Title: Walter Wick's Optical Tricks

Author: Walter Wick

Themes: Communication, Developing Perspective, Validation, DBT

Age Recommendation: Elementary through high school

Walter Wick's Optical Tricks teaches perspective with photographs of optical puzzles and their solutions. It is helpful as a tool to introduce the concept that there can be many truths about any given situation, which leads well into a DBT discussion about middle path and wise mind. It is also useful in helping children develop an awareness that things/circumstances may not always be as they first appear. 

A simple intervention I use with this book is to take turns describing what we are seeing on the pages; the pictures of the puzzles are very different than the pictures of their solutions, even though they contain the same objects arranged in the same way. Have your child or client describe one of the two photographs and you describe the other, then switch photographs. This is an engaging way to introduce communication tools such as validation and "I feel" statements. This activity can also be used with parents and children as a way to practice communication skills and reinforce the validity of varying perspectives.