What is Verbal First Aid

What is the Secret to Verbal First Aid?

Verbal First Aid is a way of speaking that can set the course for recovery whenever a child is injured, afraid, or in a crisis, big or small.

When you know Verbal First Aid, you know what to say and how to say it so you can really make it all better no matter what the situation. Verbal First Aid gives you tools to help a child get through everything from the ordinary “oh no” to the more challenging pains and procedures of life. In Verbal First Aid, we will offer you very specific scenarios and sample scripts so you feel comfortable with anything that comes up:

• Your child hurts herself in a fall or is injured or burned; (See Chapter V)

• Someone your child knows has died and the child is upset; (See Chapter VII)

• You have to take a child to the doctor for a shot or to the hospital for a procedure; (See Chapter VI)

• You want to help children know what to do in an emergency without scaring or scarring them; (See Chapter VIII)

• Your child has an asthma or panic attack; (See Chapter V)

Whether there is a broken heart or a bruised knee, Verbal First Aid can help you initiate healing in your child simply by the conscious use of your presence and the power of your words. 

To better help you understand this extraordinary process and the science behind it, we have provided you with an overview of the information you’ll find in the book:

Verbal First Aid and the Potential of the Self-Healing Child

We are at the playground watching and listening to well-meaning parents dealing with everyday crises.  A little girl falls down and cuts her knee.  Her mother cries out, “Oh, no!  Look at you!  You’re bleeding, oh, my baby, my poor baby.”   And the child begins to fear her own blood.  Or she learns a dangerous way to get her mother’s attention.

A boy falls off the jungle gym and breaks his arm.  His father says, “You’re all right.  Buck up, buddy.  It’s not that bad,” and the child learns to feel very alone and begins a long path of disregard for his own feelings.

In both scenarios the physical healing is interfered with.

If the parents knew what science is now verifying—that every thought we have sends chemicals through our bodies, adrenaline and cortisol when we’re frightened, endorphins when we are calm, biochemicals that aid or impede the healing—they would have spoken differently.  They would have spoken words that could set the course for healing, physically and emotionally in their child.

When parents learn how to speak Verbal First Aid, they will be able to say the words that set the course for their children’s physical recovery. They’ll be able to short-circuit traumatic memories, all in a sentence or two. And they’ll be able to say the words that give the child a perspective on dealing with what they encounter that could take them more confidently through life.

Reconsider the scene of the mother picking up her child and cleaning her bleeding wound.  Imagine how the look on the frightened child’s face would change when the mother says:  “See what a good job your blood is doing cleaning out that cut.  Now you can stop your bleeding.  We’ll wash it off and put a bandage on, and you’ll be so surprised at how fast it will get better.”  With these few words, the child experiences mastery instead of fear. And the bleeding slows to a stop.

How different it would have been if the father had said to the son:  “You know, I broke my arm when I was about your age, and you could never guess it to see how I throw a baseball, right?  Your body knows how to heal itself.  And before you know it…” With these words, the boy begins to use his imagination to start the healing.

Parents today have been called “overprotective” in their desire to provide children with helmets for bike riding, cookies spiked with spinach, and cell phones for emergencies. They are truly concerned for their children and invest heavily in that concern. They organize, lobby, and fight for their children’s well-being.

Verbal First Aid is much more than a psychology book, much more than just another self-help book. It is the book that can help parents give their children what they truly long to give them:  the tools to self-soothe, take control of their own emotions, consciously choose their thoughts, and literally help heal their bodies as well as their spirits.  So that at any time in the future when they need it, children, even grown children, can “remember what my mother/father used to say…” and tackle new challenges with poise, wisdom and confidence.

The unique premise of Verbal First Aid is that people in crisis, panic, fear or pain tend to slip into an altered state of consciousness. What is said and imagined at such times goes directly to the Autonomic Nervous System, which regulates such vital bodily functions as breathing, bleeding, heart and pulse rate, and perception of pain.  The pictures in their minds cause cascades of chemicals to surge through their bodies.   And whether they heal or get worse is directly affected by those thoughts and images.

Verbal First Aid teaches people a simple, yet invaluable way to speak at times of emergencies and fear, at times of hurts and sadness, in ways that ultimately can shape and affect not only physical healing but long term attitudes and remembered experiences.

There are many things in our world about which we’d like to warn our vulnerable children:  natural disasters, terrorism, serious injury. But how can we do that without frightening them? How do we help them be aware without becoming hypervigilant? How can we prepare our children for the really tough emergencies, things that might harm them, as well as the tough decisions they face without scaring or scarring them?

In this book we teach parents, teachers, physicians, caregivers how to accomplish all that and so much more.  We show how words go far deeper and further than most of us ever thought. The right words at the right time not only can help the bleeding stop now or calm your child as you speak to them, but it can help them tomorrow and mitigate the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Words can literally heal the future in the present.

The ability to focus the attention inward is a fundamental and natural human experience, and if we weren’t suggestible, we would never cry at a movie or suspend disbelief long enough to finish a good science fiction novel.

As every parent who has ever tried to get a child to “focus” knows, children are quite often in that altered state.  For children, slipping into this state seems to be even more pervasive and spontaneous than it is for adults.  Because of that, what is said to and around them, especially at crucial times, can set the trajectory for recovery—or its opposite. But it is not just our common experience that tells us this is true. Empirical research and vast clinical experience both strongly suggest that children are generally more suggestible and therefore uniquely responsive to Verbal First Aid.

Verbal First Aid for Children shows that what we think determines how we feel and how we feel determines how we heal. It offers parents a unique insight into the magical and powerful impact of words on their children and then teaches them how to utilize this understanding so they can help their children in ways they never imagined.

This book follows in the footsteps of The Worst Is Over: What To Say When Every Moment Counts. The Worst Is Over, which has been called “the ‘bible’ for crisis communication” by The International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, presented the protocol of Verbal First Aid for medical emergency responders:  “to calm, promote healing, relieve pain, and save lives.”

Once a tool used by professionals, now this invaluable information is being offered to you and your child so that when he falls off his bike, or she jumps off the couch, or he wakes up with a nightmare, not only will you know what to do, you’ll know precisely what to say.