 How can we use simple swaps in things that we say to make radical changes to the ways we think, feel and behave? That's what we're exploring in today's episode of Pookie Bonders. Let's dive right in. So today we're thinking about the power of language and the way that we talk about things and how that influences on how we think and feel about things and and consequently how we then behave. Now, this really matters when we're thinking about our role as parents or carers or supporting adults of children and young people, because how we speak about them and to them will consequently impact on how we think about them, feel about them and behave and act towards them. And there are some quite simple changes we can make to our language that can have radical outcomes in terms of changing the experience of the world for that child and indeed the adults around them. So the idea for exploring this was inspired by something that I was kind of workshopping in one of my sessions recently and the people I was working with came up with some absolutely fantastic suggestions. And I hope that this episode will give you a few examples, but more than that will make you stop and step back and think about some of the language and the phrasing that you're using day to day. I'm wondering about being curious about some simple swaps that you might make. So it's partly about perhaps adopting some of the ones I suggest, but much more than that, it's about stepping back and wondering what other changes might you make. If you are working with children and young people, then perhaps take this to a staff meeting brainstorm it for five minutes and see what you can come up with, what commitments can you make in terms of changing your language use. So the first swap that I talk about all the time is inspired by the amazing Bruce Perry and Oprah. So instead of thinking what's wrong with you, we think what's happened to you. This inspired by their beautiful book, What Happened to You, which is a deep exploration into trauma and how as the adults living with and working with children and young people, we can support them to grow and heal through their trauma using our approach. And the book is called What Happened to You because it requires that flip in thinking and the way we speak to and think about a child rather than looking at behavior that might be challenging or distressing to us and to the child and thinking, what on earth is wrong with you? Why would you do that? Instead, we think, what happened to you? What is in your past that has provoked this behavior now? And when we think about it from that point of view, what happened to you rather than feeling angry, dispassionate, punitive, we suddenly enter into that nurturing, calm, caring, desperate to support type mode. When we understand the stories behind a child's behavior, it completely changes how we think about them, how we behave towards them. So instead of seeing that behavior, we look beyond it to the child. So the first swap, instead of what's wrong with you, what happened to you? Thank you, Bruce Perry and Oprah. The next swap is attention seeking to connection seeking. So attention seeking is a phrase that comes up all the time. I hear it in regards to eating disordered behavior. I hear it in regards to self harming behavior. I hear it in regards to any big, loud, noisy type behavior that just attention seeking. My first healthy challenge to that would be, OK, maybe they are requiring some attention. So actually, rather than the swap I first suggested, we might go from attention seeking to attention needing. Perhaps as a child who needs the attention of the adults around them, perhaps there is an unmet need here and they are trying to get that need met. So maybe they are attention needing. Is it so bad to seek the attention of others? We do it all the time and we look to promote positive help seeking skills. If a child has not yet learned how to positively engage with those around them, who might help them, perhaps they've learned that the way to get this attention that they so desperately need is by not eating, is by throwing things, is by self-induced behavior. Perhaps they have learned that this is how they can get the support and the help that they need. The other switch I mentioned for attention seeking is connection seeking. So maybe this is a child who is seeking connection, looking to build bonds and bridges with those caring adults around them. Perhaps this is a child whose behavior is a cry for help from you as an adult who needs to build that connection. Cry for help. There's another phrase I absolutely hate to hear. We hear it most in relation to people who have carried out suicidal type behaviors and it's very dismissive. This was once said about me within my ear shots following a suicide attempt. It was just a cry for help. And I lay there in my hospital bed thinking, is this the time for a lecture? No, because I don't have the emotional energy and I'm not feeling my best right now. However, that is so damaging that language. A cry for help is a valid thing. Sometimes we are stood at the bottom of the deepest, darkest pit and we desperately need people around us to hear us. And yes, it would be far, far better if we had healthier ways of crying for help. But a cry for help means that there's a big problem there and we need to hear that cry and we need to respond to it. It is not something that should be dismissed or judged. Anyway, going back to attention seeking versus connection seeking. When someone is attention seeking, might be our old terminology. If we replace it with connection seeking, this is a child who needs to be forming a relationship, really securely attaching to making bridges with me as the adult around them. Then again, we begin to flip our thinking. We stop dismissing behavior as attention seeking. We see it through the lens of connection seeking. And we begin to wonder how else can we begin to build that connection? In a way that feels better for the child and better for us as the adult. What other behaviors and ways in can we teach here? The next swap, which was suggested by those I was working with on that day. They were great, is rather than diagnosed with recognized as. Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. The idea here was that rather than medicalizing everything and saying someone is diagnosed with a condition and seeing this as a sort of completely separate entity or something that one could only be considered as needing help with if there were a formal piece of paper that said that one had a diagnosis that instead, we might suggest recognized as which felt softer, more inclusive and would enable us to support those who had not yet got the diagnosis. It also starts to speak to some of the ways in which we identify with different labels and conditions that we might have. So, for example, thinking about my own autism, rather than thinking that I was diagnosed with autism, recognized as feels a bit more, I don't know, recognized as feels a bit more accessible to me, feels a little bit more like it's humanizing it, more about me as a person. A diagnosis feels really like a negative thing. We generally don't want to get diagnoses. We think about them as medical problems to overcome. My autism is not like that. This is something that I live with absolutely every day. And you know what? It brings with it great strength. So, recognized as and trying to take a more positive approach to that. I'd be interested on your views with this one diagnosed with versus recognized as and which conditions would we apply that to? Next little swap was obsessed versus passionate. So for many of our neurodivergent children in particular, who have got the gift and the joy of hyper focus and having those interests, which they can take so deeply, so those special interests, as we sometimes think about them, then they will sometimes be seen as people outside of their experience as obsessed and this can sometimes be seen as a negative and there's a long history of children and young people being denied access to their special interest and their areas of hyper focus because this obsession or behavior was seen as unusual and inappropriate. Whereas if we flip that and we see this as a child who is highly passionate about something, passion is a great thing, right? And it's something we try to inspire in our children and young people. If we see them as highly passionate about something, suddenly that really flips the lens through which we're looking at this. And one of the things here when it comes to these things that child might be obsessed about or passionate about is just being respectful of the thing that the child has chosen and recognizing the joy that it might bring to them and the opportunities that it might open up for them as well. So just because the thing that has spoken to a child, the thing that they want to spend their time doing or thinking about, doesn't make sense to us or isn't a thing that's traditionally respected within our environment, doesn't mean it doesn't have merit. So if the thing that the child was obsessed with or passionate about were, say, playing the piano, we'd probably be really encouraging of that. The child who manages to get through all their grades very young or who practices so much that they can play new songs completely by ear. This child is one who would be praised hugely and enjoyed a lot by the adults around them and who would get a lot out of this obsession or passion. On the other hand, the child who has a slightly less mainstream passion or obsession might not get quite the same praise and adulation from those around them. So I often find myself coming back to the little boy who once told me all about hand dryers. This was his thing. He didn't often get much opportunity to talk about it, it seems, because not everybody was very interested in hand dryers. But this little boy knew everything that there was to know about hand dryers. And he was quite young, I think to recall, about eight. And his knowledge about hand dryers and how they worked and the different types and, you know, all kind of physics behind it was actually quite incredible. But because it was not like a mainstream interest or one that's generally celebrated within our society, he had the potential to be viewed quite negatively as a child who had a weird obsession. Whereas if we flip that lens and saw this as a child who was really passionate about something and we looked for the joy that it brought him and perhaps wondered about what doors it opened for him and for us in terms of his engagement with his wider curriculum, for example, then this begins to really change how we view that. As children get older, with these kind of special interests and areas of hyper focus, we should also really be thinking about how those might open doors into the world of work. And again, within the school system, really wanting to focus in on one thing all the time doesn't work really well for our children. When we're trying to cover 12 different subjects and they want to do this tiny part of one, or maybe it's something that's not even on our curriculum at all, that can feel problematic to us as a school, because we're trying to get them through all the hoops that school involves. However, if we're able to think about that special interest, that area of hyper focus and think how it might apply to the world of work for that child, A, if they get there, they are going to be the best employee that could ever be hoped for because a child who's really deeply, genuinely passionate about something who wants to spend all their time learning about and doing things related to that will just be an incredible employee. What more could you hope for? But also that can help to give us direction for that child earlier on. We might be looking at the end goal that we're thinking about with that child, the child who absolutely passionate about animals and wants to go on to become a vet, we might be taking that back and going, OK, that's really a great, great idea. I think about animals because for those of you listening in, Mork is joining me, Mork is my black and white cat. You might only ever listen and you never get to see the joy of her constantly interrupting our conversations here. She's often around. If you're watching the video, you'll be very well aware of Mork and her work here. So animals, so if we were passionate about animals, we might want to become a vet to use that passion or some other related profession within the field of animals and we might think with our child, well, what would we need to do to get there? What's our pathway there? And we might then be thinking about why our maths and our English and so on becomes more relevant because suddenly we