Page 31 - Wanda Weasel

WORKSHEET
Cosmos talks about how Wanda’s thinking is what caused her to be impatient. This Stinky Thinking can cause Not OK emotions of frustration and even anger. Those emotions will in turn lead to Thumbs Down behaviors. Wanda is the typical child, impatient and not persistent. But we always focus on the behaviors of the typical child and tell them to “wait” and “stick with it.”
We fail to identify the thinking that is at the root of these behaviors. Instead, we see this as a problem of “immaturity,” “lack of discipline” or “poor character.”
Children that have these typical childhood behaviors of impatience and lack of persistence may think that there is something fundamentally “wrong” with them. Cosmos illustrates some of the typical childhood self-messages that cause these behaviors.
In question one, the children see if they are able to think of what Wanda might have been telling herself in the hunting trip situations. A child that understands the story will say that Wanda told herself, “I know more than they do” or “I can’t stand waiting any longer.”
Children should be able to see themselves in the Wanda character and may be able to be even more specific in the type of self- messages that propel them into being impatient and not persistent.
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