02/18/2026
“I know… I know… I didn’t rob a bank.”
We have a few rules in our office — but honestly, they’re mostly for us.
When we meet kids, we tell them our rules.
Rule number one? Therapists don’t get mad at kids.
We tell them we’ve heard a lot. Kids have told us they yelled, they hit, they said things they regret. Some tell us they couldn’t stay in their classroom. Some have broken things. Some have taken things that weren’t theirs.
And we’ve never gotten mad. Our job is to understand what a child needed in that moment.
We tell kids “You could tell us you robbed a bank, and we’d probably say, ‘Hmm… I wonder if you needed money — or just needed to see what would happen.’”
(So far, no confirmed bank robberies.)
We come back to this rule after hard days. We show them we mean it. And slowly, it becomes a little easier to talk about the tough moments.
There’s nothing better than when a child walks in and says,
“Well… I didn’t rob a bank. But I do want to tell you what happened.”
Nothing is more rewarding than when kids realize you really will follow the rules.
