By CJ Puotinen

Remember being young? Life could be wonderful, but sometimes it was scary or overwhelming -- and it didn't matter whether your fears were caused by real or imaginary events. To the young mind, there's no difference.

Those same less-than-constructive emotions are disrupting the lives of kids all around you -- your own children or grandchildren, students in the classroom, neighbors, and total strangers. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were some way to help youngsters let go of anger, release fear, and think more clearly? 

A Fast Solution

There is. You can learn a simple energy-balancing technique that is easy to teach to kids -- and so versatile that it helps them overcome fear, relieve pain, do better in school, and get along with just about everyone. Best of all, the transformation can occur in less than a minute.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? But imagine for a moment that there might be something to it ... and consider what a difference something like this can make. It isn't a magic wand, but the people who use it say it often works like one.

The procedure is EFT, which stands for the Emotional Freedom Techniques, a simple method of balancing the body's energy by gently tapping with the fingertips on key acupuncture points.  

Kids Like It

Children like EFT because it is easy to learn, easy to do, and it works fast. The basics of EFT  take less than a minute to apply, and change can literally occur that quickly.

A special section of the EFT website is devoted to reports about children  and their experiences. Here are several examples from one of those reports. 

Case History: Fear of Flying 

When Sharon O got on an airplane in Phoenix, she found herself sitting next to a woman with a 1-year-old child. The child had cried all the way from San Antonio and showed no signs of stopping.

"I said I knew something that might help," reports Sharon, "but that we had to start with her, the mother, and her fear for her daughter. The mother immediately said she was afraid of flying anyway and was game for anything." 

As they sat waiting for takeoff, Sharon showed the mother how to do a  fast round of EFT. "We took off," she says, "and the child and mom were both fine the entire trip. I know these mother/child stories get reported a lot, but it still feels like magic when it happens to you."

Case History: Halloween Costume Fear 

At a Halloween party, Jody Pignolet's 4-year-old daughter saw a gory costume that threatened to give her nightmares. "We both had a hard time erasing the image from our minds," she says, "so when we got home we tapped on her (I later tapped on myself) and after only two rounds of tapping, she was able to go to sleep peacefully. She could still remember the image, but it no longer carried its emotional charge. Plus, she thought it was kind of fun."

Case History: Fear of Ocean Waves 

Ocean waves can be scary, especially when you're young. Bobbie Sandoz's son was 4 when swimming in shallow water made him anxious. "He would run frantically from each wave that rolled in," she says. To help him, she tapped on the EFT points under his eyes, and his anxiety level dropped.

"He went into the water and stayed while tapping on himself whenever a wave rolled in. After the first few waves, he was able to stop tapping and swim happily, only occasionally tapping on himself whenever a slightly larger wave arrived." After that, Sandoz noticed that her son seemed less anxious in general -- and he thanked her with "before and after" drawings of himself in the water, a sad face followed by a happy face.

Case History: A Baby About to Cry 

As EFT practitioners have discovered, the technique is almost infinitely adaptable. You can tap on yourself, you can tap on another person, you can tap on yourself and send the energy to another person (this is called surrogate or proxy tapping), and you can even dispense with the physical tapping and do it all in your head.

That's what Catherine Light did in the elevator of a large, busy hotel. A family got on, and the father placed his baby's carrier on the floor. "I looked down," Light says. "The baby's face was sweet, and he seemed to be sleeping. Suddenly, his face scrunched up, the way a baby's does right before he cries." 

He no doubt would have cried, but Light mentally tapped on herself in order to help the baby feel comfortable. Almost immediately, the baby's face relaxed, and when the elevator stopped at the first floor, he was resting comfortably. "I don't think I have ever seen a baby not cry once the face starts to move into that expression unless someone intervenes, such as by picking the baby up," says Light.

Broken Leg Pain 

When Deb Kennard learned EFT, she often offered to tap with her children. "They were skeptical and would give me an adamant No, Mom!" she says. But last winter, her 11-year-old son broke his leg skiing. After waiting more than an hour for the physician to remove the splint, she offered to tap on him to help with the pain. At first he said no, but finally in desperation he agreed.

"Shortly after I began tapping, he relaxed and appeared in much less pain," she reports. "He was sent home to wait until Monday for the operating room to be available. He was in much pain and would often ask me to do that thing that takes the pain away. He became a believer."            

Student/Teacher Friction

Karen Ledger works in a children's residential psychiatric facility. One day one of the teachers came to her and said, "Do something with this boy. He can't come back to class until he settles down!" The two were obviously furious with one another. 

As much as he hated the teacher, the boy did not want to miss school or get behind in his work. He was willing to try anything, including EFT, to calm himself down. EFT often works best when strong emotions are active, and after only two rounds of tapping (which took less than a minute), he announced that he felt perfectly calm and was ready to talk to the teacher.

"He managed to be polite, assertive, and calm throughout their discussion," says Ledger. "He returned to school and managed the next four hours without incident."  

Upset Student

Psychologist Alice Finnamore uses EFT to get troubling emotions out of the way fast. Shortly after she learned the technique, she went to a classroom to bring a 10-year-old girl to her counseling session. "The teacher said she was very upset but didn't know why. I never did find out why, either.

I took the tearful girl to our little room, but she wouldn't talk. So I told her I wanted to do something very silly with her. First I asked her to draw a line on the blackboard to represent how big her yucky feeling was. Then we went through the tapping procedure two or three times. By the time we were done, she was all smiles and giggles and couldn't even remember why she had been crying." 

80% Effective 

EFT doesn't work in every case, but clinical studies estimate its effectiveness at 80 percent, and many practitioners consider it even more effective than that for children. Perhaps that's because most kids are enthusiastic tappers! A complete description of EFT is beyond the scope of this article, but you can learn the basics from a free "EFT Get Started Package" on the EFT Web site. This includes a free download of the 79-page EFT Manual. Want to save time and dive right in? See the affordable five-star training DVDs.

More on EFT

In addition to helping kids control their fear, anxiety, and anger, EFT has been a consistently effective healing tool for people of all ages and for hundreds of physical, mental and emotional ailments. For more information, explore the EFT Web site and its numerous success stories.

Please consult qualified health professionals before putting EFT into practice for yourself or others.