The Daily Peace Procedure is simple. Each night, while tucking their children into bed, parents ask: “What good and bad thoughts did you have today? And what good and bad things happened to youtoday?” As the child is describing the thoughts and events, both good and bad, the parents tap the EFT points lightly and lovingly or rub them gently. As children describe bad events, they are tuned in to the emotions of the problem. Tapping ensures that these emotions are dispelled rather than reinforced.
Children are constantly absorbing information from the environment, which includes from their parents, teachers, peers, television, the Internet, and other media. Much of this information is negative. By the time a typical television-watching American child reaches the age of 18, he or she will have witnessed about 200,000 dramatized acts of violence including 40,000 murders (Grossman & DeGaetano, 2009). Even comedy shows often get their laughs through vicious attacks on others. This daily barrage of negative images and words fills a child’s consciousness and subconscious mind. A parent who performs the Daily Peace Procedure with a child can empty the garbage can by tapping. Here are examples of bad experiences children might report:
“Daddy scared me when he yelled at me.”
“I saw a monster killing people on television.”
“My teacher thinks I’m dumb.”
“I can’t run fast like Billy.”
“I’m not as pretty as Susan.”
“The preacher said I won’t go to heaven if I’m not good.”
These are just a few of myriad statements that reflect the feelings and events that can become entrenched in children’s psyches. It doesn’t matter whether the child’s interpretation is reasonable by adult standards. What matters to children’s psyches and the effect of the events on them is how they felt when they had the experience.
As you are tapping or rubbing the points, you can continue to probe, asking, “What else happenedtoday?” You can also reframe the event for the child, providing another way to look at the event, such as, “Monsters on TV aren’t real.” Doing this while tapping makes it far more likely that your child will absorb the message than if you simply talked about it.
This EFT procedure for children can also be used with infants. Even though babies are unable to tell you what is upsetting them, their crying or other indicators of distress when all their physical needs have been met let you know that tapping could be beneficial. There may be fear, trauma, or physical discomfort, the source of which is not apparent. When infants are in the midst of distress, they are tuned in to the problem and therefore ready for tapping. The addition of EFT tapping to the usual murmured soothing language can interrupt the accumulation of negative events and feelings by infants.
Tap the EFT points while children share the good as well as the bad thoughts and events of their day. The reason for this is that when describing a positive event, there is often an unspoken negative worry or counterpoint to the event. For instance, when the child says, “My teacher complimented me today in front of the whole class,” the underlying worry might be “But sometimes she scolds children or ignores them and I am afraid that will happen to me.”
Although the tapping is happening while the child speaks about being praised by the teacher, EFT is simultaneously reducing any fear associated with the underlying negative possibility. For this reason, the procedure calls for tapping on both “good” and the “bad” thoughts and events.
Though children are the focus of the discussion of this procedure, the technique is useful for all ages. It’s never too late to start! You can do this procedure nightly on yourself, tapping on all the good things and bad things that happened to you that day, or alternate the parent and child roles with someone else, tapping on each other’s days.
