7 years – Nail Biting Habit
Dan’s mother wanted him to talk with a Kids’ Skills coach. The coach asked Dan, if he had a problem, that he would like to solve using Kids’ Skills. He said he didn’t have any problems. The coach repeated her question in a different way asking this time if Dan had any skill he would like to acquire. Dan said, that he would want to learn to stop biting his nails.
Skill
The coach asked Dan what skill he thought he would need to learn in order to stop biting his nails. Together they concluded, that the skill he needed to learn was to take good care of his nails.
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Power creature and naming
When the coach asked Dan, if he wanted to have a power creature, Dan’s eyes lighted up. And he said, that he wanted to have some animal as his power creature. Having considered a few options for a while, he ended up choosing a chameleon as his power creature. That was a cartoon character from a children’s picture book, that he liked. Dan then drew a picture of the chameleon and as he was working on the drawing he came up with a name for his skill. The name was ”Flick-fleck”, the name of the chameleon in the children’s book.
Supporters
As his supporters Dan wanted to have his mother, father, grandfather, grandmother and both his brothers. He wrote a letter to all his supporters. It said: “Dear Supporters. You can help me to learn to take good care of my nails. If you sometimes see that I forget my skill, you can tell me Flick-fleck. When I have learned to take good care of my nails I wish you all welcome to my celebration.”
The same evening Dan showed a drawing he had made depicting chameleon to his parents and bothers, gave them the letter he had written and asked them to become his supporters. The other family members were impressed by the idea to the extent that all of them came up with their own skill to learn and a power creature that would help them learn the skill.
Celebration
When the coach asked Dan how he would want to celebrate learning the skill, he had the answer ready. He wanted to organize a party at home, invite all his supporters and also his aunt and uncle. He wanted cake to be served and a board game to be played ending with playing football.
Confidence
In the next meeting a week later Dan was proud to tell his coach that he had succeeded in growing four nails, which he had cut neatly with a nail cutter. He also told that all his family members had written a few encouraging words in his Kids’ Skills workbook about why they were confident, that Dan would learn his skills. When the coach asked Dan what gave himself confidence, that he will learn to take good care of his nails, he said he believes he will succeed because he is smart and he has good imagination.
Practice
The next step was to talk about how Dan could practice his skill. He said, that for him the most difficult situations were those where he had to accomplish a task with in fixed time, for example when he had to complete a mathematical problem in a given time frame. With this information in mind an exercise was developed, where Dan was to complete a problem in a given time frame and do it without biting his nails. Dan completed the exercise and his performance was captured on video. One could see from the video that Dan was struggling to maintain his skill.
A few times he brought his fingers to his lips, but he did not start biting his nails. He was immediately praised for his accomplishment by his coach and also his mother, who was present in the session.
Dan came up with the idea that he could continue rehearsing at home by doing the same, when he reads or does his homework assignments. He said , that he could remind himself of his skill by glancing, once in a while, the picture of the chameleon he had drawn and attached to the wall of his own room. For school Dan drew a smaller picture of the chameleon. He kept the picture in his pencil case and placed it during the lessons on his desk to remind him of his “Flick-fleck skill”.
Follow-up
The coach had made a poster to Dan about his skill. In the centre of the poster there was a drawing of a treasure chest. When Dan came next time to see the coach, he had succeeded in growing all his ten nails. His mother had cut all his nails and he had glued all the ten nail cuts neatly onto the poster into the treasure chest.
The celebration was organized when Dan’s nails had been cut three times. Right after that Dan wanted to learn another skill. He had the bad habit of spinning hair around his finger with the result that he had lost some hair and there was an almost bald spot on his head. He wanted to conquer also this habit with the help of Kids’ Skills.
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