Page 33 - SB-The Angry Hornet

“Tommy, you are very upset right now. What signal light zone are you in? The Red Light zone. That’s right and when you are at a Red Light; you should stop and think about what you are telling yourself. Take a minute and think about it and I will get back to you.”“Tommy what signal light zone are you in now? The Yellow Light zone. Excellent, now tell me what you were thinking when you were in the Red Zone. ‘I was mad because Billy called me a name but I knew you would not believe me.’ Tommy, you remember our stories about coping don’t you? Is there really any reason to let yourself get upset about what Billy is doing? Do you really want to give Billy the ability to control you? ‘No I don’t’.
“So tell me Tommy, now that you are in the Yellow Zone, what are you telling yourself?” I am thinking that Billy is just being mean and he does that a lot to me and others. His calling me a name does not make me that thing. I need to just ignore him so I don’t get in trouble.” Tommy, that sounds like Good Thinking to me. You don’t have to like that Billy is calling you names. But you don’t want his Thumbs Down behavior to cause you to get in trouble. It is not nice, this name calling, but if you ignore him, Billy will stop it. I am very pleased with how well you worked that out in your head.”
This story is about learning that our feelings and emotions are caused by what we tell ourselves about a situation. Our thinking can be rational, that is, based on what is really going on and is called Good Thinking or irrational, that is, based on inaccurate assumptions and beliefs that are not true and is called Stinky Thinking.
You want to reward any evidence that your child understands this basic concept. Notice if they are attending to their thinking, able to determine if it is Good Thinking or Stinky Thinking and understand the correlation between thinking/emotions/behaviors.
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