If we consider for a moment the fact that our style of thinking is set in motion through the interactions we experience as we grow, then we realize we can intentionally engage in that space to teach healthy thinking.
But Aren’t I Lucky That… is the first in a series of books that intend to do exactly that. This book engages three robust strategies for developing resiliency:
1) It teaches children to look at the whole situation instead of focusing only on the negative,
2) It teaches children to pay attention to even the little things that are good in a situation, and
3) It shows that by giving an act of kindness the receiver feels good, but the giver feels even better.
It also demonstrates to children how to calm down and refocus in stressful situations, and shows the use of empathy and emotional validation when discussing difficulties with children.
And that is just the beginning, in But Aren’t I Lucky That… a bedtime story I will show the use of a positive review of the day to help children identify the good things that have happened, decide a course of action they will take to address difficulties so that the problems do not continue to hold their attention, and then a refocus in on the positive feelings as they relax and drift off to sleep. This focus on positive feelings at the time of sleep onset is believed to improve the restfullness of sleep, as most of dreaming is based on the day residue that you have on your mind as you drift off.
The book really wrote itself. I stumbled onto the phrase while trying to find a way to draw an anxious child out of his preoccupation with his fear that his father was going to die. Normally this would be one of those fears of childhood that has no basis in reality and is just part of developing object permanency, but we were on a small Army post in Italy and the 173rd Airborne Combat Unit was deployed to Afghanistan. It was a hard deployment and we had lots of wounded and killed in action. Saying, “It’s okay.” or “He’ll be fine.” would have been absurd. Kids know when you’re lying. So, instead we focused on what we knew to be true at the moment. At that moment we were lucky because we had not had any bad news and the child had recently received a phone call from his father. We then took this deeper and started to find other things that were lucky about the day and quickly moved to making it a game. I then taught it to his mother and they would play it whenever he was having difficulty. This helped concretely bring him, and us, back to the hear and now, which made the anxiety bearable.
I was inspired to write the book because the tools work. They work for lots of situations, not just deployments. When you have something that you truely believe would be helpful for others to know about, you have to share – at least I do.
The money that I raise by this campaign will go towards funding the publication of this book, and if there is any left over it will go towards publishing the next book in the series. That book will teach how to help children review their day to identify positive events and how to confront situations that didn’t go well by deciding a course of action to address the problem.