can see how they relate to this route through in terms of that eventual work with the animals. So use those passions, see them as passions and think of them as keys to this child's enjoyment, engagement and thriving now. But also their enjoyment, their engagement and their thriving in the future. And perhaps use those passions to help to make that journey successfully too. And then finally, in terms of those language thoughts, we're going to think about today and you'll have loads more to add. And that's kind of the idea that you think about your own and what works for you in your context. But the last one I'm going to think about is won't versus can't. So this is one we think about a lot in terms of children who can't go to school. So there's lots of controversy over the language that we use around children struggling to attend. Now, at the moment, we use largely the phrase emotionally based school avoidance. Some people use the phrase emotionally based school non attendance because avoidance suggests that a child is actively avoiding the thing and that they are in control of that, perhaps. Both of these phrases are considered by some not right. But both of these phrases, in my opinion, are better than the old phrase we used to use, which was school refusal, which puts the blame squarely in the place of the child. This is their fault. They're refusing to engage with school. However, we think about it, actually, these are children who are not going to school or perhaps they are. And they are struggling to engage with school when they are there. And the idea of this tiny change, won't versus can't, is thinking about where the blame lies here and what needs to change. When we say this is a child who won't go to school, who won't engage, then it makes us consider this a child who is being willful, who's actively making a decision, don't want to do that, not going to do that. No. Whereas when we change the won't for a can't, we begin to see that child a little bit differently. It's not that they don't want to necessarily. It's often that they simply cannot do what we're asking of them. I can't go to school if I don't feel safe there. I can't go to school if my needs are entirely unmet there. There are lots of reasons why it might not be possible for me to go to school. Lots of reasons why I can't. And when we look at it through that lens and we think, OK, well, what's the thing that means that this child can't? Then we start to think about how do we overcome those barriers and obstacles? For many of our children struggling to attend school, saying they won't go to school rather than considering rephrasing it to they can't go to school is like the equivalent of assuming that our school entrance is up a massive flight of stairs and a child with a wheelchair has been put onto our roll. And we're saying they won't attend because they are not getting from the bottom of that huge flight of stairs to the top to enter our school building. And we're saying they won't attend. They don't want to. They're not trying hard enough. Whereas quite evidently, I think this child is in a wheelchair. Here is a very large flight of stairs. It's not that they won't. It's not that they don't want to. It's that they can't. And in that instance, we obviously think, well, how would we improve access for the child in the wheelchair? The steps are the problem, not the child. And that seems really like, duh, obvious. We know what to do. Actually, when we really step into the shoes of our children who can't because of perhaps neuro differences, for example, then it can seem just as, duh, obviously, we need to adapt things for those of us who know them. But because we can't physically see it, these invisible disabilities, we're not so great at knowing quite what to do right away. And we need to get a little bit better at that. So rather than won't, if we think about it from the point of view of can't, then that leads us on to the questions of, OK, and what would turn that can't into a can? What needs to change here in terms of the environment and this child's school experience, that means that they can come to school, for example. So let's lose the won't, replace it with a can't, and be curious about what would change the can't to a can. There are so many other substitutions that you could make. Have a think about it. Please take it to your next staff meeting. If you are working with children and young people and if you're listening in as a parent and carer, then just be thinking about whether there are any of these substitutions that you might be able to make in your day to day with your child and if there might be others that it would be helpful to make as well when we consciously try to make these changes in our day to day language, they are simple. We'll find ourselves slipping a little bit at first, but try to hold yourself to account, try to get it right and just begin to notice the impact that that has on how you think and feel about the child and then consequently how you then behave to and about that child. It can make such a big difference. So a tiny intervention that can have massive ramifications and big ripples as well and explore the power of language with those that you are working with or your fellow parents and carers as well and get really curious about it. And yeah, wonder, wonder, wonder. OK, I hope there was some food for thought for you in today's episode of Pookie Ponders. If you have found this a helpful episode, please do share it and share any of my other resources and work with your network as well. And always, if you can, please like and subscribe. This makes me deeply, deeply happy. If you'd like to support my work in other ways, you can jump over to Patreon, where for 10 pounds a year or a pound a month, you can support my work and get early access to it. And you can also then influence the topics that I choose to create content about. Finally, if you'd like to take the big option, you can support me by employing me to speak either online or offline to your setting or at your next event. However, you choose to engage with or support my work. Thank you ever so much for doing so. The work that you do each and every day with the children and young people in your care really, really matters and myself and all the children are very grateful to you. Be good to yourselves. You matter too. And until next time over.