On the Eighth Grade Inquiry Presentations

This past April, I was invited by a middle school physical science teacher to present The Work of Byron Katie to all seven classes of her classes; about 180 eighth graders in all. During each class period, I had 40 minutes to introduce The Work (which was tied into their 4th-quarter project, “Random Acts of Kindness”), and have them practice inquiry as both client and facilitator using the “yellow card” with the basic four questions and turnaround. About two-thirds of the students thought this wasn’t enough time (I quite agree) and were confused by the exercise; most were also thrown by the announcement of their project, confused by the unannounced appearance of a guest speaker, and they weren’t sure how The Work tied in with their studies. Some thought doing The Work with others was too personal, and one girl said she wasn't comfortable examining "bad" thoughts because she thought she'd focus on them; instead, she tries hard to be "positive."

According to their teacher, some of the students have continued to do The Work using the Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheet. One girl wrote, “All I want to do now when I’m mad is go to my room and ask myself those questions.” About a third of the students wrote that they saw how when they believe stressful thoughts, they are not always kind to themselves and others. Some reported immediate improvement in their relationships with family and friends. “I learned that it’s better to question your thoughts before you go into action mode,” said one. Another reported, “Ever since you visited out class I have really looked into myself and realized how different I am than who I thought I was. [It] made me realize that whenever my dad says he needs my help around the house or something, I feel glad to do something for him.”

“I didn’t know that your thoughts and beliefs created your world. That must by why everyone’s world is a little different,” said one wise young lady. “I think the lesson has helped me already get in touch with myself…[and] helped me through some problems I was having,” said another.

However, this kind of insight was rare. Here are some more typical responses from the students who liked The Work:

“If I had a bad thought, I can now change it to a positive one.”

“I learned how to see the world positive by turning all my stressful thoughts around.”

“Stress is inevitable, but I have to turn my stress into peacefulness. And if I could do that then maybe I can become a nicer person.”

“By questioning our thoughts, we can turn them around.”

“I learned how to take a bad thought and turn it into a good though.”

“I liked the bad thoughts turning them to positive!”

“I learned that if you think bad thoughts you’ll have a bad attitude.”

“I learned that bad beliefs make bad thoughts and actions.”

“You shouldn’t think bad because then you won’t have an enjoyable life. It’s just always better to be positive.”

“I really liked it when you told us that we can make our beliefs whatever we wanted.”

“Now I know how to turn my thoughts around and make me feel better.”

“Thank you for teaching us how sometimes our thoughts can be bad for us.”


These responses are so interesting. I never once used the words “good,” “bad,” “positive” “negative,” or “change,” but that’s what these wonderful ones heard. I showed the students how to inquire into stressful thoughts; they apparently received a lesson in affirmations! Our students as young as 12 or 13 seem already to have bought the new-agey notion that they should always be happy and positive.

It got me thinking about people of all ages want to (or believe we ought to) feel better than we feel, or to be “better” than we are, in spite of all the self-esteem messages we’ve received in school, in our spiritual training, or in therapy.

Katie says “Do The Work for the love of truth.” And let’s be honest: how many of us came into The Work as truth-seekers? I know I didn’t; I just wanted my suffering to stop.

Still, who can know the ripple effects this very rushed introduction to inquiry might have on a young life (as it did on this older one)?


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Ask a Facilitator: Won't My Kids Run Wild?

Q: Carol, those of us with kids could use some inspiration. I've had trouble applying The Work here at home. We are such an applications-oriented society (well, we're an applications-oriented family, anyway) that if you don't have a solution/process/procedure/outline you can throw at a perceived behavioral issue, you're sort of left gasping. So doing The Work hasn't felt adequate or proactive enough.

I've often wondered if there are people who use inquiry in their family life with terrific results. (Yeah, I know about Katie's daughter Roxanne, but she seems like a special case!) I think many of us parents are afraid to trust The Work. I certainly have this feeling that if all I did was do The Work, instead of intervening and dealing out consequences for fighting and rudeness, our entire household would blow up, the kids would run wild, my marriage would end, and the dog would run away.

A: Who says you'd just do The Work? Questioning your thoughts doesn't mean you won't have rules in your home. Still, like it or not, kids—like every other human being—do what they do. Sometimes they smack their sisters and brothers, cut classes, experiment with drugs and alcohol, talk back, have early sex, don't do their homework, won't clean their rooms, prefer others' company to ours, cling too tightly to us, are colicky and fussy infants, grow up to ride motorcycles, become philosophy majors instead of going to law school.

If what we're doing doesn't "get results," at the very least, we can understand the reasons why our children's behavior is troubling to us...which may alleviate the reactivity that doesn't help them or us. Out of that clarity might come better solutions than the ones that haven't worked...including kids who feel loved and heard, and who might come up with solutions themselves.

