|
The stories in the Coping Skills’, Adventures of Cosmos Crow address issues that can be problematic for both adults and children. Our stories overlap various topic areas because irrational (Stinky) thinking can cause problems in multiple areas. Coping Skills is not about “perfect solutions” but rather about helping you and your children understand and develop the skills to deal with an issue across a wide range of situations while dealing with many different types of people.
On the next few pages, you will find a brief paragraph outlining our philosophy and strategy in addressing a particular subject identified significant issues by from our survey of school counselors. We also list the stories that have the issue as the major or as a minor theme. The stories listed on the following pages are not the only stories in the series that are appropriate for a particular topic but this listing will provide you with some initial guidance.
Bullying/Teasing/Ridicule The stories of the Coping Skills series are more about teaching you how you handle your thinking and your response to Bullying, Teasing and Ridicule than about “making them stop.” If you are able to use “Good Thinking” as taught in these stories, you will have self-control, self-confidence and will not make yourself unduly upset. Your child can understand that it is not “weakness” to ignore the other’s negative behavior and in so doing, the other’s behavior will not accomplish the goal of the perpetrator and the behavior will stop in time. These are skills not just for the eight year old’s school playground but also for the twenty eight year old’s workplace.
Social Skills There are certain social skills that make it possible for you to be more accepted, more successful and happier throughout your life. These skills are behaviors but they start with learning good “coping self-messages.” These cognitive (thinking) skills do not come naturally to us and some may even be discouraged in some setting or by your children’s peers. These stories will introduce and reinforce concepts that parents and teachers will want to reinforce daily.
Anxiety / Fear
A majority of the school counselors identified these emotions as significant issues in your children. These stories will help your child develop the ability to recognize their anxiety/fear and determine what they are telling themselves to generate it (typical anxiety and fear responses are cause by the unrealistic, irrational things we are thinking). They can then develop the skills necessary to challenge and change their thinking into something more realistic. Concern will allow you address an issue appropriately but anxiety/fear will activate you “flight reflex”, which unfortunately can become your child’s primary means of coping with life problems.
Anger/Demandingness… “That’s not fair” Anger is often the result of ‘Demandingness’, which is caused by beliefs that contain the “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.
Self-Acceptance There is a phase often used when referring to someone who seems happy and satisfied with themselves and their life. They are said to “Happy within their own skin.” This really refers to their “cognitive coping repertory”… the realistic, positive and effective things they tell themselves about themselves, others and life. This may sound complex but in the three stories listed, your child will learn of one who is ‘Happy within their own skin, one who isn’t and one who learns to be “Happy within their own skin.” This quality or ability can be learned through the lessons and guidance of these stories.
Manipulation/Peer Pressure Is there be a more common but complex social problem than manipulation/peer pressure? Manipulation comes in many forms but it always relies on one thing… our participation in being manipulated. Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “I knew that was foolish before I did it but I was feeling so (guilty, foolish or afraid).” Who made you feel guilty, foolish or afraid… you did. Without your participation you can’t be manipulated but that is not as easy as it sounds. These stories will help your children recognize the various types of manipulation and develop the cognitive coping skills necessary to deal effectively with them.
Respect for other’s differences/Prejudice It almost seems as if there is a genetic predisposition for humans to feel uncomfortable around those who are different from us. We feel justified to dislike, ridicule or fear others for reasons that really make no sense. By giving in to these irrational beliefs, we fail to develop appropriate empathy. We avoid situations and people because of our anxiety about the “differences.” But our prejudices also give us permission to be unkind and inconsiderate of others… behaviors that can become habitual and cause life problems.
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 from the titles, these stories cover many of these skills and illustrate what happens when you fail to learn them.
Transitions/Change/How to succeed Life is constantly changing and as you know, we all fear change. These stories are all about change and the different ways you can cope with change. The type of thinking illustrated by some story characters will cause a lot of problems dealing with change, because of their irrational insistence that “This should not be happening” or “Everything will work our fine despite what everyone else thinks.” Use these fables to introduce the consequences that occur when you fail to develop the cognitive skills to navigate life’s changes and encourage your child to use the “Good Thinking” Change Messages illustrated in the stories.
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. These stories illustrate how 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.
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 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. These 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.
Siblings’ Issues Siblings always get along well with each other… right? They never fuss or fight or call each other names. They never blame others for things they have done. They never whine “That’s not fair”. Behaviors that can be annoying with a child can be exhausting with two or more children. These stories will help you with some of the more common “Sibling Issues.”
Single Parent Concerns There are some issues that school counselors identified as more significant to some of the single parents they encounter. They specifically mentioned the discrepancies in rules and expectations in the different households. Another area is helping the single parent avoid the manipulation of children and other adults while insuring that their children do not adopt these manipulative behaviors. A third area of concern is recognizing and handling the “blame game” that sometime occurs when relationships end. As you may have already realized, these stories will help both the children and adults deal more effectively with these situations.
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 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, the following should be particularly useful in teaching “Character Skills.”
|