 Hello and welcome back. Today I am going to give you a list of reasons to use lists when getting young people talking. I love lists. It's not a secret. If you've ever had the joy of working with me, you'll know I love lists. So why lists? Okay, number one. Number one reason is they are a great way in. So get kids to write a list about songs they like, films they've enjoyed, books that made them think, anything that, you know, might just tap into something, get them, get them going. And just remember that your list is not an end. It's the starting point of the conversation. So once you've got the list, oh, what is it about this song that you particularly like? Oh, were there any characters in this film book, whatever, that you particularly identified with? Why is it that you chose this, this film that, you know, how did it make you feel? Or, you know, you can, you can ask endless questions once you've got the starting point. So you're basically allowing the kids to identify good ways into conversation for you. So it's a way in. And it's a way in whether you are looking to have a kind of deep and meaningful conversation with the kids, you're trying to establish a relationship. Or if you're just looking for like an icebreaker with a class, for example, and they're, yeah, great way in love lists, love lists. Number two, lists are really accessible. So you can use lists, whether you are working with kids who are kind of gifted and talented or kids with special needs, whether you're working with kids who might have barriers to communication, they might have English as a second language. You can use them with anyone really, you can use lists with people who find it hard to engage verbally or using the written word, because you can do it with pictures, you can write the list for them, you can find different ways of making the accessible. Lists are a lot less daunting for a kid than the idea of having to write like a whole paragraph of prose, or having to the thing of always when I'm trying to find words about communication, I lose my words. So having to verbalize writing a list is easier than having to verbalize. This is one of the reasons I like lists. Okay, next number three, you can use lists to identify issues. And number four, you can use them to identify positives. So you can use them to like find pros and cons basically. So you can use them to find issues. So for example, if you've got a kid who is having like flares of anger or anxiety or any other kind of difficult thoughts, feelings, behaviors, then we can sit down and go, oh, okay, let's think of like six times in the last week when you felt really angry. Or let's think of five times today when you felt anxious or whatever it might be. So use the list to help identify. We can also identify the positives though. So, okay, so let's think of three people who make you feel safe. Let's think of five things you can do when you're feeling anxious. Let's think of four places where you feel safe. Okay, so we can use them to identify positives as well. Here are three things I'm proud of, 10 things I like about myself. You know, use lists to identify positives and to build on confidence and self-esteem too. One, just slight caveat. If you're going to use a list to try and build self-esteem, make sure you've had a think about how you would populate that list before you work on it with the young person because if they are struggling with their self-esteem and they can't fill the list up, then you need to be able to make suggestions. If you suggest they write the list and they can't fill it and you can't fill it as well, that actually can be quite negative. So have a little think ahead. Okay, so we've used the list to identify issues and identify positives as well conversely. Then we can also get a little bit clever with our list. We can use ranking. So you might have identified 10 times in the last week when I felt angry and then we might say, okay, let's put those in order from the time when you felt the most angry the time when you felt the least angry and then we can identify, okay, these are the issues that we really need to be dealing with fast. Then we can also do things like thinking about, you know, here are five strategies you've identified that make you feel calm. Let's think about the ones that you think are the most useful that you could use all the time and put those at the top of the list. And again, it can just be a good way of helping to kind of consolidate what we've discussed, helping to prioritize what we're going to work on and helping to identify really helpful strategies and to think about what's working well. Finally, you can use lists to explore different contexts. So you might, for example, be working with a young person in school and you might need to think about, okay, we've got some really good ideas about how to help with your anxiety day to day at school, but what happens when you go home, what happens at the weekend, in the holidays. So we might then use our lists and think about, okay, so we've written a list of like five things that helped me to feel calmer when I'm anxious. These work really well at school. How would that list change if we were thinking about it at home? You might also think about, you know, here are four places that I can go for help. And again, these might be tailored to school or they might be tailored to home and then you might flip it and think about how would I use that in a different environment. Another example might be young person who's struggling say with anger and you might say, okay, so these are ideas that work. You know, when you've come to see me and we're trying to help you calm down, now let's have a think about what if you were in a lesson and you began to feel really angry? What strategies might work then? So you can think about context as well. So basically lists are great. Love lists. Yeah, lists are great. And you just need to think about just get creative with them really. I think people think lists are really boring. I don't think lists are really boring. And I think that you'll have loads of ideas that you can add to this as well. Maybe you have a list of things to add to my list of reasons to use lists. So yeah, get using lists. They're a great tool. And if you find yourself with a young person and the conversation isn't really flowing or you're not really finding it very easy to think of like practical ideas of ways to help, then just, you know, sit with them, scribble a list down together. Just get your ideas down on paper. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's just for you and them just to get the conversation and the ideas flowing. I hope it helps. Good luck. Bye.