Magic Valley NLP

Dawn has a problem.  She has to ride the bus everyday and it is a bit of torture.  The ride seems long, extra long for a special ed student with ADHD.

Dawn came in one morning very upset.  Another girl was always teasing her and wouldn’t let up.  I called the bus garage and the true story emerged.   Actually Dawn, with her incessant talking at a low cognitive level, is the instigator.  Because she does not understand, she does not understand that she is the problem.  

I had recently done a 3 Square time line with another student and thought to myself, “How can I apply the same type of solution to a very different problem.”  Instead of a past-present-future I did one with present-immediate future-farther future.

Dawn and I discussed what the problem is from her perspective.  I think it is important to take things from her perspective using the presupposition that the “map is not the territory.”  We then went to the third block and discussed several options.  I told her to be creative and come up with all of the ideas she could.  She did, and we then filtered them and wrote out which ones were safe to do. She could entertain the idea of bopping the girl on the head, but she couldn’t actually do it. Sometimes children with special needs take things literally when other children understand and reject them as fun but not to be taken seriously.   I have written down such options for normal kids, but special ed kids often cannot filter fantasy from reality.  I had to make an accommodation for her disability.

We then discussed the next step and she chose the one she felt best about and put it into her immediate future.  She even dated it.    This is what she did.

The most interesting thing to me to see was how this empowered her.  She now felt like she had further options and had control of her life.  She reported back several days later that things were much better. I I haven’t had another complaint and it has been almost a year ago.

© by Debrah Roundy 2008

NLP Presupposition: Choice is Better Than No Choice