Our Mission:TURNING STONE Positive Self-Esteem Choice Making For Children
What if every choice made by each child was representative of he or she having a positive self-esteem – a choice that accepted self-responsibility? This is the goal of the materials that make up the TURNING STONE choice processing system.
Hello, I’m Dr. Arthur W. Sagoskin, one of the founders and a senior participant in one of the largest medical fertility practices in the country. For many years, my life has been directed toward helping people - specifically, couples who wanted to bring life into existence and fulfill their dream to become parents. Now, I’m expanding my vision to the future of children, what kind of life they are or could be living.
In my life, I recognized that success and the important inner fulfillment necessary for happiness were part and parcel to making effective choices - choices that were made when I felt good about myself. When I talk to many other successful, happy folks from every walk of life (professionals, engineers, blue collar workers, white collar workers, stay at home moms and so on) I recognized that wealth was not the common denominator. It was the fact that they felt comfortable inside their own skins with who and what they were and how they thought about themselves.
With this knowledge, I put together a group who, under my guidance, have developed the conclusions and supporting materials you see before you. They continue to put together additional supporting materials that will assist teachers and parents to help our children have a better understanding of themselves, how they go about making choices, and how they can better control and direct the process.
The natural organic result of the processing we have put together assist a child to feel more in control of his or her life. This is a necessary part to having a positive self-esteem and a vital element in order to deal with challenges such as teasing, bullying, feelings of insecurity and fears of scarcity, angering, stress, being jealous, harmful eating habits, use of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes and other obstacles to making an effective choice.
Our first books are:
1) A Teacher’s Guide. This guide explains the framework of what we are presenting. It can be supplemented by requesting one of our facilitators to make an oral presentation and to be available to explore any questions.
2) The Trouble With Sneakers. This children’s book is prepared for a teacher or parent to read or paraphrase to children. In addition to the interesting story, it introduces the framework and some tools for the children to start to understand the nature of their choices and their self-responsibility for them.
The story line describes a youngster in conflict over a choice that is being affected by his fear of economic insecurity. He initially chooses to breach a trust between his friend, who needs a temporary home for his pet dog, and his family that is prepared to help out. This story deals with a real fear: economic insecurity. Other stories relate to mind fears such as teasing and bullying and prejudice, among others.
Introduced in this first book is the understanding that each child has the capability of thinking about him or herself (a reflective consciousness). It is interesting to me that this is an understanding that is rarely explored with a child even though it is a part of human uniqueness (the child’s existence being very special). We need to decide how we feel about ourselves, because we can think about ourselves. The child is also consciously opened up to his or her inner screen, the self-communication capability, including talking, visualizing, smells, noises and imagining – abstract creation.
Two hand puppets are introduced:
The “Detective” has the function of being a non-threatening source of identifying the child’s fear or other obstruction to making a choice “as if” he is acting from a positive self-esteem.
The second hand puppet is the “Sorcerer.” Its function is to serve as a non-threatening source of possible choices that become available after the Detective has done its work. There is no compulsion for a child to make any particular choice. The TURNING STONE process is structured for the sole purpose of providing the child with an open mind to see options.
The TURNING STONE process is a non-competitive alternative in which there is no loser – there is no competition.
Another tool explored is the Family Keep Close Chat. This is structured as a loving family cooperative exercise, but it can be adapted to classroom use.
The artwork provided in all of the younger children’s books has been carefully prepared by a very talented artist to maintain a child’s interest.
3) The Safety Solution is another young children’s book. Its story line tells about a student, who is conscientious about her school work, being teased and bullied by other children. The tools and ideas explored in the first book are re-introduced.
This book helps a child to understand the fear basis for teasing and bullying acts. It also relates to options for changing such behaviors, focusing on keeping our eye on the objectionable acts and changing the actor’s need.
Our materials are a work in progress. We are also looking for folks who would like to participate with us in creating additional materials using and expanding upon these ideas.
Why the emphasis on a “choice” model? A choice making capability is something unique to our humanity. Our lives are lived through a series of choices – one after another. For a child to learn the importance of each of his or her choices and take the time and patience to hold it in his or her little hand, turn it in several directions and to rejoice in the process of making a choice is a joy we need a child to feel.
Why is the joy of making a choice limited to those choices that represent when they are made from a child exhibiting positive self-esteem? It is because those are the choices that give a feeling of being in control over his or her life. A Self-Empowering choice is a choice that meets our need to be in control over our own lives. It has the following characteristics:
- It cannot be harmful toward someone else.
- It recognizes that whomever we are interacting with has the same Need to be in control over his or her own life. This requires a mutuality of Self-Empowering choices so that each party has the ability to meet their own need.
- It does not represent an effort to control others, because the choice maker understands that his choices are the only ones they can control. The effective relations with others rely on meeting a mutuality of Need. These choices by children by their nature are devoid of the attributes of the obstacles that have been discussed.
- It is goal oriented toward successes, but more importantly, toward a sense of inner fulfillment. Because of the acceptance of choices coming from within the child, the child learns the result of self-responsibility.
All content © Turning Stone Publishers, 2009