Mindfulness Matters- OCCS Blog

Coping with Grief and Loss

October 4, 2023

Chronic Invalidation

October 18, 2023

Published by Okanagan Clinical on October 10, 2023

Help Them Define the Conflict

Sometimes kids find it difficult to put their finger on what’s actually upsetting them and how they feel about it. Encourage your kids to express what’s wrong by helping them define their conflict. Is it an argument that’s frustrating them? Is it a power struggle over toys? Is it a bully making them feel small? Is it feeling like their siblings don’t help with chores? If they are having trouble defining their conflict in words, make use of stuffed toys or painting to help shed light on the situation.

The Scaling Question

The scaling question looks like this: On a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being no big deal and 10 being a very big deal, how is this conflict affecting you? Once they’ve answered, ask them what one thing they could to improve their scale response. They might not know at first, but stick with the question and give them time to work out possible actions they could take that would result in the conflict affecting them less sharply.

The Miracle Question

This is a bit quirky, and that’s why it can be effective. The Miracle Question allows for imagination, creativity, and thinking both in a way that is concrete but also playful. Ask your child to imagine waking up tomorrow morning and the conflict being completely gone. How would they know the conflict had disappeared? What would be different? How would they feel? What would have happened to make it possible that the conflict disappeared?

The Exception to the Problem Question

So often when there is conflict, kids start to see just the conflict and lose sight of interactions where the conflict does not take place (I suppose we do as adults sometimes, too, don’t we?). By asking kids to think of times when there wasn’t a conflict, or when there was an exception to the conflict, we shed light on how often the conflict really occurs. Ask them how it happened when there was no conflict? What did they did differently when there wasn’t conflict? Just as importantly, we can help our kids become aware of factors that are within their control and that help them have a more satisfying experience.