Child Psychology

Broad Framework

Preschool-age children (3–5 years old)

Anchoring is a useful psycho-therapeutic technique for inducing a certain frame of mind or emotion, such as happiness or any positive state of mind which is needed for preschool children. It usually involves a touch, gesture, or word as an “anchor”, like a bookmark for the desired emotion, and recall it again later using that same anchor. The most common use of anchoring is to access resources, feelings, and states when you want them. Replacing unwanted feelings and thoughts with desirable ones is freedom indeed.

Middle and late childhood (6–11 years old)

Pattern interruption is an effective psychotherapeutic approach for storing keywords into a child’s subconscious mind. This can work well especially with middle and late childhood. Well, the child whose pattern is interrupted becomes highly influenceable. Pattern interruption is really useful in that it shakes up a child’s typical thoughts and actions and opens the possibility for something new. To fully overcome ineffective behavior patterns, the goal is to eventually recognize you are about to do it before you do it. The awareness itself doesn’t interrupt the pattern. The awareness is what enables you to become more aware of when you do it so you can change the behavior. Like any personal development technique, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Adolescence (12–17 year old)

Swish, also known as Swish Pattern, is a psychotherapeutic approach that is very useful for replacing an unfavorable emotion or behavior with a more useful one, especially for adolescents. Every memory has emotions attached to it. Some emotions are good (good memories) and some are bad (bad memories). For instance, a teenager moved to a new school, and tomorrow is his/her first day at the new school. He/she doesn’t know anyone there. How will he/she feel? He/she might feel nervous, anxious, or worried. Yet he/she knows that by feeling this way, he/she will come across this way to others and make it more likely that he/she will be alienated. It’s a vicious cycle. He/she might associate “anxiety” with the condition “the first day at a new school”. It would be better if he/she associates “excitement” instead. So we can use the Swish technique to make that happen. The idea is to keep remembering how excited you felt and hold onto that feeling.