AUTISM Tip: This Skill Prevents Meltdowns More Than Any Other Skill I Know Of.
What you’re about to see is straight out of Secret Agent Society, Session 3. It’s called “The Helpful Thought Zapper”.
Often our kids can get into a loop of negativity and it is a self-destructive cycle that is almost certain to lead to a meltdown. When something small goes wrong, our child often tells themselves something like:
- I’m stupid.
- Everyone hates me.
- I’m such an idiot.
- I’m useless at this.
- Everyone laughed at me.
There’s a better way.
The “helpful thought zapper” teaches your child how to break out of this cycle.
Your child can learn to choose what thoughts they will dwell on and reject the thoughts that are not helpful. Your child is not as captive to their thoughts as they think they are. Instead of thinking negative thoughts that are mean to ourselves, we can choose to think along these lines:
- "I made a mistake and I will try again next time"
- “That didn’t go to plan, but that’s okay.”
- “I broke it, but we could always buy a new one.”
- “I can’t seem to make this work by myself, but I could ask someone for help.”
- “People laughed at me, but I still have some friends here.”
Remember, your child doesn’t need to learn every skill to thrive. Your child simply needs to learn the most important skills. Let’s focus on the skills that will make the biggest impact and let go of those that are just ‘nice-to-haves’. 😊
Michael Clark (Course leader for children & teens with Autism)
IMPORTANT: Be patient here. This skill set is not learnt in one conversation. We teach it as part of an ongoing strategy over a period of a couple of weeks in our Autism course “Secret Agent Society”.
