Unbreakable balls

You know I told you I bought some balls for Johnathan that were advertised as being unbreakable - well, he has already managed to break one!  Basically he is wanting something that gives him sensory feedback because he can squish it as hard as possible in his hand, but it also needs to be robust enough not to break with excess squeezing - which a child on the spectrum does.

However, the difficulty with the ball that he destroyed was the feeling of the bump where it joined together/ended/started.  He really didn’t like it because it detracted from the smoothness of the rest of the ball.  So he tried to get rid of it.  Unfortunately, he didn’t do it in the best manner possible.  But that was the worst feeling ball, so let’s hope for the best for the other three.

After Johnathan brought it to me, he was telling me that it was a scam that the balls were unbreakable.  My reaction to that was that no, it wasn’t a scam and him saying so was wrong and it could end up being a problem if he continued to keep thinking anything we bought that didn’t last was a scam.

Poor boy went rushing to his bedroom, bursting into tears.  He thought I meant he was a criminal!  So I had to go and talk to him about it.  When he was calm again and ready to listen I said to him that maybe we needed to think of it a different way.  What was a word we could use instead of the word scam?  Of course he couldn’t think of one at first.  So I was trying to think of something myself.

And it took me back to the counselling session I had this week.  We were looking at CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and she asked me to think of a pink elephant, raise my arm and wave and then feel excited.  The only one of the three I couldn’t do was feel excited.  So she was explaining that we can begin to change in tiny, tiny steps how we feel by how we think, which impacts on what we do, and then it begins to change how we feel.

Suddenly I had it!  Opportunity!  So I said to Johnathan we could reframe the word “scam” to “opportunity” and he asked why and I explained to him that to reframe our thinking we needed to see it another way and a word that would do so would help us get there.  Now every time he thinks of the word “scam” he needs to think “opportunity” instead.  He still seemed a little confused so I said to him that instead of it being a scam it is an opportunity for us to search and find something else.  In fact, we might be able to find someone who needed us to find him to give them the opportunity to help others.

Initially Johnathan was pretty resistant to the idea.  But then I explained to him that this was the idea of therapy that you change your thinking and your behaviour and then feelings would slowly begin to change.  He said to me that he couldn’t feel it WAS an opportunity and I explained to him that THIS was the point.  We have to start somewhere and this was a good a place as any.

Truthfully, I have never heard CBT explained in this way before, and it actually made sense to me!  And no, I won’t be an expert next week - nor will Johnathan, but slowly and surely we can begin to make little changes in the words we use and impact our lives in a positive way.