The Story Garden with Mrs. Sandoz

"What color of the rainbow do you feel like today?  Why?" "What does someone else have that you want?" "What do you think about when you wake up?" "What silly thing did you do recently?" These are a few of the questions you'll find in one of my new favorite Healing Story games. This post is for my sister-in-law.  She sent me a text asking what games we play at the dinner table because they needed a little something to direct conversation.  This is a must in our house!  If we don't have something ready for the boys to talk about they will choose the topic themselves.  It always goes one of two ways.  Either poop and body parts are the subjects or a not so friendly debate about who's the best.  Neither of these give us a very fine dining experience. To avoid these dinner talks I've learned to come prepared.  Here is one of my latest tools. Q&A a Day for Kids by Betsy Franco is a delightful conversation...

Sometimes I get it right.  Not often but sometimes.  It feels so good!  Lately Thing Two has been feeling bad about himself.  He tries to punish himself for being "bad" and gets into these funks where he can't seem to find anything good about himself.  This is so heartbreaking.  Especially as he is my birthday boy (born on my birthday) and can be as sweet as pie!  (I actually called him Baby Pie as an infant).  Like many of us he has believed a lie and follows its trail. So what did I do right?  Instead of lecturing Thing Two on how good I thought he was I played a game with him.  I made it up on the fly.  It's called "I'm Good".  It worked too!  I have to brag because probably 90% of the time I'm beating myself up for getting it wrong.  It just seems so rare to actually feel like I'm doing something good for my boys.  Hmm...guess I need this game too! Here it is. I'm Good Game To Play: Each player ta...