Passionate about Persistence!

FROM JACK: Howdy folks! Wow - as a Son-Rise Program Child Facilitator, I am constantly blown away by the power of this therapy, the simplicity of our techniques and the profound nature of the Son-Rise Program attitude. Today I want to talk about one really important attitudinal piece:
PERSISTENCE!

I doing on outreach with a little boy in his playroom at home, and I had designed and taken in my own game to play with this cutie (a whole load of train tracks and comedy station names like Tickle town and Sneeze city). Now, the moment I showed him my game, this kid said "No!" and threw it onto his shelf. So of course I gave him control, celebrated him for showing me what he wanted and decided not to play that game. But here's the thing - I didn't decide that I would NEVER play that game - I really wanted to help this boy be more flexible by enticing him to eventually play my game. So from then on I was PLAYFULLY PERSISTENT in reintroducing my game. At times I would bring down just one of the pieces of my game and do something fun with it - maybe slip up on the piece of train track, or sneeze the sign for Sneeze city out of my nose... The point being that I was never demanding my friend play my game, but simply showing him how fun and silly we could be through using it.

This continued for most of the day - I would do small things with my game and then my friend would tell me to put it back on the shelf. Then, in the afternoon, this little munchkin spontaneously came over to the shelf, brought down my entire game and asked to play it!! Woooooo hooooooooooo!!!

What really strikes me about this story is that I could easily have decided, after the first "No", after the second "No", even after the tenth and eleventh "No" that my friend would never want to play my game. But instead I decided "He just isn't ready to play my game YET!"

From this belief I was able to be fun and playful and PERSISTENT in offering my friend so many different and silly ways we could play my game. And by continuing to offer him opportunities, by continually and gently knocking on his door, he eventually opened up to me!

When we are persistent in the playroom we are constantly offering opportunities for growth and change. And sometimes people want time to warm up to the idea of change. So if we stop offering after the first time they say No, then we lose the chance to help them come round to the idea.

Have fun being persistent, my friends!

Jack