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Totally is rewards and sanctions. It gives the child a chance to think about what they are doing and stop. No good if they are acting out of impulsive terror It’s quite a positive happy sort of course- but I found it really tough going because it’s a technique that just isn’t right for children subject to poor epigenetics repeated trauma and catastrophic losses. For that you need therapeutic reparenting

Thanks for that Pear Tree. I suspected it might be rewards/sanctions based and not relevant to us in our situation.

Hi nereid. I feel frustrated on your behalf-there’s a lot of jumping through hoops to get to the right services. I have had the 123 Magic recommended to me by well meaning friends / colleagues but not pursued it. If your Health Visiting team are not familiar with advice given around parenting traumatised children, would a post adoption socia worker be able to support you to help them to understand it is not appropriate and hopefully get you a paediatric assessment sooner?

Hi Loops, that's a good idea. I do have a meeting with our new post adoption support worker next week so I will definitely raise this with her and ask her to advocate on our behalf.

Brilliant-good luck! X

this sort of stuff was disaster for me and shadette

Hi Nereid - if you want to show willing there is a 1-2-3 magic book which you could buy/borrow and read to say that you've taken a look and give a reasoned response as to why the course wouldn't be appropriate. We were lent it by our SW when we were going through preparation, so a very long time ago now. It isn't completely daft - the idea is that rather than getting into a lengthy debate with a child when they're doing something they shouldn't be (or not doing what they should) you say, calmly, "that's a 1", and hopefully they then comply. The problem, of course, is that if they don't comply you quickly get to "3" and then you're pretty stuck. In the early days I did occasionally use it with success when child was calm and just being "disobedient", but as others have said, not helpful at all for a dis-regulated child (Margot Sutherland much more relevant there.)

It was recommended to me by the post adoption centre of all places but this was a long time ago when people were looking for programmes that might help. It is about counting to three. I found it useless and patronising. My younger daughter was subsequently diagnosed with pda and a system like 123 is the worst possible for a child like that as it is highly demand based. Sorry you have to do it but you might meet some nice people x

OK it’s not all bad. My son has ADHD and FAS and the subtleties of therapeutic parenting are often lost on him as are sanctions and rewards not to mention consequences. 123 Magic formed a framework for what we do. As it is taught it is useless for a child like him but we adapted the technique to suit his needs. Instead of the count up escalation and sanction approach we use a count down from five. It seems to bring a focus to a gradually diminishing expanse of chaos in his head and snaps him back into the present. It’s like what you see a hypnotist do when they focus a preconditioned participant. We count down from five and give a visual sign with our fingers which of course means you can do it at a distance like in the park when things are getting out of hand a long way off. What happens when we get to zero? I don’t think any of us know. We rarely get below three. The sanction is implied by him and we have never set one, I think he simply knows he has to stop what he is doing before the count runs out and that is enough for him. To him something is being taken away even if it’s just numbers and that is enough. We have been doing this for three years and even at 8 years old this is the primary way to get him to focus.