiers, animals, parents and siblings in houses, zoos, a battlefield, etc., whatever is in the child’s mind . Anger and anxiety, fear and shame are “played-out” in the sand tray, again and again, until the negative thoughts and feelings change from battles and anger into happier scenes like zoos and beaches. In the process, the child “works through” their anger, anxieties, fear and shame and feel happier and are comfortable in their world. I also use board games and UNO to invite the child or teen to relax and actually enjoy the process while they talk about what troubles them, with positive results.
To combat bullying, an ongoing issue in schools (and elsewhere), I created an effective intervention for students who came to me complaining about how they felt when they were bullied. The intervention, which uses humor and a few words, is based on experiments at Harvard and Yale which demonstrated that if you can put a smile on your face, you cannot feel “mad, sad, angry or hurt” which are the expected results of bullying.
One of the most important interventions or techniques I use to help children and teens (and their parents) came from these same children and teens. Introducing household chores and enforcing them with consequences suggested by the child relieves the parent of having to “discipline” (i.e., get angry at or use physical force on) the child and teaches the child that they are an important part of the family. This is especially true when the child creates their own consequences, a “special” part of the process.
Surprisingly, it turns out that children want to participate in creating their consequences and believe that they should have chores to help out the family – a realization that often stuns parents. Children and teens also want their parents to “enforce” consequences because it demonstrates to them that the parents “love” them enough to do the hard work of parenting. This unexpected understanding is key to parents committing to the implementation of chores and consequences, and EVERYONE WINS!