The Rabbit Who Came To Tea - Bedtime Story For Parents To Read To Children To Help Them Sleep

This extract is from my book 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales'. This is the first story in the book and is to be read to your child at bedtime to guide them to sleep. (http://www.alt-solutions.org/sleepy-bedtime-tales) - (this link takes you straight to the book on your local Amazon website: http://apn.to/prod/B015HVQZV4)

'Sleepy Bedtime Tales' isn't like other bedtime story books. All the stories in the book have been designed around my approach to helping to get children to sleep. The approach works with any story, but is easier to do when the story is written specifically for the approach. This also makes it more effective. These stories have been written for 4-7 year old's but they can be read to younger children. The approach itself works with people of any age.

Read this story slowly and calmly in time with the rhythm of your child's breathing. Ideally read while your child is breathing out, and pause while your child is breathing in. Yawn occasionally as you read (get into the story a bit first). Add extra emphasis to the words and phrases in italics (add a more 'relaxing' voice to these words). As you read through the story gradually slow down your reading and make the reading sound more relaxing. This will help your child to drift deeper asleep. I use a similar structure (like counting down) to help the listener associate the process or elements with relaxing and falling asleep regardless of which story they listen to. It helps people to 'know what is coming next' on an unconscious level so the more they hear the stories the more effective the stories become.

There is more comprehensive information in my book 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales' along with other ideas that help to get children to sleep at night, and ten more bedtime stories.

The Rabbit Who Came to Tea

As you close your eyes, I’m going to tell you about a rabbit who came to tea. This was no ordinary rabbit; this was Malcolm, the magic rabbit.

 So with your eyes closed, you can listen to me reading this story, and while I read this story, you can begin to feel relaxed. And as I read, you can imagine this story and begin to drift off to sleep. As you drift off asleep you can continue this story in a dream. And my reading will help you feel sleepy, it will help you feel tired and it will help you fall asleep.

Malcolm lived inside a magician’s hat, and the hat lived on the magician’s head. The magician used to spend every day doing magic tricks for children. He would make ribbons appear in his hands, and coins appear from behind the children’s ears.

But what the children most loved was when he would show them his magic hat. The magician would show that the hat was empty, and then, with a magic word ‘abracadabra’and a wave of his magic wand, there would be a puff of smoke; Malcolm the rabbit would appear out of the hat.

The magician didn’t know where Malcolm came from, or where he went when he put him back in the hat. All he knew was that, when he said ‘abracadabra’ and waved his magic wand, Malcolm would appear in a puff of smoke.

Every evening, the magician went home for his tea. He would take his hat off and leave it on a shelf by the front door until he next went out to do magic for the children. What the magician didn’t know was that the hat was magical.

Inside the hat was a magical world. Each day, after the magician’s last show, Malcolm travelled deep down into the hat and went back home. As he travelled deeper and deeperinto the hat, he became less aware of the magician’s world, and started to become more aware of his own.

His land was one where trees grew upside-down, and the sky was bright pink. When Malcolm arrived home, he found a letter waiting for him on the doormat.

‘You are invited to afternoon tea at three. From, Cybil the Squirrel.’ Malcolm read.

‘Afternoon tea? That does sound nice,’ Malcolm thought to himself as he wiped his feet on the doormat and closed the front door behind him.

Malcolm hadn’t been to afternoon tea for a long time; he wondered what he should wear. He tried on five different pairs of shoes and four different t-shirts before he decided on the right one for him. He didn’t have long to get ready, and he knew deep down that he was going to enjoy his afternoon tea.

Once Malcolm was dressed for afternoon tea, he left his house to go and visit his friend, Cybil the Squirrel. Cybil had short ears and a bushy tail, and she lived in the tallest upside-down tree in the land.

Malcolm hopped along the blue path, past the green upside-down oak tree, before turning left. From here, he could see Cybil’s tree at the end of the road.

He hopped towards the grand upside-down tree where he found a doorway. He knocked on the door three times.

Knock,knock, knock.

On the third knock, he could hear Cybil’s voice. ‘Hello, who is it?’

