Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour (Early Years) - Softcover

Susan Perrow

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903458781 ISBN 13: 9781903458785

Publisher: Hawthorn Press, 2008

Synopsis

Susan Perrow is a story doctor. She writes, collects and documents stories that offer a therapeutic journey for the listener - a positive, imaginative way of healing difficult situations. Her collection of modern and traditional folk stories includes stories for challenging behaviours such as dishonesty, stealing, bullying and fighting; and stories for challenging situations such as moving house, a new baby, nightmares, illness or grieving. Each story is introduced with notes and suggestions for use. There is also a guide to help readers create their own healing stories.This book reviews and features in parenting, education and specialist professional magazines; regional and national newspapers.

About this title

Review:

'Susan Perrow's inspirational adventures with storytelling have grown into this inspiring book. May its pages encourage you to speak healing words that help both children and adults to flourish. Her wisdom, imagination and generosity will kindle the joy and healing power of storytelling in you.' -- Nancy Mellon, author of Storytelling with Children

From the Author:

Working with both modern and traditional tales, and many personal stories, the following chapters offer imaginative possibilities for transforming problematic behaviour and situations with young children. They also provide teachers, parents, childcare workers and child therapists with a range of skills to create stories that address challenging behaviour.

Included in the text are eighty stories divided into different behaviour categories for easy reference - to work with directly, adapt or use as models for creating your own tales. Brief notes precede each story, with an age guide and suggestions for use. The categories cover many kinds of commonly identified challenging behaviour, from dishonesty through laziness to teasing and bullying; everyday situations like `tidy-up time'; experiences such as `moving house'; or problems and difficulties such as `separation anxiety'. `fear and nightmares' and `illness and grieving'.

The range of selected stories and ideas are suitable for ages three to eight. However, stories often elbow their way out of the boxes we make for them. Sometimes a story written for a child may have a transformative effect on a teenager or adult. Examples of this are shared through the book.

If you feel inspired to write your own therapeutic tales, the text provides a story-making model - a threefold framework of `Metaphor', `Journey' and `Resolution' - to guide you. Based on a dictionary definition of healing - `Bring into balance, become sound or whole', therapeutic stories for challenging behaviour are presented here as stories that help restore equilibrium or wholeness where behaviour is in some way out of balance.

Beside this framework, the book has chapters on age-appropriate stories, multicultural perspectives, props and presentation aids, and guidelines for the telling of stories. It is my hope, with some help from these sections, that you will feel encouraged to write and tell your own stories, and so perpetuate and develop age-old story traditions.

In many traditional cultures throughout human history, wise elders have drawn naturally on metaphors and stories in their role as mentor and guides for the children in their tribes and communities. Using `wisdom tales' to guide and invoke behaviour, they have tapped into children's imaginative reality and reached children in positive, affirming ways. This book encourages a revival of such use of metaphor and story.

Please remember that stories are not magic pills with powers to fix or heal all difficulties and challenges. Neither can there be a list of stories to suit every situation. Behaviour is relational and contextual. It can rarely be addressed in isolation. Each child exists and develops within an intricate web of relationships and environments - family, school, community and global. It is you, the practising reader, who is in direct touch with the relationships, context and individual characteristics of the children who you parent, counsel and teach; you are best placed, therefore, to create stories for individual needs.

From several decades of running storytelling workshops and seminars, my general experience is that our inner `storyteller' is once again seeking ways to unfold and shine forth. This book is a contribution to the universal revival of story in family, school and community life. I hope you will find treasure within these pages to help bring the healing light of story to the children in your care.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hawthorn Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1903458781
• ISBN 13: 9781903458785
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320