Using “Reach & Withdraw”
My daughter absolutely loves tractors. She loves them with a passion. Quiz her on how old she is, and she’ll immediately tell you that she’s two, but when she’s three she’ll be getting a “red excavator” for her birthday.
There’s been only one hitch when it comes to tractors — they’re big & scary.
We’ve tried on a few occasions to actually walk up to one & touch it, but she’s gotten scared every time (she’s only 2).
So, when we went to my Uncle’s place up in Connecticut this weekend, I thought it a good idea to get over it a bit., as he owns a backhoe & was doing some work with it in the back woods.
An easy technique for this is one that’s gone over in the free Scientology on-line course called Tools for the Workplace. It’s a technique called Reach & Withdraw. The video here shows this technique in motion.
A quote from L. Ron Hubbard in those materials:
A person is out of communication with something because he is withdrawing from it and is not about to reach out to or contact any part of it.
If a person cannot reach and withdraw from a thing, he will be the effect of that thing. — LRH
The same technique that applies to getting a construction worker used to running a jackhammer applies to getting my child in communication with her environment, and “over” things which are scary like this.
For us, we simply reached & withdrew from that backhoe until she was comfortable with standing by it. Then, some more, until she was comfortable with standing on it. Then, next thing we knew, she was having a blast sitting in the drivers seat. We didn’t get QUITE to the point of her being comfortable with working with my uncle to pull the levers & operate the bucket, but I think we made some fantastic progress in only a few minutes. 🙂
And she liked it too – as it’s no fun to be scared of your favorite things.
This is a great article! It has soooo many good uses and it not only works with children but with adults and you can even do it with yourself! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!
This is awesome! So great that you helped her with this–such a simple, great tool!