Page 46 - SB-Little Prince

CONCLUSION
As with other stories in the Coping Skills series, this story provides you an opportunity to help children develop empathy, “When you make demands of others like the Prince, how does that make them feel?” The response of “angry or scared” may not come readily to some children. Children tend to be too self-absorbed and internally focused to recognize how others feel.
Behaviors that come naturally from this type of thinking (Demandingness) may have negative and unintended consequences. “If you act like the Prince, will others want to be around you?” The answer is of course “NO.” But you will notice that in the story this really did not happen because the demanding character was the “Prince” and there in lies the rub.
Often the negative consequences for the Demandingness are too inadequate to eliminate it. Punishments for inappropriate behaviors that accompany Demandingness frequently do little to change the thinking of the “Prince” and consequently those behaviors continue once the punishment is over or the punisher is not present.
Another important goal in all of the Coping Skills stories it to help children recognizing that there are long term consequences to current thinking, feeling and behaving. Although this may not seem like a necessary goal to many adults reading these pages, a frequently observed inadequacy noted in adult substance abusers is their inability to make the connection between their behavior and it’s consequences. You want to continually reinforce the connection between thinking/feeling/behaving, moving away from the idea that emotions or behaviors occur of their own volition.
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