Time for a Change
This awesome mother supported her son as he went through his course with me. She booked him in wanting help with his self-regulation. The outcome was “a calm, reasonable boy – and happy.”
The Davis Mastery for Attention course covers basic life concepts including concepts of Self and Identity. Outcomes support social and emotional development.
The course requires modelling and mastering a series of concepts in clay in order for the person to first engage with the idea of each. Then we go out to find and experience real-life examples of each concept.
This child’s model of Time made all the difference!
The boy’s mother wanted to share her experiences in detail so other parents could gain a good idea of what is possible.
Here are her words:
My 10-year-old son completed the Attention Mastery course with Claire a month ago after having already completed the Dyslexia course.
Before the Attention Mastery course my son was getting increasingly stressed and anxious as he got older and had a very short fuse. Any answer that wasn’t a ‘yes’ to his request would elicit immediate objections, why couldn’t he do this thing now? He would talk over my explanations, not listening. He couldn’t take turns when playing games, everything had to be his way, he would change the rules to make sure he could win. His younger sister was constantly pointing out that things weren’t fair (quite rightly) and my son would argue that his way was fair no matter how unfair to everyone else.
My son is extremely active and constantly on the go, which hasn’t changed, but before the course he had an inability to wait. Waiting 5 minutes for a swimming lesson to start was too hard for him. He would be trying to get into the pool, stealing the pool noodles to play with and asking repeatedly why the lesson hadn’t started and moaning that he was bored. I was forever trying to get to places exactly on time. But sometimes it would take 15 minutes to get him to stop playing at home before we could leave the house. Getting places in a timely manner was a huge stress point for us. All this was accompanied by erratic and unpredictable explosions of temper where things were frequently getting broken or damaged.
I am not sure why things were getting worse with him. In a child his age I should have been able to ask him to stop behaving like he was. Friends and family were steadily getting more and more disapproving of my son’s behaviour.
During the course I noticed a really dramatic change after the Concept of Time was modelled. It was as if he could take a breath and listen to what I was saying to him.
Before he had been ´wired´, so reactive to anything and everything. Now we can discuss an issue, he understands and accepts that it will take 10 minutes to get ready to leave the house to go somewhere, he even asks what he can do to contribute to getting out of the house faster. On a number of occasions he has explained to his younger sister why she needs to wait and can’t have something immediately. He is now behaving like the older, more mature child in the house, whereas before they were similar in their behaviour.
My stress levels have reduced substantially with my son’s behaviour improving. We can now go visit friends and I expect the visit to have a good chance of going well, without the intense confrontations and arguments that happened before. He still argues and disagrees with me, but this is steadily reducing as the concepts Claire taught sit with him and are maturing in his thinking. What is remarkable is that the intensity has vanished. He used to get so angry so quickly, he would be unable to engage with reason. Now he stays with me, even when he disagrees with me, we are still in conversation. Such a huge change.
The stress and anxiety has also changed. Before he would get very upset but not be able to tell me why. Now he is able to have a conversation about it. He still might not know what is causing him to be anxious, but he will consider some suggestions and we can slowly figure it out together. What a difference the course has made for my son, and for me and my family. Thank you so very much Claire.“
Mother of a 10-year-old boy, Waikato, New Zealand
For more information: The Davis Concept Mastery and the Establishing Order Exercises are described in detail in the book, The Gift of Learning (Chapters 15, 16, 17)
