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    Working method

    Kids' Skills in Poznań: learning a skill instead of fighting a problem

    Kids' Skills was developed by the Finnish psychiatrist Ben Furman. Instead of talking with a child about what they get wrong, we turn the difficulty into a specific skill to learn and practise it together with the family. The child is not a problem to be fixed, but someone learning something.

    What Kids' Skills is

    Kids' Skills is a way of working with children that comes from the solution-focused tradition. Ben Furman, a psychiatrist, developed it in Finland with a team working in nurseries and schools. The method is described as fifteen steps leading from naming a difficulty to celebrating a skill the child has learned.

    The starting question is different from the one parents usually ask at home. We do not ask why the child behaves this way, or how to make it stop. We ask what the child needs to learn so that the difficulty stops getting in their way. “Stop having meltdowns” becomes “learn to notice anger building up, and do three things when it does”. The second version can be practised, and the child can see it working.

    That shift is not cosmetic. A child who hears a list of things to correct will argue back or go quiet. A child with a specific skill to learn can be proud of themselves when it goes well.

    Which children it suits

    Kids' Skills works with difficulties that can be described as a specific behaviour in a specific situation. Parents usually come once the things they tried at home have stopped working:

    • The child will not sleep alone. Bedtime takes an hour, and they end up in their parents' bed in the middle of the night anyway.
    • Meltdowns over small things. Not dramatic events, but the daily ones: the wrong T-shirt, the wrong cup, the end of a cartoon.
    • Refusing to try new food. The list of accepted foods has shrunk to a handful of items and keeps narrowing.
    • Bedwetting or trouble using the toilet with no medical cause, once a paediatrician has checked it.
    • Difficulty with separation. Crying at the nursery door, a call from school an hour after drop-off, asking to stay at home.
    • Trouble finding a place in a group. A common one in families who have recently moved to Poland: the child wants to join in, but does not yet know how to start in a new language and a new class.
    • Forgetting, losing things, endless reminders. The rucksack, the homework, the PE kit, every single day.

    Age is not a hard boundary, but the method relies on conversation and on the child's imagination, so it works best with nursery and early-primary children. With older children and teenagers the full sequence often feels childish, and we use the parts of it that still work rather than the whole procedure.

    Sessions in English are available with the specialists listed below. If you are not sure whether your situation fits, that is exactly the question for a first meeting; it does not need settling before you book.

    How the work runs, step by step

    Below is the frame the whole method rests on. In practice these steps spread across several sessions and look different with a five-year-old than with a nine-year-old.

    1. Turning the problem into a skill

    We start by asking what the child needs to learn so that the difficulty stops getting in their way. This is the most important step and usually the hardest one for adults: “stop being scared of sleeping alone” has to become “learn to fall asleep in your own bed”. The skill has to be small enough to be mastered.

    2. The child names the skill

    The child gives it a name of their own. It might be “calm power”, “the falling-asleep superpower”, or something that means nothing to an adult. The name is not decoration: from that point on we talk about practising that thing, not about the child's problem.

    3. Agreeing why it is worth learning

    We talk with the child about what will change once they can do it. Not about the relief it brings the parents, but about what the child gets out of it. Without this step, practising is just one more instruction from adults.

    4. Choosing supporters

    The child picks the people who will know what they are learning and will notice it: parents, siblings, a grandparent, a teacher, a classmate. This is not an optional extra but one of the pillars of the method. A skill practised in secret rarely lasts.

    5. Practising and recording progress

    We agree exactly what practice looks like during the week and how the child will record that it went well. The record is for the child, not the parent: it shows that something is changing on the days when nothing seems to be.

    6. A plan for setbacks

    Before the bad day arrives, we agree with the child what happens then. Not a punishment and not starting from zero, but an agreed way back into practising. This step makes the biggest difference to whether the work survives the first relapse.

    7. Celebrating

    Once the skill is there, the child celebrates it with their supporters and decides how. It closes the work with a clear “I can do this” instead of the silence of a difficulty that simply stopped happening.

