 Hello and welcome to MIPS TV and with me is Bob Cook for his usual bi-weekly book review And he's got a very interesting one today may be useful for teachers as well as TA therapists And it's called TA for Kids by Elvin and Margaret Freed published in 1985 What's the appeal of this book Bob? Well, I went into the whole profession of TA psychotherapy and training I wanted to work with adults, but I had worked with children as a teacher In my postgraduate education with kids and I was always interested in you know working with kids I never actually did in the last 35 years, but I read this book It came out in December 1985 and many many teachers went on to buy it and specifically looking at Tools if you like for creating self-esteem Dialogue self-confidence and assertiveness within the kids in the classroom from You know, I think of the age of 9 to 15 or 16 and how we can help Children in that's a wonderful age if you like because there's so many things which weren't healthy I think at that particular time teachers didn't have psychological tools There weren't that psychological models around and transaction analysis actually did provide a model for child development Social workers teachers probationers outside the clinical field Yeah, it's interesting isn't it because when I was teaching and I was member of the Institute for Learning This came up quite quite a bit You'd see in the magazine in the in our kind of professional standards magazine about the use of TA In class I know some schools actually work on a TA principle as well So Why do you think this is useful in terms of its application Bob? Yeah, just one thing I want you've just said that if you go to the teachers channel on YouTube, all right, I put transaction analysis in you will get to at least 10 11 videos, but one very important video Where it's a school in Bradford where they took on board for at least one year all the ideas of the PAC model and Strokes and games and the kids loved it and it was a very accessible tool very easy language for kids to operate under and also another useful Sort of delight off this was that the staff also got trained in TA It was a wonderful tool for staff communication so Go there the teachers channel transaction analysis and you'll see a whole video for at least a year where we're behind the seeds of a school in Bradford they use transaction ours as a psychological tool for communicating with children They'll put a link to that in the comments box if you watch in this Have a look in the comments bar below and we'll put a link in you can just link on to it and have a look Useful as well. I guess for anyone who's going to be a practicing child therapist Absolutely the model used of course is parent adult child and we've talked earlier in many of the Videos the TA made simple videos in the book reviews on parent adult child as a model of personality Everybody's got a parent everybody's got old and everybody's got a child now There's another model in transaction analysis, which is called second-order structural analysis model Which splits up? Developmentally the child eager state to the young parent the young adult and the young child by so by the age of 11 you've actually Really sort of built up this evolving young internalized parent adult child So this model is used within schools to look how children develop There's a very interesting model it sounds very interesting and I've actually seen that Series in the school in Bradford, and it looked very very effective And and the children as you say the children loved it because they had a form of structure And we know that children like structure you like like a structured view of the world And of course the teachers they got a language in terms of parent eager state the parent state of the self So they could see their their teachers if you like as a sort of parent eager state Setting boundaries nurturing controlling and they could talk about themselves in their free their free child state or their adapted child civil rebelliousness and They knew about boundaries and also strokes now strokes is really important when you look at work with adolescents in terms of behavioral change Yes, yes, can you give us an example how that might work and maybe lots of people watching this You've got teenage children thinking you know Give us an example Bob. Yeah, so for example Let's look at the idea of strokes, which is a positive. Well, it's a social unit of recognition So if I say I really like you worry that would it be a positive stroke if I said I don't like you worry That would be a negative stroke. So in other words, you get would get rewards for doing positive things and also they would teach you how to take account of your you know, the kids around you how to treat people with dignity respect and You'll get rewards for that in terms of positive strokes and positive strokes in the sort of TA language If you like would be warm fuzzies. Yes, negative strokes would could be cold prickly's. Oh So I don't sure if it's in that video, but For doing positive things you collect what was called positive well these sort of warm fuzzies and You get actual rewards for treating your Fellow pupils if you like your your friends in a positive way instead of a negative way It sounds very interesting. So really useful for teachers useful for child therapists What about for people working with adults? Is there anything in this book that adds to to the lexicon of TA therapy from Yeah, absolutely because the idea of child development Using the second it's called second-order structural model is splitting the child up into parent-adult child and The younger parent was called electrode because it's the early internalized messages which are stamped or printed into the The young child's head if you like it's called a lecture by a little professor early intuition and Then you've got the young child. Yeah, which is called So called the somatic child if you like where the child sees the world through feelings inside their body Yeah, so it's a good way of looking at How a child develops and the actual tasks that is needed through the different areas But I think most importantly The idea that very young in life as we grow up. We have internalized parent figures And unless there was internalized parent figures with strong boundaries, there'll be chaos And the more chaotic a person is a young child is they're not able to self-sooth Because they've got no internalized nurturing parent So the idea of these child developmental ideas of different years and months if you like it's very useful for a Teacher social worker to think on how to interact and what developmental level to go to when they're actually Communicating with that younger child. Yeah, I mean that's crucial is this one of the things that you know separate I think Practices with adults to from practitioners with children is working at the relevant developmental level Yeah, I think it about I suppose that's the same with adults to some extent you get some adults who chronologically one age But emotionally another and I think the the key to that is working to the emotional level not the chronological Well, don't if you'd agree Bob. Yeah, absolutely And of course the younger the child say eight or nine and your language construction Gonna be shorter and much more simple for example. It won't have sophisticated language Yes, also, you'll be thinking of if you use a functional model of transaction ours Is you would think of appealing to the free child or the adaptive child in terms of Communication so yes attuning to the age developmentally is important and TA for kids talks a lot about How we can use TA to raise the child's self-esteem And how to raise their assertiveness and how to appeal to The child estate as well as the parent ego state So it's an important book and if you think about it teachers often the How can I put this not the substitute parent, but the parent that is there from you know nine till four The in loco parent I asked the word I was searching for my head, but you've said it Yes, low in the absence of parents for those who didn't take a lot of care Open sign Charlotte can take in that healthy parent. Yes. Yeah, it's very important because you know teachers work with many children Who have difficult and challenging backgrounds? Yes So it's important the time they've got with them to be able to test healthy boundaries. Yes Permissions for growth. Yes to give them a sense of self-belief The internalized of a new parent for that day if you like absolutely Absolutely, it's interesting isn't it Bob, you know where where we think of teaching purely as imparted information But so much of teaching is is building self-esteem and building confidence You know helping people helping helping children see a bigger bigger world Making that's correct and this book has wonderful diagrams So, you know, I'm not only for the The readers, but you know for kids love to see the diagrams of the you know the internalized warm for warm parents and the nurturing parents and the critical parents and they like that So it's got a very I think he has a very accessible language to understand help children understand The building blocks of self-esteem and the new messages that they need to take on or perhaps even think about for the You know for the first time with these parent figures the new teachers Hopefully they may be rebelling against them, but hopefully they can take them in positively Which can give them the new foundations for their own growth Well, it sounds like a very useful book, you know, if you're an educator watching this, maybe you're not a therapist You've just stumbled across this video Um, you think this is an interesting book sounds like something really useful for teaching could fit into social work Many years of helping. It's called ta for kids It's by alvin freed and margaret freed published in around 1985 Yeah, yeah, we'll put a link in the comments bar below so you can inspect the book Um, as always bob doesn't get paid for book reviews. He does it because of his love of literature And we'll also put a link into the the video Um showing the schools that might show more of an application of the ideas. Yes. So, uh, bob cook as always Thank you very much. Thank you very much