Page 4 - Story Summaries

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 stories cover many of these skills and illustrate what happens when you fail to learn them.
Self-Motivation/Self-Control
Our modern society has an epidemic...Wasting Time. This is our most precious possession but as a society we seem to spend little effort on maximizing its value. Our stories illustrate how the lack of self-motivation and self-control contribute to our “time wasting.” Some of the stories also illustrate how we will choose not to use the skills of self- motivation/control because it takes effort and discipline. Others will give ideas in teaching personal self-control to even young children.
Anger/Demandingness... “That’s not fair”
Anger is often the result of “Demandingness” beliefs that contain the “should”, “ought” and “must” connotations.
“You should want to do this with me.” “I ought to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it.” It is obvious that these two statements are unrealistic, irrational and demanding. Failure by others to comply will cause the “demanding” person to become angry and to blame others for their anger. As Cosmos Crow would say, “That is what most of you would do but you would be wrong, wrong , wrong.” The stories in this group address the multiple facets of the emotion of anger and how they can be managed.
Limiting Ourselves... in school, work, relationships and our lives
The most important limiting factor in our life is our own thinking. If you say to yourself, “I can never learn this” you will not put out the effort necessary to succeed and will quit at the first difficulty. If you say to yourself, “Others will never like me” you will not try to learn the skills necessary to develop friendships since you know you will always be rejected. Neither of these two statements (beliefs) is true but because you believe them to be true, you make them come true. Our stories illustrate the “Limiting” thinking of the story characters. One of them also illustrates what may be the negative reaction of others when you choose reject limiting beliefs.
Pessimism... “The glass is always half empty”
Who really knows when pessimism as a significant “thinking style” begins? It can become a habit at a very young age and stay with us all our life. This will be a habit that will doom you to always seeing everything in your life as “not quite right.” Our stories will introduce you to spiders, a mouse and a princess that all fall into the “pessimism trap.” Fortunately, Cosmos Crow will provide you and your children to tools to get out of and stay out of that trap.
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 stories 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” repertory 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 story in the series has some of these character self-messages, some are particularly useful in teaching “Character Skills.”
This Flipbook uses "abbreviated summaries". More complete summaries available at "Adventure Topics" of website. Stories increase in length and complexity as you go down the "bookcase". All stories are audio enhanced.
www.cosmoscrow.com copingskillsfables@gmail.com