This is what I hear most often from parents who do The Work: they come to realize they love their children as they are. In the peace of that discovery, as parents they are better listeners, more supportive, and less fearful. Behavioral changes (in themselves as well as their children) often happen in ways never brought about by punishment.

Sometimes these parents also end up with kids who, when scolded, love to admonish mom and dad to "turn it around." Let's face it: aren't they right? (And that doesn't mean there are no consequences for them when they knowingly do something that's not okay with you.)


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Inquiry in Education: The Work with Eight Graders

In April, I presented The Work to six classes of eight-grade earth science students at a local middle school—about 180 young "inquirers" in all, plus visits from a language arts teacher and the superintendent. The students are using The Work if they choose to, along with other attention-focusing tools (including breathing and meditation), as part of their inquiry process for a 21-day fourth-quarter project called "Random Acts of Kindness," during which they explore and track what keeps them from being kind to themselves, others, and the planet. We identified common beliefs about family, school, and friends, along with universal thoughts like, "What I do doesn't matter," and used the Yellow Card to question their thoughts. Their teacher created a rubric for them to record their experiences.

From where I sat, interest was mixed; some kids really got into it, others were neutral, others rebellious. (Pretty typical for 13-14 year olds, I'd say.) According to their teacher, they got into it more when she reviewed the process with them the next day, and showed them how to use it with their assignment.

Naturally, a couple of the students immediately began to tease their teacher with "Is it true?" :-)

I think it's fair to say that I was the one who needed this curriculum the most; I have been picking up trash in the street like crazy since discussing with the students thoughts that keep us from picking up trash. "I didn't put it there." "It's not my job." "I'm too lazy." "It won't make a difference."

I'll keep you posted about any feedback I get from the students.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Byron Katie Takes Fun Out of Arguments, Says Teenager

You really must read this funny little article, written by young Santa Cruzan Kyle Abbott, on the Abbott Family Blog, which is all about playing music, being Taoist, and living the weird Santa Cruz life. Kyle manages to good-naturedly indict both Byron Katie and his mom, Leslie (a really nice lady!) in one funny breath.

"In the beginning of this year, Mama has discovered this Dr. Phil-ina who looks like a slim Paula Deen from the Eating Channel. Anyway, this gal Byron Katie has a life-changing way of taking the fun out of arguments. How? Well, when you feel negative feelings towards somebody, you take those feelings and turn them around. Let’s role play here: So, think, 'That guy is stupid!' Well, when you Byronize it, it sounds like this, 'That guy is not stupid! I think he is but it turns out it is a reflection of my feelings towards myself which I am projecting onto this Starbucks clerk who gave me a Double Cha-Mocha Ascretymbia instead of my regular Grimbles Coffeeprimonade.' Sure, it puts a more Taoist Perspective on life, but it’s hard to have a good argument with Byron-Vision turned on."

For more digs and laughs, see Byron Pusher (http://www.abbottfamilyblog.com/2007/07/12/kp-byron-pusher)

He's right; arguing is no fun anymore because I can't make anyone wrong, not even a barrista...darn it.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

The Work Is Child's Play

Here's some video of the Children's Workshop for Kids, Teens, and Parents that was held last weekend in Ventura, California; kids getting clarity and having fun doing it. Fun is actually an enormous part of the experience of this investigation. It's a kick to see the correlation between thought and feeling, and to discover "that snake is a rope." And children, not having lived long enough to gather as much evidence as we can, don't put out as many "yeah buts."

I especially love hearing the mom at the end, who says that an eight year old was the best facilitator she ever had. (Perhaps I should take down my shingle!)(NOT!)


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

All In the Family

Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the innocent!

When my friend Eleanor came to The Work, she was just about ready to run away from home. In the past year, she has written dozens of Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheets on her husband and kids, most especially on her 12-year-old daughter, Ginger, whom she has found particularly challenging ever since Ginger was a colicky baby.

Not long ago, Eleanor wrote:

"Hey, Carol, thanks so much for yesterday. Things feel much clearer. And the funniest stuff has been happening since we worked on my one-liner 'Ginger's rudeness disrupts our family.'

"Last night, Ginger was going downstairs for a snack, and she voluntarily picked up her little sister's evening snack dishes which were on the linen chest in the hall, took them downstairs, and put them in the dishwasher. This morning, while I was making breakfast for the girls, Ginger got out stuff to put on her oatmeal, and also got the stuff that Margaret likes on her cereal, without being asked. She was incredibly sweet last night, she hung out with me for awhile late in the evening, and she was very sweet this morning as well.

