Putting Feelings on a Continuum

Sometimes children perceive their situation to be worse than it really is. A child with poor self-esteem is especially prone to doing this. For example, a child may think of him/herself as "stupid", "clumsy", or "unliked".

One way of helping a child counter these negative images is to help them put the self-defeating experience on a continuum, rating the experience from 1 (not so bad) to 10 (very bad).

For example, the child comes home and says, "I had the worst day of my life." You might respond with, "Oh, really? Was your day worse than yesterday? Was it worse than the time you were sick and in the hospital for a week? (You get the idea).

Then, have the child rate the experiences. For example, you might say, "How would you rate today´s experience on a scale of 1 to 10?" If the child says a 10, you might remind them that they thought the hospital stay was worse than their experience today. Have them then rate the hospital experience. If they say that experience rated a 10, then tell them today´s experience couldn´t possible be the worst experience they´d ever had. Help them put the current experience into perspective by continuing to compare it to worse experiences until they get the idea that was not really as bad as they had originally thought it to be.