‘Hi! It’s me, Malcolm’

Just then, the door creaked open and Malcolm could see stairs leading down into the base of the tree. There were ten steps for Malcolm to follow, and each step led Malcolm deeper and deeper into the tree. The stairway was lined with twinkling lights, sparkling and flashing with a rainbow of colours, and at the bottom was a beautiful glow coming from a room at the base of the tree.

Malcolm excitedly hopped down the stairs towards the glowing room. The stairs were numbered, to let visitors know how many steps they had left to walk down.

He stepped onto step ten, then nine, and eight. He didn’t know what the afternoon tea was going to be like, or what the room at the bottom of the stairs was like. Seven, six, five. He was hopping down the stairs deeper and deeper into the tree. He began to feel like he was going to a party. Four,three. 

Malcolm was now nearly at the bottom of the stairs and he could see that the room was glowing with a soft light, and he could hear a voice talking in the room. Malcolm continued to hop deeper and deeper down into the base of the upside-down tree. Two, one.

Malcolm reached the bottom of the tree, paused for a moment, and then stepped into the room.

Cybil was sat in the room at the end of a long table. On the table were lots of plates, full to the brim with small sandwiches, cakes and sweets. 

Chugging around the outside of the table was a small stream train, pulling carriages laden with tasty food.

Malcolm’s mouth watered at the sight of all the food. As he sat down with Cybil to eat,he wondered why she was having this afternoon tea, and why she had invited him round. But, before he could ask, he already had a tasty cake in his mouth. It looked so nice, he couldn’t help himself.

‘Mm, these are good!’ he said, talking with his mouth full.

‘Malcolm, I need your help,’ Cybil said, ‘I have lost my favourite toy. You know magic,and you know how to find things. I need you to help me find my favourite toy.’

Malcolm did know magic, but he didn’t know whether he could find Cybil’s favourite toy. Still, he was going to try. He asked Cybil what the toy looked like and where she had last seen it.

Cybil told Malcolm she had had her favourite toy this morning, but when she got home she had lost it. She tried to look for it, but couldn’t find it. 

Malcolm said he would try and find it for her.

Malcolm and Cybil finished their afternoon tea. Malcolm put some of the cakes and sweets into his pockets and set off in search of Cybil’s favourite toy.

Malcolm wanted to find Cybil’s toy before his bedtime. Malcolm looked along the street; Cybil’s toy wasn’t there. He looked behind upside-down trees; it wasn’t there. He looked around the bushes; and it wasn’t there either.

Malcolm didn’t know where else to look, so he decided to use magic. He had seen the magician making coins appear from behind children’s ears, and he thought maybe he could make Cybil’s favourite toy appear from behind her ear.

Malcolm went back to Cybil; he said a secret magic word, before reaching behind Cybil’s ear where he found Cybil’s favourite toy appearing in his hand.

Cybil was so excited and grateful to Malcolm. She gave him a big hug and an extra big slice of cake to take home with him.

Malcolm walked home, eating the big chunk of cake and feeling great about helping Cybil. This made him smile and think to himself: ‘I’m going to be kind and help people more often.’

As the sun set in the pink sky, and the shadows drew long and thin, Malcolm arrived home,feeling tired and sleepy, and, with a big yawn, Malcolm went to bed, falling deeply asleep.

This story 'The Rabbit Who Came to Tea' is the first story in the book 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales' which is available on Amazon as a Kindle eBook and Paperback (this link takes you straight to the book on your local Amazon website: http://apn.to/prod/B015HVQZV4).

http://www.alt-solutions.org/sleepy-bedtime-tales 

Sleepy Bedtime Tales Book Cover

Tales of a Teenage Hypnotist With Asperger's Part 04

When I was growing up I had tremendous trouble understanding how people felt. I would say things and do things without realising that others could be upset by this. My view was that if I was just stating facts, then clearly I wasn't trying to be hurtful or upsetting to anyone, I wasn't trying to upset anyone, I was just stating facts (or, in some cases facts from my perspective of how I read the evidence/situation - not that I thought about it in that way back then).

