Page 43 - G-Gold to Lead

CONCLUSION
Your hope is to get your children to recognize what they are telling themselves and then to challenge their Stinky Thinking. You then want to get them to attempt difficult tasks past their usual level of frustration to see that frustration is just a part of the process, not a stopping point.
The Young Man in the story never moved beyond the anticipation of frustration so that he never even attempted any of the tasks suggested by the Old Man. You may have children who are unwilling to try some new or “difficult” tasks because they “know” they will fail. Some may attempt the task but their efforts are half hearted and they quit at the first misstep.
You may already be aware of the negative self-messages we have identified. You may have also identified that your children use what is referred to as a “mental filter.” They use this mental filter to value or devalue items, suggestions, and comments of others without any real consideration of the validity of their evaluation. You must understand that some children may have a positive mental filter toward you and others may have a negative mental filter. You can be very influential with one group and totally ineffective with the other.
Your goal with this story is to get your children past their usual level of frustration, by identifying their irrational self-messages and replacing them with more appropriate coping self messages. Any appropriate coping verbalizations in this situation, “I can finish this,” “I might as well do it or I will be here forever,” could be rewarded.
Remember that you are ‘shaping appropriate behavior’. That is, going from the ineffective, to the somewhat effective, to eventually get to the very effective... but this will take time and will have setbacks. Be comfortable with some small progress steps and don’t get caught up in an unrealistic need for your children to make immediate and consistent improvement.
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