It's so simple, yet so powerful. It's the one conversational tool I use every single day, with every single client I work with and I use it at home with my kids too. It'll take you from misunderstandings and frustration to real dialogue quicker than anything else. Find out now! …
Tag: challenging young people
On the importance of not getting all caught up in our expertise, superior knowledge or experience and forgetting to do the most important thing of all with our troubled teens- listening.
Teens can blow up in our faces because they think we are being unfair. Part 2 of this mini-series looks at: 1. What can we do to get them to express themselves better, to stop treating us like a verbal and/or physical punchbags; 2. How we can get them to respond more appropriately to their perceived sense of injustice. With practical examples and scripts.
Why are some teens so darn rude? Why can they not just do as they are told without arguing? Without being disrespectful? It may have to do with a hidden paradox that has within it the clues to help us get them to lose the rude. Find out more! …
You think you know. You think you know what’s going on in my head, in my life, in my everything. Why I blow up in anger, or why I’m withdrawn, why I use coke, why I skip school, why I’m silent when you essentially ask me WTF? God you probably think you know why I put jam on my toast. You think you know. Well you don’t. Whether you have studied for five years, whether you have worked with troubled kids for ten, whether you have lived with me for fifteen, I have to tell you that you do not know. Why? Because when you over-rely on what you know, you do not rely on what I know. What I know of my existence, what I have experienced, the thoughts and emotions that whirl around inside me. You might see outward manifestations of all of that, you might see my dysfunction, but you do not know my inner world. The biggest tell-tale for me that you do not know is when you do not ask. It is when you tell me what I feel. It is when you tell me why I am doing what I’m doing and punish me…
A poem on why teens don't listen to us, often because we are not listening to them, and how we can do better! "...I get shut down, Before I’m even open, You’re not listening to me, My words might as well be unspoken."
What happens when we stop thinking we are an expert when we meet with our teens? What happens when we stop thinking we know it all? What happens when we open our hearts, minds and start really listening?
On why it's not enough to focus on the 'don't's and why we need to focus on the 'instead's and the 'do's.
So this is a confession about my very real struggle to not cry at any Christmas event with children performing or singing. It's ridiculous. It's about understanding my behaviour and realising it's all about children's potential and how we need to still see it in our troubled teens.
How to create memorable endings with your teens that increase their chances of future success.
Trigger Warning ! The content of what follows may be a trigger for those who have experienced sexual abuse or grooming. I just wanted to be noticed and he saw me. I wanted to feel like someone actually cared, and he made me feel special. I wanted to feel worthy of gifts for once, and he showered me. I wanted to show everyone else that I was somebody. And before I knew it I was somebody, somebody to be abused. At first I was the one, the only one. I seemed like the centre of his world. He’d pick me up, he told me I was beautiful, he showed interest, what I thought was care. And instead of going around dragging my life baggage, of being ignored, of abuse, of care homes, of being picked up and dropped time and time again, by relatives, by professionals, I started to float on air. The baggage weighed nothing because I was somebody. Instead of assuming the colour of my environment, I stood out. And because I was seen, somebody lifted my bags, somebody helped me on my way. Little did I know that while my back was turned the plans for further…
"When I blow outwards, when I lash out, when I destroy, I test the limits of sympathy, of compassion. But what if you could actually see the pain that drives my actions?"
I’m a label, a sticker, a scrawl on a file A person lost in the paper mile That runs from birth to right here now You know me but you don’t and I’ll tell you how My name spells trouble, it’s written ahead In the assessments, the reports, the letters you’ve read You know my circumstance, my life, my woe But any deeper you just won’t go
Hello, this is me. Me if I could talk, me if I could express myself, me if I wasn’t so broken. I want to let you in, into my world, into my thoughts, into the very essence and core of who I really am. I don’t know if you realise this, but I am more than what you see me do, more than the difficult buggar that most days you could strangle.