"So I don't know exactly what happened yesterday--are you sure you didn't call her up and do The Work with her while I wasn't paying attention?"

Yes, I'm sure, and I wasn't surprised to hear this. When we do The Work with a modicum of willingness, we can discover that we don't need our children to change in order for us to be happy. When we realize this, things often change in the family. The children seem to pick up on our energy.

Amy came to The Work at the end of her rope. Her adopted daughter Bianca, age seven, has a diagnosis of detachment disorder. One of Bianca's "symptoms" is that she usually refuses to do anything Amy asks her to do, whether it's brushing her teeth, eating her lunch, doing her homework, or going to bed. Often Bianca reacts by hitting Amy or destroying things in the house, showing no remorse. Amy and Bianca have had a battle of the wills from the time Bianca was a toddler. Nothing they had tried previously, from therapy to forging agreements, from screaming fights to medication, seemed to make much difference.

One day, Amy worked with me on her beliefs about Bianca's homework. Amy believed that if she didn't sit with Bianca and "make" her do her homework, it would never get done. Even with this belief, Bianca was not completing her work, often furiously scribbling in her notebook in the early morning on the way to school. Amy began forbidding Bianca to do her homework in the car, resulting in more battles, sometimes physical.

Seeing Amy's frustration and anger about the homework situation, Bianca's teacher had told Amy to back off and let the homework be a matter between the teacher and Bianca, but Amy would not let go. She felt strongly that it was her job as a mother to make sure Bianca's homework was done. We worked on that thought, and Amy left the session feeling she had gotten nowhere; she needed to be right about this one! Something terrible would happen if Bianca didn't do her schoolwork; she'd fail at school, have early sex, take drugs, drop out, live on the street. (I am not making this up; Amy really believed this.)

Later that day, Amy sent me an email:

"Good news...amazingly, effortlessly I gave up getting involved in Bianca's homework today. I didn't do The Work on it at all after our session, but something from talking with you this morning slid into place. One big thing I realized is that I have been holding back doing fun things with Bianca--such as reading aloud to her--until her homework was done. I saw that I didn't want to punish myself, so I decided to go ahead and offer to read, and see what Bianca said. She could have said she had to do her homework, but she didn't say that, so I read aloud to her, and enjoyed myself. She enjoyed the reading too. She will have to deal with the teacher on Friday if her work isn't done!"

How did The Work help this situation? Without realizing it, Amy became aware that night of Question 3, "How do you react when you believe that thought?" She realized that in being rigid and controlling with Bianca, she was being rigid and controlling with herself. There was no way for Amy to have a happy family life if she couldn't allow herself to be happy until all conditions were met. When I last heard from Amy, sometimes Bianca was doing her homework, sometimes not. Amy was still stressing about it, but less. It's a beginning.

What if your issue with your child has nothing to do with behavior? Corinne wrote to me as ask if she should use The Work with her young daughter, who was experiencing night terrors about death. If the child were interested in inquiry, she could certainly benefit from The Work, I told Corinne, and she might benefit most from having a mother who works with her own fears. I suggested Corinne work with the belief she was voicing, "My daughter is suffering," with her own thoughts about death, and with her beliefs about her daughter: "Allison is fearful and withdrawn, and it means that..."

Corinne wrote back to say that she understood she could not expect her daughter to overcome her fears if she as a mother wasn't willing to face her own. She discovered she was holding beliefs that were at least as terrifying as her daughter's fear of death, such as "I am the cause of Allison's suffering," and "I am responsible for my children's happiness." About death: "If I died, no one would love and care for my children as I do."

Children--like our neighbors, spouses, bosses, parents, siblings, friends, perceived enemies, cats, dogs, and elected officials--are here to support us, to point us toward the way to freedom. Whose business are you in mentally when you believe the thought, "My child should...?"

If we can look to ourselves for our happiness, it doesn't mean the kids aren't going to behave, or thrive, or grow up to be good citizens. It's like that old saw about the oxygen mask on the airplane: in case of emergency, affix your own mask before attempting to assist another. We can be of no use to our children if we are suffocating in the name of love.

Byron Katie has said,

"You live as the example of how lovely it is to serve yourself, to create for yourself the world you want to live in, by cleaning up what you want cleaned up. If you love it, [your children] begin to love it also. They become attracted to you and how you live, and all the while you can lovingly ask for what you want, and that is their help. You can ask over and over and over, from a place of love and gratitude for your own life lived well. And they will help you or not. And that is what is happening anyway. It's just, how are you going to live out what you are doing? In peace and joy, or in resentment? If doing what you do brings unhappiness and resentment, why would they want to do it? Notice what you are teaching--is it joy or grievance?"

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

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