REBTOZ

The Yellow Success Helper (YSH) represents behaviours related to positive relationships and interactions. They are associated with what REBT calls unconditional other acceptance (UOA) or what Carl Rogers calls unconditional positive regard (UPR). These philosophical perspectives see others as fallible human beings, like ourselves, and making judgements based on a particular quality or characteristic abstracted from the many are inaccurate assumptions. YSH thinking makes YSH choices and emotions. This is the message conveyed to our early childhood learners, that they are constructivists, building their own conceptions about how things work. Have a Go Spaghettio! thinking is Brain Friend, Success Helper or rational thinking. If they learn that thinking, feeling and behaviour are connected they can learn to regulate how they feel and behave successfully. The Red ‘I’m worthwhile crocodile’ thinking Success Helper is unconditional self-a...

  Albert Ellis's ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance is a paradigm within Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). It provides a framework for understanding how our thoughts, beliefs, and events interact to influence our emotional and behavioural responses. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is a psychoeducational teaching and counselling model. The ABC model is a tool used within REBT to help individuals identify, challenge, and deconstruct irrational beliefs and to construct new, more efficient ways of thinking and believing. Have a Go Spaghettio! is an early childhood approach to social, emotional, and behavioural learning based on REBT and the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance paradigm. It teaches young learners that they make (construct) their own habits of thinking that in turn make their emotional and behavioural responses to events. Early learnings about their thinking nature will provide the tools with which they can learn to think about their th...

A rational and healthy appreciation of the ‘self’   according to REBT is called unconditional self-acceptance. The ability to maintain its integrity, even in difficult circumstances is to be able to conserve it. If children can learn that their overall worth is not determined by others’ estimation of them, and that an opinion of them cannot ‘be’ them, they will conserve their established unconditional self-acceptance status. This is what I understand conservation of the ‘self’ to be. If children learn to believe that they need others’ approval, that someone’s estimation of them ‘is’ them, they expose themselves to excessive upset, excessive worry, sadness etc. As the ‘self’ in this sense, cannot be stable, and remains reliant on others to determine it’s worth it cannot be conserved. It lacks strength and integrity, it is a ‘self’ that has conditions attached to it and the child will be externally controlled i.e., their sense of self is determined by others and not them. The w...

Teaching children that they cannot be any word used to describe them will help them develop a healthy habit of thinking and believing that is intuitive, automatic. This Success Helper or Brain Friend way of thinking is the goal of the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional wellbeing, called ‘I’m worthwhile crocodile’ thinking. What does this mean? Unconditional self-acceptance  is understanding that there is no law that says our worth is decided by others appraisal of us or how well or badly we do at tasks. We can e.g., act dumb/smart but we cannot be so. It is a Brain Bully belief when we decide that we ‘are’ our dumbness or smartness because it’s not true, there’s no evidence to support this hypothesis! The Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional wellbeing teaches young learners about Brain Friend believing which is rational and supported by the evidence. It is as ridiculous to accept that we can be a giraffe as it is to believe we are or can be dum...

A semantic disturbance arises when a person’s constructed virtual representation of reality or mind map doesn’t approximate how things are, the territory, the ‘real’ world. Bear in mind that Einstein and others said that reality itself is a persistent illusion, something concocted based on the organism’s assessment of how they believe things are. A poor assessment, one that doesn’t consider the facts available, is a mis conception or misunderstanding. What we believe or tell ourselves about something is semantically inaccurate and therefore a semantic disturbance exists. This is characterised by feelings of upset to varying degrees, or ‘upsetness’ as Dr Albert Ellis says. Alfred Korzybski ’s General Semantics theory tells us the map is not the territory it represents or the word is not the thing it describes. The ‘self’ under construction in the minds of our young Have a Go Spaghettio! audience can be a helpful, healthy Success Helper type or one that is self-defeating, where Brain ...

