The Best Moments

I had the honor today of returning to a school whose staff was trained last year by my company on video self-modeling. Video self-modeling is a positive psychology technique where children watch themselves on video performing a behavior perfectly well. Most videos are between 30 seconds and a few minutes long.

Many of the children whose videos I shared in trainings this year were there, which gave me the immense pleasure of seeing how far they have advanced. These are just a few of their accomplishments, achieved by watching their individual 30 second videos:

The young girl who was terribly afraid of fire drills proudly shared that she had two fire drills in one day recently and went outside like a champ!

The little boy who would not participate in group activities and used a mumbling quiet voice was happily dancing with his classmate and teachers while loudly singing the words of the song today.

The young girl who screamed every time she was given a simple instruction like “stand up,” “sit down,” or “turn around” smiled broadly as she watched her video. When I asked her to stand up, she excitedly did so with a huge grin – and no screams.

Another girl watched her video and then returned to her teacher and exclaimed, “I used my listening ears!” Her pride was palpable.

There are so many more examples that I’ll share as they come to mind in future posts. I am so proud of the children’s accomplishments achieved simply by watching themselves perform well on short videos.

The very best part of my day, though, was following through on a young boy’s fun request to record him and his toy in slow motion. We laughed so purely and innocently at our big coup of recording his toy in slow motion.  Sometimes life’s greatest moments are the unexpected ones….