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As you can imagine, I am on quite a few groups for mums who as for help with anxious children and teens. I help where I can because obviously these aren’t platforms for promoting what I do and I wouldn’t want to be kicked out of these group because they are a good way for me to hear voices from mums who need help. It enables me to better understand where they’re coming from, what they face every day and inform my writing of blog posts, articles, books and so on.

Just lately I’ve been ready a lot of stories about angry children, hitting out at parents and siblings, teachers, other children in the class. These children are usually quite young and are in families with younger children.

There are a few points I’d like to make about this.

1) Children under the age of 6yrs do not have the cognitive or emotional skills to understand that when mummy and daddy shout at them it does not mean they don’t love them.

2) Because they are tuned for survival, they are the centre of their universe so whatever happens it will always be about them. It will be their fault and they are not good enough, not loved, not seen, not heard etc

3) Their world is very very small, basically just you. Any changes will be very difficult for them. They are connected to you energetically as well as physically so when you’re sad they will pic that up and it will seem like a threat to survival. Of course you will have times when you are sad but use this as an opportunity to say that it’s ok to cry and it’s ok to sometimes not be ok and that it will pass.

4) The arrival of another child is a huge threat to survival before the age of 4yrs because it’s like being replaced. “Why does mummy need another me?” They soon see that they are less important because of course a baby has more practical needs and they make a lot of noise!

Threats to survival create panic, fear, confusion and they cannot express what they feel because they don’t even know how they feel. So what can they do to get your attention so they know they are still safe and loved? They shout and scream, kick and do whatever they can to get you to notice them and pay them attention because even your angry attention is better than the fear of abandonment.

So what can you do?

• Focus on what you’d like to see in your child’s behaviour. Close your eyes and visualise - what would you like to see, picture them and add colour.

• What would you like to hear, what would you like to hear them say, maybe you want more quiet and calm, what would that sound like?

• What would you like to feel about them, imagine that feeling inside you and make it grow bigger and bigger.

• Now imagine you are a detective looking for signs of these things. Focus on every moment and as soon as you see a sign of something you want to see, hear or feel, imagine ticking a box. Some mums keep a journal and note there. What you focus on is what you get more of.

Get in touch and tell me how it’s going.

If you’re interested to learn more, here are a couple of books that might be of interest.

‘Understanding Children and Teens - a practical guide for parents, teachers and coaches’ Judy Bartkowiak

‘Engaging NLP for Parents‘ Judy Bartkowiak

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Are you identifying yourself by your belief ‘I’m a worrier’ ‘He’s shy’

How can you help your child change their limiting belief?

How can you create a resourceful belief in your chil or teen through your feedback?

“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

As you may have read in my last post, I lost my mum in February. She was such a joy and despite the fact that she was 99 years old, there was no reason for her to go, no illness, condition, nothing. She was managing her own affairs, living independently with a companion at breakfast and lunchtime when she didn’t have family or friends visiting.

Then she had a few falls at the end of November, went into hospital, moved to respite care and then home again in late January where she was delighted to be. But sadly she had a much more serious fall in February and died in hospital a week later.

Over those difficult months I found Katherine’s words really comforting, reminding me to rest and take time for myself as the leaves fell revealing my bare bones of grief. This has served me well since her passing as I take life slower, more calmly and being quiet, spending a lot of time on my own. Nothing much is being done. I’m journalling as I find that very healing. Perhaps you do too.

I’m experiencing so many emotions. I feel angry that she died as she did, having had a preventable fall. Preventable because she refused to have an overnight carer. Since her passing, friends told me that sometimes you have to overrule a feisty mum who resists having her independence eroded but I failed to realise this. So it is anger with myself.

I feel extreme sadness at no longer being able to call her daily to chat about everything and anything. I miss her humour, the funny things she said and did, her fascination with ChatGPT, her relationship with Alexa (mostly getting annoyed because Alexa didn’t do as she commanded!) and her amazement at how technology made life so much easier.

Alongside this sadness and anger though I also feel a sense of relief and freedom from the daily worries about her, not knowing if the reason her phone was engaged for hours was because she’d accidentally sat on it or because she had had a fall and been unable to use her Carelink device.

