Counter for Life’s Questions.
Empowering children, stunning adults, playing with possibility
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SEE CHILDREN ALSO AS WISE PEOPLE AND GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE THEIR INSIGHTS TO ADULTS?
The Concept: Behind a counter sit children, most often age 8–12, who will answer your life questions. The result impresses me every time. Children get a boost in confidence and feel they matter. (Quite a few) Adults are stunned. They discover children are not empty vessels you pour knowledge in to get adults. They have a mind of their own and see way more than most adults are aware.
“It’s been a year later and I’m still contemplating the advise I got from those kids.” ~ an adult client I happened to meet on the street a year later.
“Children are a wonderful gift . . . They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.”
~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Why Run It?
I have met many adults who were really impressed with the advice they got and even set to work with it. But even more important, the positive pride of the kids, read confidence boost, went sky high. Can you imagine what it does to a kid when they meet adults all prepared to seriously listen to them, being open to be helped and who takes their council seriously? Can you imagine how happy kids are to help adults out? It speaks to the deep wish of everyone to be seen and to feel they make a difference. Best lesson possible in my eyes.
HOW TO RUN IT?
This can only be run in the following conditions: Participating children are enthusiast to join voluntarily and run the experience themselves. The asking children to join and have them understand the concept is a puzzle in itself. A few times I had to drop the plan, because no kid seemed interested. I also have seen groups who later self organised with adult help their own counter in their own town. The minimum to join is 3 (for one counter). Great is anything around 12 or 24 at big festivals. In the latter case organise more counters.
Organise a short workshop for those who join. Do little introduction, mostly do try outs with some parents willing to help. A great question to start with is to ask the children beforehand, “What are you better at or in, than adults?” Once they realise there’s a lot they can do better, or even know better, then they’ll easier believe that they have wisdom to offer.
Children learn how to run a counter.
- Self organised. The children are the boss of the counter. They decide opening and closing, how many children help at the same time (tip: 1–3 works best). Why? Because when they get coached, they’ll perform a task and may try to please the coach. That screws up their own brightness.
- Tone. They help in polite ways, as officials would do. “Yes, madam, how may I help you? What is your question?” By using an official tone, they turn into polite helpers and train being in control of the situation.
- Questioning. The core of the workshop is to help the children to keep questioning clients until they fully understand the question. Only then they offer their advise. The more they try to please, the weaker their answers. Kids often consider adults as talking unnecessarily complex in order to evade things. In other words, what bothers us about most politicians bothers kids about us. So we taught them only to come up with their own answer when they fully understood the question. A professional coach who went to a counter later reflected, “Wow, they offered such high quality questions, like, I’d say, professional level.” This is best trained by practicing with some test clients (who bring in preferably real cases. Use made up, on dominant topics, like finding partners, solving quarrels, having more fun in life. Portray then some different adults, like shy, very mental, struggling as parent) and reflect on what works and what not. Also, never tell the children what a good or better answer might have been, just discuss what made a customer more or less pleased.
- Safety. The counter itself is already a subconscious safety measure. On top of that, they are told not to go anywhere with the adults, nor promise to meet up. It all happens right there at the counter with each on their own side. They are free to send unpleasant clients away and or report to coaches. Also safety: all they hear or tell an adult is confidential, except misbehaving clients.
Counter placement & coaching
Counters are set up in such a way that conversations are more or less private, there’s a counter between children and adults and what’s happening is visible for everyone else. This works best in enclosed environments like festivals, school events, conferences on the power of children. Either build your own counter (with the participants) or ask the location or festival organisation to build and or organise materials. When possible, place the children on eye height of the visiting adults.
Coaches stay at a distance, with an half eye from afar. Children should feel they run it independently once they started. They can open and close the counter to their own liking (but demand some effort). I’d make sure to run (by accident) into some children once in a while and ask them how it was going. And I’d check some clients, what their experience was, and if I noted an issue, I’d report it back to the children.
“I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs” ~ Anita Roddick
Note: Why ages 8–12? I’ve seen a boy of 8 being a wizard at this, having the magical sensitivity to feel what was at play and a highly non judgemental attitude towards the asker. On average I’d say best works 10–12, and girls often being a little bit better, more willing. But I also once saw a boy of 16 being wonderful, which was rare. Most kids entering puberty lose their openhearted ‘If we all are nice, things will work out attitude’ and get judgemental towards adults. When that happens the magic is gone and they can’t do it any more.
History
In 2001 my business partner, Bert van der Neut, and I organised a party called ‘The Fairy Tale of Reality’. We had the luck we could host it in the center of Utrecht in the old justice building and could freely use all of it. On the first floor there was an old fashioned counter in a wall and we fantasised what could be happening there. As the purpose of the party was to be equally fun for adults and for kids, we also considered a lot of changing roles. In the former court room, we had created a throne. During the party we invited a beautiful dressed up princess of nine years old to be the queen of the party and reign from this throne. To see 90 adults having fun bowing to a queen deeply enjoying this magic moment was already worth the party.
This is when the idea for the counter was born. Almost all ingredients were there, from the workshop before to the letting the children run it on their own. We still thought this would be a fun little idea. About 15 minutes after opening a woman came up to us and exclaimed: “My God, I need six months of therapy to admit the child is right.” That was when I thought, what is happening here? This was beyond all expectations. This is much more than a funny idea.
The effects turned out to be amazing. Lots of willing adults had anticipated a moment of nice conversation with a child. They were surprised at what happened, and even I as the inventor got perplexed. It was more truthful and real than anyone had expected. All the more reason to repeat and upgrade the booth when possible. I was seriously touched with how much integrity these kids had and how they talked to adults on the same level.
What happened at the Open Up festival was that within two hours after they started they were at it almost full time. They opened up a second and third counter and even started to make money on it on a voluntary basis. A child’s advice “If you look for a new partner, be yourself and go to outdoor activities with your friends. Sit so you face strangers.” So elegantly simple. It’s true, if you’d do this: You’ll smile more because of your friends and the activity and have a bigger chance to meet new people, both through your friends and because you are at new places. And others can see you feeling at ease among friends.
Later when we first had success with it at this festival, an added value became clear. Imagine how rewarding it is for a child to feel truly listened too and valued for his or her contribution. The 12 children who had ran the counter at this festival demanded the microphone in the closing of the event. They thanked the adults for coming and expressed how awesome this whole experience had been for them. In 3 days they had helped over 80 adults. And I had only one complaint of misbehaviour of an adult. An older woman tried too much be liked by the kids, which they considered very insincere.
“Floris, these kids actually gave me such great dating advice, I’m stunned.” ~ adult friend of mine seeking help at the counter
Counters for Life Questions have been offered at festivals, events, and few schools. There are others who either copied my concept, or (re)invented it on their own. Has been operating (to the best of my knowledge) in the Netherlands, Germany, UK & France. I can always be approached to come and train this (for a fee) but most of this can be created through common sense.
I wonder what would happen if organizations or politicians would meet children in this kind of set up. In Vienna they actually had kids advise companies and that worked wonderful. So I am now looking for opportunities to try it out in more places. If you have a group of kids, a setting and or a organisation in need of youthful advice go organise it and or approach me to help out.
