Page 3 - Patrice's Club Summaries
P. 3
Anxiety / Fear
A majority of the school counselors surveyed, identified these emotions as significant issues in your children. Our fables will help your child develop the ability to recognize their anxiety/fear and determine what they are telling themselves to generate it (typical anxiety and fear responses are caused by the unrealistic, irrational things we are thinking). They can then develop the skills necessary to challenge and change their thinking into something more realistic. Concern, will allow you to address an issue appropriately but anxiety/fear will activate your “flight reflex”, which unfortunately may become your child’s primary means of coping with life problems.
Character... “What is it and how do you get it?”
There is a lot of concern about a lack of character in our children and adults. The Coping Skills series of fables talks about developing “Character Self-Talk.” It may seem obvious but the qualities we associate with the word Character are the result of overriding our natural tendencies to be jealous, vengeful, demanding, inconsiderate, self-serving and on and on. To overcome these tendencies you need a large and “powerful” repertoire of Character (Coping) Self-Messages. This self- talk must be able to override fear, anxiety, and embarrassment as well as peer pressure and the disapproval of “powerful” adults. Although every fables in the series has some of these character self-messages, some are particularly useful in teaching “Character Skills”.
Academic Success/Accepting Responsibility/Consequences
There are opportunities in childhood to learn skills that will be useful all of your life. Unfortunately, some children may not be predisposed to want to learn those skills, which can include; paying attention, accepting responsibility, accepting consequences, doing your very best, being patient and persistent and listening to the guidance of others. These are all skills valuable in an academic setting and throughout your life. As you can guess, the recommended fables cover many of these skills and illustrate what happens when you fail to learn them.