This new freedom feels like Spring.

This feeling is like an opportunity to prioritise myself knowing I don’t have to worry about Mum any more. She is with Dad and my children are grown up and have their own lives to lead. My husband and I started our family very soon after we met so we feel this is now our time to enjoy our hobbies and new freedom. But for me, what does this actually mean?

We have just returned from Switzerland where I would normally have ski-ied but I felt I needed to take time for myself and not feel I had to keep up with a group. Instead I walked. I did a different walk each day and enjoyed the views, the sounds of the birds, children playing, skiers passing me by, stunning mountain views and the snow on trees. I was able to think about Mum and cry whenever I needed to. It gave me time to also think about what my ‘Spring’ would mean in terms of my own new beginnings.

Many people my age are retired but I do not want to give up doing what I love doing.

So what are my plans?

Of all the things I love, working with teens is my passion, especially working with the more complex issues of trauma, suicidal thoughts, self-harming, eating disorders, addictions and other similar conditions. I also love working with women who have experienced, birth or early childhood trauma, mother issues, sexual abuse, trauma, abandonment or relationship issues.

I am not planning to work with younger children and have colleagues I will refer those clients on to or I will work with the parents who I can help with changing limiting beliefs, behaviour or communication that is not proving effective.

I have a number of books I have almost finished writing or updating - Engaging NLP and EFT for Early Years, Children, Parents, which I will complete as frankly it seems rather lazy not to! But I am not going to write any more books. I will focus on selling off my stock of books so that I won’t need to allocate a room in our new small house in which to sore them! I’m including a link to my bookshop her in the hope that you’ll help me with that!

I enjoy recording podcasts and have been very negligent over the months I was focused on my mum so I will get back on track with that. here is the link if you use Apple podcasts but it is available wherever you usually find your podcasts. It would be great if you could let me know what topics you’d find most helpful. My recordings are from my books and the feedback I get from listeners is that they like the bite size chunks of helpful tips, especially being busy mums, they may not have time to read my books.

As EFT tapping is such a great skill to learn to help kids with anxiety, anger and generally regulating emotions for all the family, I have recorded a great many videos on my YouTube channel which I know mums find very helpful. Here you’ll see exactly how to tap and what to say. You can also get free tapping diagrams on the Free Resources page of my website of course.

The other thing I will be continuing to do and probably focusing a lot more on, is passing on my skills and knowledge to other mums through my training programmes. I absolutely love to see how my students take their training and develop it further adding their own qualities, skills, passions and desire to make a difference in this world where children and teens struggle so much.

Goodness, as I look back through my plans it doesn’t look much like slowing down does it?!

If you’d like to follow me on my Spring journey and learn more about how to support your children and teens please subscribe here. It costs nothing at all.

The paid subscription is for my students, who get this version free and for those who work with children and teens who want a practical ‘how to’ for coaching, teaching and working with child and teen clients. It works out at £5 a month. This includes worksheets and instructions for specific NLP or EFT exercises and activities.

I have written two textbooks for professionals and for parents who want a deeper understanding and practical tools, these are linked below

Understanding children and teens

Empower your kids

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My mum died on Saturday evening. I wasn’t there because she hadn’t told me that she’d die that day. I’d seen her with my daughter on the Thursday and we’d fed her lunch including some lovely ice cream that we added to with raspberries from the fruit and veg stall downstairs in hospital reception and a chocolate all mushed up into it, that was from a box my daughter had one at a work event. She opened her mouth like a little bird, loving the treat. We chatted with her although it wasn’t clear how much she took in, but she did recognise us.

Today is Tuesday, no time at a…

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If you absorb these basic ground rules into your parenting, you will notice the difference immediately. They are positive and life changing because they offer you a different way of thinking about a situation.

Let’s start with one that might be relevant for you at the moment.

THERE IS NO FAILURE, ONLY FEEDBACK

Yes, that’s right – you cannot fail as a parent! However badly you might feel you’re doing, look on your children’s feedback as useful information to understand what’s going on for them and what choices you have next.

