And , while we do have a bit longer than a few seconds in the therapy room , the principle of needing to get them interested pretty quickly is crucial or the child ’ s attention will wander and their engagement will wane .
Never assume you know the cause of a problem
One of the things I ’ ve learned is never to assume that I know the cause of a problem before I actually see the child , even if it is an issue that I have dealt with many times before .
Make flexible treatment plans
Nor do I plan in detail what I will do in the session , although I certainly have a good think around the problem and consider possible useful approaches and activities I could take if appropriate at the time . An example of being prepared to change my loosely ‘ planned ’ activities was with an 8-year-old child I saw recently whom I shall call Jack . He was a selective eater with a pretty restricted diet who was underweight and deficient in several essential vitamins . Various medical investigations were being carried out but at this point had not revealed anything organic , and the doctors were happy that he should have some hypnotherapy . Having taken a case history from Jack ’ s mother prior to seeing him I ’ d thought of a few activities we might usefully do during an initial session to begin to break the negative pattern of his eating . I had in mind perhaps a SWISH or playful Rewind Activity as these can be fun , as well as effective , and usually prove to be very popular .
Be flexible and be prepared to change ‘ plans ’
However , in this particular instance , Jack , despite the fact that he had told me he really would like to be able to eat more , showed a certain reluctance to engage with any ‘ imagining ’ and I felt that we should move more slowly than I had originally thought . I decided to abandon any ideas of using SWISH or Rewind in that session , as they tend to work best with a lot of visual input , and I also completely dropped the words ‘ see ’ or ‘ imagine ’ from our conversation .
Use a solution-focused approach
So instead , we spent quite a lot of time with me asking him solution-focused questions so he could tell me how things would be different if / when he was able to add the odd thing to his exclusively potato and baked bean diet .