A few examples of my lack of understanding that what I say could upset others. In school as a teenager a girl asked me out. My response to her was that I thought she was ugly and so wouldn't want to go out with her. She slapped me... I couldn't understand why she would be upset by me, from my perspective I felt people go out with people they find attractive, so if I didn't find her attractive then I wasn't going to want to go out with her and I thought she would want to know the reason I was saying no, rather than just being told no.

I would often walk into rooms where people had been arguing and carry on as if nothing had been going on, completely unaware of the fact those in the room are perhaps angry or uncomfortable whilst I am in the room. I wouldn't notice when people were attracted to me, and likewise wouldn't notice when people weren't attracted to me. So if I wanted to ask someone out I would just do it, when it would have been more helpful to just do it with those that were likely to be more receptive, and it would have been more helpful to notice people that were flirting with me, rather than being blind to this.

When I was about 14 I began to experiment with some ideas. I used to read lots of books on subjects like auras, spirits, ghosts, etc. I wondered whether it would be possible to use hypnosis to hallucinate auras around people as a visual colour representation of the emotion that person was experiencing.

Chichester Hypnotherapist Dan Jones Aged 14

Like today one problem I have always had is my obsessiveness around subjects I am interested in, so if I was interested in a subject I would talk about just that subject with whoever wouldn't walk away or tell me to shut up. I wouldn't notice that people were bored of listening to me, or that people were getting angry with me constantly talking about my interests with them.

So seeing auras around people allowed me to begin to notice emotions others were experiencing. My belief about how it was all working was that although I wasn't very good at reading emotions I assumed that my unconscious mind would take in all the information and would recognise the patterns of behaviour associated with someone being bored, or being angry, or annoyed, or anxious, etc. I felt that although to me I couldn't notice any difference, there must be a difference, perhaps such a small difference that I can't detect it, but maybe my unconscious could.

This turned out to be correct, and very useful. By the time I was approaching 16 I was much better at reading emotions by noticing what colours where around people. As time went on I also began to learn about micro-expressions, and learn to notice minimal cues, and taught myself as much as I could about noticing these things for myself, rather than just letting my unconscious do all the work. I still make lots of mistakes, but when I can get 'in the zone' I can be more efficient and effective and noticing what is going on for others.

Tales of a Teenage Hypnotist With Asperger's Part 03

I began studying hypnosis about the same time that I began to also show an interest in playing pool. As I had already started to use hypnosis to 'see sounds' to help me to play manhunt and other games in the dark, I was curious about whether it was possible to improve my pool playing with hypnosis.

An idea that I had was that playing pool would be so much easier if I had lines on the table that I could follow, so I decided I would try hallucinating them. I hallucinated a dot on the cueball so that I would know where to hit to do the shot I was thinking needed to be done, I would hallucinate a line, like a laser beam, coming out from the cueball and making contact with the object ball I was aiming for, with it meeting the object ball at the point I needed to hit, and then a line, like a laser beam, coming off the object ball, following the path the ball is going to take, all the way to the ball's destination (normally a pocket), and a line for where the cue ball will go, and end up.

This wasn't a failsafe process, I still needed to be able to hit the cue ball at the spot on the ball, and still had to hit it so that it followed the line to the object ball, but if I could get these right I had a very good chance of doing well.

This wasn't to only trick I used to increase my chances of winning when playing pool, but other tricks will be saved for future posts.

Here is a brief video of me playing pool using the technique described above.

Which is your favourite? The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep, or Sleepy Bedtime Tales

Today is the launch of 'The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep'. So with the release of 'The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep' I thought I would ask a question to parents out there.

September saw the release of 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales' which is a collection of 11 bedtime tales designed with ideas from social psychology to help children fall asleep.

As these two books seem to offer similar approaches the question for parents is: which book do you prefer and why? What has been your experience with both 'The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep' and 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales'?

'The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep' is a single story to be read to children to help them to fall asleep. While 'Sleepy Bedtime Tales' is a collection of 11 different stories to be read to children to help them to fall asleep.

Comment below what your experience is with these books, which is your favourite and why?