‘Shouldhood' causes upset or increases the intensity of what, Albert  Ellis calls, our ‘upsetness.’ The degree of ‘upsetness’ caused by our  tendency to think in ‘shoulds’ is what Ellis also calls ‘shithood:’  ‘shouldhood’ leads to ‘shithood ‘ psychologically speaking. Sometimes we might ‘should’ and stop and rethink our ‘shoulding’  reminding ourselves that to demand we should get something we  can’t get is futile. So, we recalibrate, shift our thinking to a more  logical, rational posture. However, if we indulge in ‘should’ thinking on a more permanent  basis, where we continue to demand that things should, absolutely  be  as we demand they should be, then ‘shithood’ is where we end up  until we understand how thinking effects how we feel and behave.  The world is no good, others are no good and/or you are no good  equals ‘SHITHOOD!” ‘Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ Shakespeare (Hamlet) The Have a Go S...

Have a Go Spaghettio! teaches children that something about them, 'good' or 'bad' doesn't define them in a global sense. Yet, they/we learn to abstract something, be it a competency or quality, from the many that constitute the 'self' under construction, and decide it 'is' us, we are it! Hence, children can start to think of themselves as good/bad, cute, dumb, ugly etc. Emotional and behavioural upset experienced by the young child, according to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy theory, on which Have a Go Spaghettio! is based, is linked to irrational, Brain Bully/Success Stopper thinking.   The belief we can be dumb/smart etc. is what General Semantics calls a 'semantic disturbance,' where the persons upset is caused by mis interpretations, mis perceptions.   Brain Friend thinking is taught via the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to social and emotional well-being which says the person cannot 'be' a w...

How we perceive the world, others and ourselves is our own constructed version of the reality we experience. Reality then is our version of how we perceive it to be. It’s a persistent illusion according to Albert Einstein and Douglas Adams says everything in the universe we perceive is specific to us. Dr Seuss says there is ‘no one alive who is youer than you,’ we are unique it is said, but what kind of ‘you’ are we constructing, what is our virtual take on the reality we experience and are we constructing a healthy view of the unique ‘self’ possessed by each of us. Have a Go Spaghettio! ‘s goal is to help children understand that as constructivists they are building an internal, virtual representation of reality and it can be either a rational, Brain Friend, Success Helper version of reality or otherwise. This video explores the idea that we can't ‘be’ any word ascribed us  by others or ourselves, as General Semantics theory says if we do we will experience emotional and behav...

This Have a Go Spaghettio! video is a review, reminder that rational BF thinking can be taught explicitly in the teaching and learning context. Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, says the future of psychotherapy is in the school system. With the Have a Go approach, it has arrived in early childhood learning. Rational thinking is that which helps us get the results we desire or prefer. It accommodates the reality that sometimes we may not get what we strongly desire to have; people to like us, to do well at tasks, reach our goals. This needn’t be catastrophic unless we believe it to be. The BF belief we are OK even if others think otherwise is a rational perspective on the worth we apportion to our ‘self,’ i.e., we are worthwhile because we exist not because someone else says we are! We can help children develop this habit of thinking so it becomes intuitive, automatic, and deeply held. Some children will be constructing such a belief others may not be but ...

This video is another look at setting up the Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper classroom. It offers classroom strategies that help to acquaint children with the think, feel, do connection a la Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. Give it a try banana pie! The Success Helper Well Being Framework has been adopted by many schools in Australia. It embodies the thinking and ideas of Dr. Albert Ellis who created Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. His ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance is a counselling paradigm used universally to help people navigate their way through life. Ellis' therapeutic approach to wellbeing, mental health promotion/education is influenced by Stoic philosophy, Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics theory, Bertrand Russell's ideas and many more who teach that thinking, feeling, and behaving are all interconnected. The Success Helper Well Being Framework teaches children that they have the potential to manage their extreme and often self-defeating emotions...

What's up with Franklin? He's throwing his clothes about and disobeying his parents.  His  friends come by and he's discourteous towards them. He goes to his room and accidentally  knocks over a block building he and Otter made. He cries in frustration and his dad comes  in and asks Franklin why he feels so sad and angry. Otter has moved away he tells his  father, and she was his best friend. Dad understands now why Franklin feels sad and he  decides to apply his Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper knowledge to help Franklin deal  with this unfortunate event in his son's life.