198 | "I'm In Charge, and I Want You To Choose!" - What To Do When Kids Try To Make You Choose (Ninja Trick!)

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You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.

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Your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.

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Hi, I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.

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This is the Play Therapy Podcast where you get a master class in child-centered,

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play therapy and practical support and application for

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your work with children and their families.

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In today's episode. I am answering a question from

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Linae in Colorado,

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Linae called the hotline and asked that I not play the recording.

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So I will give you a summary of what she called in with

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and then we'll dive into that.

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But before we get into that, just a reminder,

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if you are thinking about attending the conference in Atlanta in October,

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we are going to have a podcast collective and coaching, meet up on Friday.

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So please make plans, get your

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flights or your bus or your boat or whatever you're gonna do to get there.

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Now, I'm singing a country song in my head,

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but whatever you need to do to get there and plan on being there on Friday night,

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it's gonna be amazing.

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We're gonna have a lot of fun together.

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Ok. So back to the question

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Linae is asking about

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a client who

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will not make choices in the playroom.

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And this has actually come up quite frequently lately

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in the coaching program and in the Collective calls

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where the child chooses for you to choose end quote.

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So I know I'm in charge in here. So if I'm in charge, then I say that you do it

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or you're giving me a choice, but I choose for you to choose

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and how we best navigate that.

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So let me give you some details that she shared on the message

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and then we'll talk through that together.

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So she says she's been working with the child for about a year

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and has been making slow progress.

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And there's a lot of repetitive play

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mostly tied thematically to power and control anxiety and aggression,

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which tracks because those almost always are tied to a child refusing to choose.

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So we can see the consistency there

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and she continues to return responsibility

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and here you're in charge and here you get to decide

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and he does not like it. And then inevitably says, my choice is for you to choose.

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So when she reflects,

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you really don't like

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to have to make choices or

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you're uncomfortable with having that responsibility, something like that,

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he typically just continues to insist that it's her job to decide.

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And then recently in

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a session,

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he said,

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I'm not used to it

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when she mentioned you're uncomfortable when you have

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decision making or you're uncomfortable with control or whatever she reflected.

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And acknowledged,

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he said, I'm not used to it.

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So first of all, that's a huge breakthrough

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Linae and that is certainly something to celebrate

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because not only is he aware of

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the reason for the discomfort, but he is effectively articulating that.

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So that's actually a really huge win.

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And then at a later part in that discussion, he said that making decisions is boring.

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So he's trying to come up with reasons why he doesn't want to do it.

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And that also goes along with trying to avoid something that is uncomfortable.

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Kids do that all the time,

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they will figure out ways to avoid doing something or resist doing something

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that they're uncomfortable with. So

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that also tracks.

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Ok, so let's dive into this a little bit.

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It's important to recognize that there are different

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reasons why kids will tell us to choose.

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They will give us different reasons.

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Well, not necessarily give us different reasons,

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but there will be different reasons for why kids tell us to help.

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There will be different reasons that they insist on something in the playroom.

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So one of our approaches and one of the things that are helpful to do

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is we need to unpack the why

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the why matters

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per my staff at my

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center. Hashtag the why matters. They say that all the time.

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Ok. So here's what

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in my opinion, Linae is really helpful

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if it is a power and control issue.

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So if he is demonstrating power and control over

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you over the environment and or over the playroom,

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it would be

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an order that you have to do it.

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Power and control is going to be

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dictator, like

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do it, do it. Now, I said not to, I said to

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do that. Don't do that. Stop doing that.

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Start doing that when you get ordered around in a dictatorial fashion,

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that is a power and control route

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and that has a very different motivation

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than one of the other options, which is anxiety based.

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So when a child says that you have to choose

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if it is anxiety based,

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it's because they can't bear the thought of making the decision for themselves.

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And in his case, since he's working on power and control and anxiety and aggression

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and the aggression is actually tied to the power and the control and the anxiety.

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So we can see that all three of those would kind of be

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in hybrid fashion there.

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I think his might actually be a little bit of both,

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but I think the scales are tilted more toward his anxiety in this case,

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especially since he said I'm not used to it.

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That is nothing if it is, if it is not a declaration of, I'm scared to do this.

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This feels foreign to me. This is unknown for me.

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I don't feel ready or prepared and I don't know that I can handle this.

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So in his case might be a little bit of power and control as well,

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but certainly tipped more toward anxiety

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because they're trying to avoid doing something that is scary.

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So one of our go to approaches is to

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tease apart why the child is not accepting responsibility.

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And it's almost always going to be one of those two reasons.

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So with that in mind

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Linae,

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I would

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continue to reflect feelings

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and I would continue to

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reflect content

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and I would provide narrative summary. So reflecting feelings are

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you're disappointed that I haven't chosen

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or you're frustrated with me because you want me to pick.

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You're concerned, you don't know what choice to make,

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ok? These are all options we could use to reflect,

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then we're also going to reflect content.

