I was a Top Gun instructor in the Royal Air Force, if you have seen the film Top Gun you will know that all military aircrew are steely-eyed ice-cold killers who have no emotions, because "up there if you think, you are dead!!" As you can imagine, everybody thought they were the best of the best and did everything perfect. So, when we had the next Maverick, who turned out to be more MiddleRoad, we had to bring them down to earth gently as taxpayers had spent $millions just to get them to that stage. Now to let you understand, military flying training is a SAVAGE environment to an outsider, where all students are basically 5 flights away from being permanently cut from training with debriefs being very direct and hyper-focused on what seems like minutiae. To that end, we had to debrief in a way that never crushed a students spirit but allowed them to learn from their mistakes and come back stronger next time. To do that we used the RCP framework, which officially stands for: - Recognize - Cause - Prevention or unofficially: Ridicule, Criticize, Patronize 😆 So we break it down like this: - Recognize the problem - Find the root cause - Explain how to prevent it That might look something like this... "Your missile wouldn't launch as you could not get a lock on the other aircraft (Recognize), this was because you were too close for missiles (Cause). Next time you need to monitor your distance and when too close for missiles, switch to guns (Prevention)" 😎 "Yeah, yeah... cool story Dave... whatever!" Well.... this works sooooo well with children (and spouses 🫣). Here's a real world example from my house this morning. Emily was trying to sweep the floor and not doing a great job. "Hey sweetheart, great effort but there are a few little bits that escaped in the corners, can you see it? (Recognize). This is normally because the broom is not really great for corners so you never managed to get it right into the corner (Cause). Let me show you how to get fully into the corner by turning the broom on it's side like this. (Prevention).

When Emily was 3 she LOOOOOVED the film Trolls. We must have watched it literally 50 times in a few months. She always loved lying with me or Linzi and snuggling. Her favorite part of the movie was "hug time", which for those non-aficionado's regarding Trolls, is when the Trolls set an alarm to have a huge group hug. It is really quite wholesome. Well, Emily was going through one of her development stages and being particularly clingy and needed a lot of reassurance. For those that know what I am talking about, you will understand how stifling it can be having a child constantly needing reassurance and contact. I was still in the military and was working crazy hours and weird shifts, so she REALLY clung to me. The next time she was playing, I sat with her and steered the conversation around to what was going on with her. And like any normal self-respecting 3 year old, she had no idea. 🤦‍♂️ I asked, did she just want to be made to feel special and loved, to which she replied "yes". So, I stored this new info in my, 'things to try and figure out' file in my brain so that I could ruminate over it in the next few days. Later that day of course, we had a date with Trolls (aaaaagain?!).... That is when I had the idea hit me square in the face, "Hug Time"! We set an alarm for every 30 minutes and when the alarm went off, we all got together as a family and had a group hug for 30 seconds. It. Was. A. Game-changer! Within an hour Emily was less clingy and more content. The added bonus was that Max became less high-energy and calm. After a week I stretched it to 40 mins. Next week 50 mins, then eventually an hour. Simple, yet super effective! Who knew Princess Poppy could teach me something about connection, despite watching it 429 times beforehand... 🥴