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Children

General

For parents--using EFT with your own children

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Steve Wells provides an important slant for parents who apply EFT to their children. As often occurs, a parent has his/her own frustration/emotion over the child's issue. This can aggravate the problem and create resistance from the child. Solution? Parents should tap themselves first.

Steve's message for parents is given below.

Hugs, Gary


by Steve Wells

Using EFT with your own children can be a most rewarding experience. It can also be extremely frustrating. Here are a couple of things I have learned from using EFT with my own children.

1. You need to do the tapping on yourself first.

If it isn't working, I would suggest this is the first place you should look, particularly with younger children. They tend to be intimately tied to your own emotional state to determine how they are going to feel. Remember, emotions get transferred between people when we interact, and children are often like tuning forks for our emotional states.

Case in point. One night my son Joshua, age 6, was frightened to go into his room alone telling me he was scared there might be ghosts in there. After explaining that there were no ghosts, and that his light was still on - traditional linear parental logic - he still refused. I told him I would do "the tapping" on this for him to help him to be less afraid. He replied that the tapping would not work (I've found the Apex phenomena is rife even with young children!).

I have tended to ignore such protests in the past as he has had excellent results from EFT even while protesting, "this won't work". I proceeded to rub on his sore spot and say, "Even though you're scared of ghosts, you're still a good kid." Following several rounds and no reduction in fear I, in my frustration, implemented plan B: Exposure treatment - "Feel the fear and do it anyway kid"!

What followed was a very upset little boy who went to his room under extreme sufferance, which was followed by another performance when going to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and still more crying and upset over going to the toilet. Following this, and with me feeling like a total chump for forcing him to suffer so, I took a moment out to think and do some tapping on myself. Then, having produced a little necessary distance, I sat down on the bed with him and started to talk about what was scaring him.

As I was now no longer anxious about his anxiety (or as frustrated with it), I found I was available to listen to him more fully - and target the treatment towards his specific fears - and he was surprisingly more receptive to the EFT as well. He told me about a segment in a TV program with an airship full of ghosts. Not only the images but also what was said on the program had upset him. I asked if he would be able to focus on that while we did the tapping and he agreed.

As he did so, I was able to realise that the slight distance I now had was crucial to getting this to work for him. I needed to be free of my own negative emotional states ABOUT his problem, in order to work with him ON his problem. Prior to this my emotions were clouding my responsivity - and even being transferred to him, shortcircuiting our work together.

I believe if we anxiously tap with someone or on someone we greatly lessen our chances of a positive result - this is why I always tap along with my clients. I don't want my own state to interfere with their healing. Anyway, the conclusion to this story is that we were then able to proceed through several aspects, with me being respectful enough of my son to ask him at each point "What should we call that?" when we identified aspects to tap on, involving him more fully in the process. 5 rounds later and he's off to sleep. Problem solved - at least for now!

My advice to other parents and to therapists: Always, always, always tap on yourself. I have experienced numerous situations where this has made all the difference.

2. Treat yourself for the things your children do that upset you.

When my daughter was born, her particularly loud cry and inbuilt persistence had a significant negative effect on me. I found it mightily stressful to deal with her at these times of auditory assault.

One day while changing her nappy, with her screaming and me getting upset, I realised I needed to do some tapping on this. A few rounds of tapping on her cry and I suddenly became aware of the wide variety of different cries she actually produced. Previously they were all the same - loud and intensely upsetting for me. Now I realised that some cries were due to real pain, some were due to frustration, some were from her simply wanting a little love and affection, etc, etc. Previously, they all translated to me as intense pain. And that was painful for me to cope with so I wanted to immediately jump in and settle her down. Especially when a particularly tired girl could take up to an hour to settle herself down to sleep.

After tapping on myself over her cry, I was able to realise that not all her cries required an immediate response, or the same type of response, or even any response at all on occasions. And I began to feel good about my little girl again. I wish I could say she stopped yelling and screaming. I can report that now almost two years later she does settle more quickly. But the empowerment of being able to "stand in the heat" was significant for a father who never would have been able to cope with this without the tapping.

Keep well

Steve Wells

More articles on Children's Issues

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