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You don't want to make choices, you're not used to making choices,

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you think making choices are boring.

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So now that he's starting to declare some things to you

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that gives you an opportunity to reflect content as well,

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but the narrative summary or the narrative commentary is also going to be helpful.

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So then in that scenario, you might say something like

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it's really difficult because you want me to make a choice.

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But you know that in here you get to make choices.

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So you're kind of giving that

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overarching perspective on what's happening and that's

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also a returning of responsibility statement in the middle of it all.

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Ok?

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Now that we've covered through that,

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I'd like to share what I consider to be one of my

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most helpful ninja tricks that I've figured out over the years.

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I actually shared this on a couple of my coaching calls last week.

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I work really hard to be truthful to kids

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and I think there's only been a handful of times in almost 20 years

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that I feel that I've said something that was just really untrue because it

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aligned with a CCPT skill.

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Right. So, we're not supposed to know anything.

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The child doesn't know we're not supposed to be

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capable of anything the child isn't capable of.

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So I have probably at some point said something like I

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don't know how to do that even though I truly do.

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But I really didn't,

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that didn't feel congruent to me and I didn't like the

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fact that I said something that wasn't true to a child.

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So I started on a quest to

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figure out what to say instead

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that would be adherent to CCPT

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but would be congruent with my

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intention of honesty

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and telling kids the truth in the playroom.

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So I settled on this trick. I'm gonna share with you all.

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You can always feign ignorance,

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but that sometimes puts you in a position

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where you would say something that isn't true.

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Like I don't know how to spell that word or I don't know what five plus seven is

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OK. That is not true because we do

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ideally.

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So you might be the one that counts on your fingers 7 plus 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

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But you can still get to 12. Right?

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So,

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the idea is to feign ignorance with a different wording

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and what I landed on

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is I'm not sure what you want me to choose

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or I don't know how you would spell that

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or

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I don't know what you would add that up to

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notice how now you're saying you don't know what the child's answer would be.

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It's very subtle,

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but it's effective because if you say I'm not sure what you want me to choose,

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I'm not sure what you would choose.

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Now all of a sudden you are feigning ignorance.

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The child can't force you to make a decision if you don't know,

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but it truly is back to you don't know what the child's

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answer or decision or outcome would be.

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Another thing that you can throw in there is you really want me to pick.

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But I'm confused because I'm not sure what you would pick.

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You can say, I'm confused as well

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and I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm confused.

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You can throw all of those things in there. As long as it's tied to

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the child's decisions

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or answers or responses or outcomes.

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I had a child that insisted that I helped her spell the word anniversary.

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She was making a banner for it. I showed the video on the Collective

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and she kept telling me that I had to spell

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the word anniversary for her because she didn't know how.

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And we spent probably 30 or 35 minutes

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with me

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feigning ignorance. I'm not sure what letter you would put next

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and she ended up spelling it very incorrectly,

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but she came up with how to spell the anniversary on the banner

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because I continue to return responsibility to her.

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So it's a really appropriate and effective trick

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so that the child has to assume the ownership over the outcome

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and, and let's, Linae, let's go back to the root of this. Yes, it's anxiety.

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I think it's probably a little bit of power and control as well.

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But keep in mind

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if you don't

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take control of choices and if you don't make decisions,

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you also don't have to assume responsibility over outcomes

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and you don't have to connect to consequences.

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So there's a lot of weight

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in making decisions and in this case, the child may have never made decisions.

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Maybe his decisions are always made for him every step of the way his whole life.

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So he's just completely out of practice.

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He has no idea what it feels like to make a choice.

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And I don't know if you all have watched the

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Cookies, Choices, and Kids video by Dr. Garry Landreth.

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But in that video, in

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his southern Texas drawl, he says,

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I realized

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when will my daughter ever learn what it feels like to make a choice?

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Right? Can you tell I've seen that 8,742 times

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because he's saying in that video to us, kids have to practice making choices,

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kids have to practice having decisions offered to them and then deciding what

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they want and therefore accepting the consequence

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and the ownership over the outcome.

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So this is something that he likely has never done

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or

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he has such high levels of anxiety,

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the weight and the burden of knowing that a choice comes with

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a consequence that he then has to own can be very overwhelming.

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So those are things that you can enlarge

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Linae.

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hmmm

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You really don't like the idea of making

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a choice because that's a lot of responsibility.

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That would be a really helpful thing to enlarge for

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him because if that's what's at the root of it,

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he will get over that,

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but it's helpful to have it said out loud.

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So Linae, I hope that that's helpful.

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I hope that was helpful for all of you because we inevitably

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without fail,

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get kids that tell us that we have to make choices and it's helpful

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to have tools in our toolbox so that we can navigate that appropriately.

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Linae. Thanks so much for the call.

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If you would like to call and leave me a message 813-812-5525.

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You can always email me brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

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Love y'all. Have a great week. We'll talk again soon. Bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr brenna hicks.

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