Equally, this means that when your child feels a failure, they haven’t failed either; they need to process your feedback or their teacher’s feedback and learn from it. We usually use the sandwich approach when giving feedback. We notice and comment on a positive aspect first, then mention what needs work, then fi nish on a positive note.

IF YOU SPOT IT, YOU’VE GOT IT

What we observe in others is usually a reflection of something in us. That’s how we recog…

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Silence the annoying negative words in your head.

Learn techniques to manage pre-match nerves, frustration and anger, low self-esteem and feelings that you don’t want.

This is a question I’m frequently asked because most people have heard of NLP through work as a selling technique or for motivating employees. Another way they have heard of NLP can be through TV shows like Paul McKenna hypnotising members of the audience.

So how, they ask can it help our kids?

So there’s some truth in these examples I’ve just given. Yes we can use NLP - neuro linguistic programming, to ‘sell’ and ‘motivate’. As a parent this is what we spend a lot of time doing don’t we?

• selling them on the idea of going to school

• getting dressed

• getting out of the door on time

• with everything they need

• selling them on the need to do their homework

• that they can do it without your help

• selling them on going to bed

The list is much longer than this isn’t it?

What if you learnt some ways to make this easier by using some techniques I share in my books, on my courses and training and in the videos on my Youtube channel and Podcasts.

We n…

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As you can see, it contains a wide variety of colours, shapes and sizes, even the odd DUPLO brick. It also has lots of weird bits and bobs; ladder, tube, wheel, gold blocks. There are no figures because the idea is to create a concept rather than a thing.

I have used it to ask my clients to make a model of say happiness, trust, confidence, fear, loneliness and so on. They can build their ideal state like happiness or their anxious state. You can find out how I use LEGO in my book ‘Understanding children and teens.’

Buy the book £11.99

When they talk about their model, they are projecting onto what they have built, their hopes and fears in a way that reveals what needs to change for them. When we’re working on the block to what they want, say, anxiety, low self-esteem, anger, I introduce Picture Tapping to work on clearing that block. Again this is described in detail in the book. If you work with children and teens you will find working with LEGO modelling an incredibly creative fun way to understand their emotions and help them to heal.

As you may know, paid subscribers get professional content. You can sign up here or of course continue to receive free content.

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• it is incredibly effective in calming anxiety which is the emotion behind most of the issues and conditions I work with

• it is fast, often only taking less than 30 minutes which is why I offer free 30 minute discovery sessions which can be used as EFT demos

• children and teens often don’t know why they feel how they feel, they simply feel it and that’s all we need to get tapping, a feeling

• they usually don’t want to talk about it. They’ve probably already done that at school or with CAMHS or with their teacher or parent, but they still experience the emotions

• they usually don’t want to tell you the story, they’ve already done that and in any case, what happened recently to trigger them probably goes back to early childhood, it is something they’ve ‘always’ had in some measure

• once they know how to use tapping, they can do it for themse…

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· Fun

· Insightful for both of you

· Engaging

· Non directive – using metaphor, play, imagination rather than questions and answers

· Involve colour and image

Colour and image is the language of the subconscious mind. Because their conscious cognitive brain is not yet fully developed and their verbal skills are limited we need to make it super easy, fun and accessible for them to be able to share how they feel.

Do NOT use the ‘why’ word. This is left brain and requires them to access logical cognitive thoughts and then express them. By that I mean that even though they can put a sentence together, it is unlikely that they can fully describe what they feel. By using metaphor, colour and image, play and art, you will better understand what’s going on and they will more easily be able to express it.

PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

These are ways of interacting with your little one in a non-directive way. You will find less resistance by using this approach. Being directive and speaking to the conscious brain, a child will question what the ‘right’ answer could be and fear disapproval or disappointment should they get it ’wrong’. But if you ask them in a way that means they are projecting their answer onto a toy, cuddly or a picture, then they can relax because it’s not them who is saying or doing it.

Instead of asking your child “what do you think?” or “what do you need?” you ask them what their teddy thinks or needs, on the basis that they will guess that they need the same as they do themselves, because that is their first reference point.

