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Have a Go Spaghettio! The ABC of REBT – part 1

Have a Go Spaghettio! is a pedagogy for teachers to teach their students about the think-feel-do connection using Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) principles in daily early childhood teaching practice. REBT provides the ABC Theory of Emotional (and behavioural) Disturbance counselling and teaching paradigm which considers how emotional and behavioural upset is linked to the event or happening (A) but is also influenced by the thinking (B) about the event or happening. The six-colour coded Have a Go Spaghettio! visual teaching and learning graphic is underpinned by REBT and General Semantics theories. The word is not the person! Slide 2 Teachers teach their students about the ABC’s, words and meanings, sentences and reading and writing. I can recall being told that ‘you go to school to learn your ABC’s.’ There’s another type of ABC that we can teach our young constructivist learners, the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance. Ms Smithers has completed the Have a Go ...
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What is Have a Go Spaghettio!?

Have a Go Spaghettio! is a pedagogy which provides the early childhood educator a way of delivering ideas and principles of psychotherapy to the young constructivist mind. Albert Ellis said a long time ago that the future of psychotherapy is in the school system so that’s Have a Go Spaghettio!’s mission, to help young people learn habits of thinking that will hold them in good stead. clap your hands touch the sky give it a try banana pie! Who is Abert Ellis? He’s the creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy which provides the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance counselling/teaching paradigm. It is the underpinning theory of the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social, emotional, behavioural well-being. General Semantics also informs the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach, which posits that ‘the word is not the person’ it intends to define. A personal failing or the opinion of others do not determine the persons entire worth. What is a good self? Is there such a thing?...
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Have a Go Spaghettio! and Our 'Upsetness'

The goal of REBT, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, is to help the person identify the beliefs they have constructed and how they are connected to the way they feel and behave in response to adverse happenings. The emphasis is on the views one holds, personal philosophies that underpin and drive how we feel and behave, as it is they, not solely the adverse event, that ‘makes’ them as upset as they become. In essence we upset ourselves, and Albert Ellis calls this self-disturbance, we are causing what he calls our own ‘upsetness.’ This presentation is titled ‘our – upsetness’ as Ellis’ invites us all to learn to be less ‘self-disturbable.’ In the school context we call this endeavour Rational Emotive Behaviour Education. Dr. Albert Ellis The Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to social, emotional, and behavioural wellbeing provides a pedagogy for teachers to use in the early childhood context. It is underpinned by Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and General Semantics t...
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Have a Go Spaghettio! The Map and The Territory

If the 'map' (our belief constructions) isn’t the 'territory' (reality) and people believe it is, then there’s a lot of unwarranted emotional and behavioural upset endured by many who believe what they think is reality. This kind of thinking sees life’s twists and turns as major inconveniences that shouldn’t happen. So, if, for example someone doesn’t say thanks when you open the door for them, and you feel the indignation rise within, and you say ‘you’re welcome’ after them, who or what is causing your angst? The answer is that you are! But how? Rational Emotive behaviour Therapy, (REBT), the Stoics, General Semantics and the Buddha say that how we interpret what’s happening has a connection to our emotional and behavioural response. How we interpret what’s happening is related to philosophical belief rules we’ve constructed over time, of which we may not be aware. Consider the scenario above, how might the aggrieved person be thinking at the time, about the inci...
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The Rational Emotive Behaviour 'Have a Go Spaghettio!' Educator

  Teachers who employ the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy in their early childhood teaching practice are Rational Emotive Behaviour Educators . The Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to early childhood personal development is based on Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy theory (REBT) and his counselling paradigm, the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance. REBT is influenced by the Stoic Philosophers such as Epictetus, who said that happenings plus our interpretations of those events cause our emotional and behavioural 'upsetness' as Albert Ellis said. But REBT would not have come to be had it not been the work of Alfred Korzybski who created General Semantics theory. He alerted us to the idea of the 'map is not the territory' where our belief constructions (the map), our conceptions about life, are but a virtual representation of reality (the territory). Teachers who teach early childhood student constructivists the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy are Ratio...
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Dr. Evil and Ms. Prudence Putty-Nose

Daddy Wasn't There!  is a song featured in the film Gold Member. Mike Myers plays the role of Austin Powers, the James Bond type, man of the moment who has issues about the absentee father who was ‘never there’ at those crucial milestone moments of his formal development. Hence the song Daddy Wasn’t There! Austin had a twin brother, called Douglas Power, aka Dr. Evil who was thought to have died in a car explosion, and was subsequently adopted by a Belgian family who taught him to be evil. How this was done is of course conjecture, but I would suggest that Douglas may have been programmed to believe he was an exceptional type and people, all people, should, must defer to him and his specialness. Dr. Evil is self-absorbed, needs to be admired, and scorns those who do not revere him as he must be. He has a fragile ego and demands that others validate his status as an exceptional human being. So fragile is his ego he must destroy those perceived to be his competitors or enemi...
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Ms. Prudence Putty - Nose Sees a Counsellor

  Ms Prudence Putty – Nose went to a counsellor because she was flying off the handle a bit when she didn’t get what she wanted and she lasted one session. The counsellor said that her sense of her own exceptionalism, that she was a better breed of person and that others should see this and act accordingly was the cause of her high anxiety and need of approval. Ms Putty   Nose was affronted by this and could not see how she was responsible for how she felt and behaved and not the furniture, the weather, or the popularity of a teacher peer she despised and she decided that counselling wasn’t for her. She was even resentful of a teacher colleague who had cancer, as her condition was taking away precious attention from her. ‘I wish she didn’t get cancer. It’s not fair,’ she thought. "Cancer envy" is a recognized, complex, and often shame-inducing emotion where individuals may envy the attention, support, or care others receive during a cancer diagnosis.” She went back to her ...
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