Unhooking from “sticky” thoughts
It’s really normal for kids to have thoughts that seem to control everything they do. It’s also normal to not even question this - what we think must be correct. This is a subject that often comes into my room - with all ages - but especially with children. Some common thoughts that I see are “I’m not good enough”, “no one likes me”, “I can’t do it” and “it’s not fair”. Allowing unhelpful thoughts to dictate how we feel and what we do is incredibly common, but there is often a simple solution.
When working with children who have these thoughts, the first thing I do is to teach them how to just notice the thoughts. When the thought is noticed, it is seen for what is it - just a thought. Then I explain that they are separate to their thoughts - they have thoughts but they are not their thoughts. After that I usually explain that about 90% of the thoughts in our minds are made up, not factual. You could explain this to them by showing them that 9 out of every 10 items/peas/coins/etc (symbolising the thoughts) are self-created. From there, it is useful to explain these thoughts as like a parrot that sits on their shoulder and never stops babbling - some helpful, but some not helpful thoughts, and they can choose to listen to them or to acknowledge them and choose their preferred action from there. Likening the babbling to noisy passengers on a bus that you can choose to listen to or not, is a favourite of mine.
For children that are very rigid in their beliefs/thoughts, it is useful to begin with a simple grounding exercise first that will help them come back to the present moment - one of my favourites is to just notice the thought/feeling, and then find 3-4 things the child can see and hear in that moment. Once they have “come back into their body”, and have realised that it’s just a thought, often this is enough. If the thought is still dictating how they feel, try having them say out loud: “I’m having the thought that...” and then add their sticky thought into that sentence. Another simple technique is to think or say “thanks mind!” when a particular thought comes up. All of these simple techniques can cause the thoughts to lose their “puff” or their hold over the child. Anything that places a little distance between the child and their thoughts will be useful.
For more information on this concept, please see: https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/defusion.htm