In this way your question bypasses the cognitive or logical mind which in the case of under 6yr olds is not yet fully formed anyway so it talks to their wonderful imaginative mind which means the two of you are speaking the same language. It also means that you are connecting with their right brain where you’ll be able to access those all-important emotions. Once your child goes to school and their cognitive mind becomes more developed, they may be less receptive to this approach but you may still be able to use it in a playful way.

The following activities and exercises have a strong element of projective techniques in them. Many also combine this with EFT tapping which you already know from Part 1 but this time we will be tapping with your child and you will be guiding and supporting them.

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ACX Audible via Amazon, have given me 50 individual codes to share with anyone in the US or US based, who would like this audiobook free in return for writing a review on Amazon. I know I have a good US following here on Substack so I thought I’d reach out and see if any of you are interested. As I said, the codes are individual so you will need to contact me - I’ll pop a button below linking you to my website enquiry form or you can message me here and I’ll send it straight back to you with the link of where you can redeem it.

This book is aimed at professionals who work with kids, educators, coaches, practitioners, social workers, play and art therapists, child psychologists or psychotherapists but it will also be of interest to parents, especially those who home educate. I’d be enormously grateful if you would hit the share post button and send it to your network if you think they’d be interested.

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News too that the next audiobook will be from my first book ‘Be a happier parent with NLP’ so I’m going to share a chapter from there in my next podcast.

Reminding you as well that if you have any bored young athletes at home this summer, that my book NLP for Sport, can be purchased on my website.

It’s basically the content of the training course I deliver to students and it is essentially the Judy Bartkowiak method of working with children and teens so it is perfect foe anyone working as a professional - coaches, practitioners, counsellors, play and art therapists, social workers, teachers.

I think it’s also perfect for the Home Ed market, those working in fostercare or adoption services.

If you’d like a copy of your own individual free promo code use the button link below.

If you would prefer to buy the book - either the paperback or ebook use the other button to buy from the shop on my website.

If you’d like to enquire about training with me, there’s a button for that too!

Get the free promo code

buy the book

talk about training

A + B = C

A is the activating event– in other words the thing that happened first. So this could be your child

- throwing their food at you

- pushing you away

- having a temper tantrum on the floor of the supermarket

- biting someone at playgroup

Write in here some examples of your own.

B is the belief. A belief is something you hold to be true about that event. Let me give you a few examples again and you can write your own in the box below.

- I don’t know what to do

- I can’t cope

- I’m a bad mummy/daddy

- It’s all his/her/their fault

- they’re tired

- they’re ill

- there’s something wrong with them

Looking back at one of the activating events, what did you make that mean? Write it in the bo…

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Sophie Baker, a recovering Eating Disorder sufferer was telling us what had helped her. I felt these ideas would also apply to other teens with addictions, depression, self harming and other issues that made getting through each day, a struggle.

Grounding chair

Create a safe space in your room perhaps, but it could be anywhere, even outside, somewhere you make special, maybe with a special rug or blanket, a crystal, a favourite jumper, a cushion. Then breathe. Breathe in for 4 and out for 4 for few breaths and then move to an in for 4 and out for 6 breath pattern.

You can add a colour. What would be your ‘healing’ colour? Breathe that colour in and take it through your body, down to your feet on the ground, imagine it going down to the centre of the earth and then draw it back through your body into your heart.

With your healing colour in your heart, imagine now sending it down your timeline to younger version of yourself: your child self, toddler, baby. Imagine breathing that healing colour onto each younger version of you who may have needed it.

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Judy Bartkowiak NLP Trainer and Master Practitioner

1. There is no failure only feedback

Feedback is the nature of the response we get from the class, an individual child, parent, a colleague or the Head. It can be a verbal comment, body language, an email or phone call. The feedback can be directly to you, overheard or passed on to you. The problem is not the feedback itself; the problem is how we react to it. So how can we as teachers improve the nature of the feedback we give?

One of the best ways is to use ‘clean’ language free of generalisations, deletions and distortions.

1) Generalisations

Words like ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘everyone’, ‘no-one’ are generalisations. They can’t possibly be true and there is richer feedback in looking at the exceptions. Focus on the positive and point out that when they did x the result was excellent rather than the many times they did not and the result was disappointing.

Another classic example of a generalisation is ‘I can’t…

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Illustration Gus Scott The Guardian

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