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20221115 To kill a mockingbird (for parents / psychotherapists)

I became a parent a year ago (on Thursday!) and will – hopefully – receive a diploma to practice psychotherapy in around another two years. With that in mind, here's a great little chunk of dialogue from Harper Lee’s classic, which I’ve just somehow found time to re-read. What a Jem (geddit?). There’s an exchange early in the book between six year old Scout and her father, Atticus. Scout is upset after an unhappy first day at school. Her father (knowingly or not) gives her a lovely bit of person-centred counselling (2006, p.32). He starts with an open question: ‘Something wrong, Scout?’ No leading. He leaves ‘an amiable silence’ for her to answer. Carl Rogers would approve. This gives her a chance to collect her thoughts – he doesn't rush her or feel a need to fill the silence.  When she declares she 'didn't think I'd go to school any more if it's all right with him' he tells her he’s legally bound to send her to school in a non-judgemental, congruent way: ‘...
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20221102 trauma-informed schooling in a nutshell

There is a growing trickle of British schools turning to 'trauma-informed' schooling for the benefit of their pupils, especially the ones most likely to struggle. Trauma-informed means, in a nutshell, that the school's staff have been trained to understand the impact of traumatic events in children's lives. The school has collectively committed to shifting its thinking from 'what's wrong with this child?' to 'what's happened to this child?' Parents and the children themselves can also be taught about the impact of adversity in childhood on a child's ability to sit calmly in the classroom and take in a steady flow of information. The big idea is to be able to help a child who has experienced a traumatic event – or, as is often the case with the kids most likely to be failed by the current system – who experiences multiple ongoing traumas in their everyday life. How can staff help these children? First of all, by not making things worse. If you...
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20221101 Procrastination

 I've resolved to write at least something on here each workday. Will you help me with this? If you'll give the odd post a quick comment, I'll see what I can do by way of making it a valuable use of your time. I am a creative person; a thoughtful person; a person with a head full of thoughts; an unfocussed person... Is this familiar? I must be one of millions of unreformed procrastinators around the UK and beyond our chalky shores. What on earth are we doing? We know we could get our little piles of jobs done with ease. We'd feel terrific about ourselves. We'd shine at work / in our studies. We'd probably get a pay rise and finish early. We could use the time saved to learn to knit or something. The magnetic pull of timewasting instead feels almost physiological. A  Psychology Today post says it 'tends to reflect [our] struggle with self-control' (1). Well yeah, how much do I owe you for that? That's just a tautology. It goes on to say one in five of...
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