    After the celebration a next skill very often appears and the cycle starts again, this time faster, because the child already knows the sequence.

    What the parent does

    Kids' Skills is not work the child does in the consulting room while a parent waits outside. The method rests on supporters, and the closest supporters are you. If you book this work expecting that bringing your child to sessions is enough, you will arrive with an expectation the method does not meet.

    In practice that means four things:

    • You help choose the skill. You know things about your child's day that we will never see in a consulting room. The choice is made with you, not behind your back.
    • You notice the practice, not the result. Credit is due for an attempt made on a hard day, not only for success. This is the part that most often takes a change of habit in the adults.
    • You drop the old label. If “calm power” is being practised at home, “you're being difficult again” sets the work back by weeks.
    • You hold the frame. The daily reminder, the record of progress, the agreed celebration. A few minutes a day, but without gaps.

    If in your situation it is the parent who first needs to work out how to respond, it makes more sense to start with a session without your child. That conversation is parent counselling.

    What Kids' Skills is not

    • It is not an assessment. The work does not answer whether a child has ADHD, autism or an anxiety disorder, and it does not end with a diagnosis or a written opinion.
    • It is not psychotherapy for a disorder. Kids' Skills teaches one specific skill. It is not an answer to depression in a teenager, to an eating disorder, or to the effects of trauma.
    • It is not a reward chart. Recording progress and celebrating are not stickers for obedience. The child learns to recognise their own progress rather than to collect points from adults.
    • It does not work without the child. The method needs the child to want to learn something and to name the skill themselves. It cannot be run over their head.
    • It is not a method for every difficulty. It suits behaviour that can be turned into a skill. Where the difficulty belongs to the whole family, or the situation is an acute crisis, a different starting point makes more sense.

    When to start with something else

    • You suspect ADHD or autism. Kids' Skills is not a route to a diagnosis and does not replace one. Start with a child and adolescent consultation: we will look at what worries you and point you to where an assessment can be carried out. We do not run assessments for people under 18.
    • Something is happening that affects the whole family. A separation, illness, bereavement, a move to another country. A child's difficulty is then often a response to the situation rather than a missing skill. Start with a child and adolescent consultation, or with a conversation for the parents alone.
    • The situation is acute and needs a response now. After a sudden loss or another difficult event, the first step is crisis intervention, not a plan of skills practice spread over weeks.
    • Your child will not talk about any of it. That does not rule the work out, but it does not begin with fifteen steps. At the first session we check what is possible and match the form to what the child agrees to.
    • You are not sure this is what you are looking for. Book a child and adolescent consultation and decide afterwards. The choice of method does not have to be made before the first meeting.

    How long it takes and how many sessions

    There is no set number of sessions, and we cannot honestly give you one before knowing the situation. It depends above all on how large a skill we choose: learning to fall asleep in your own bed and learning to handle anger in a peer group are different sizes of work.

    What is fixed: a single session lasts 50 minutes, and between sessions the child practises at home. The practice, not the session, is the actual work, which is why we space appointments to leave room for it.

    Typically the first session settles the skill, the ones after it are given to practice and to whatever is not going well, and the last one closes the work with a celebration. You can stop or change direction along the way; you are not signing up for a fixed course.

    Who works this way

    Kids' Skills is used at Oddech by specialists who have completed training in the method:

    How to start

    The method has no separate line in the price list — you book one of the two appointments below. If your child is the one coming to the session, choose the child and adolescent consultation. If you would rather talk first on your own, without your child, choose parent counselling.

    Child and adolescent psychology consultation

    A consultation with a child psychologist in Poznań, in English. We work with children from bilingual and international families, including those adjusting to a new school or country.

    250 PLN

    Learn more

    Parent counselling

    Consultations for parents worried about a child's behaviour, or unsure how to respond to difficult parenting situations.

    250 PLN

    Learn more

    Common questions

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