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WORK WITH CHILDREN
These activities can help a child to find meaning and a sense of coherence :
• Draw a timeline and mark on it important events in the child ’ s life .
• Make a photo album and look at it together . Help the child to remember .
• Make a “ Story of my life ”. Help the child to write down the story of its life so far . Add photos and other objects and points of reference that can give the story detail and body .
• Participate in drama and theatre . Dramas address many themes that children can identify with and acting is ( or should be ) an inclusive collective experience .
• Tell stories , share stories , and write stories about daily life and past events .
• Encourage and support fantasy and playfulness .
• Talk together about life , and why bad things happen . Help the child to tolerate its pain .
Helping a child to manage
When an abuse is revealed , it is important to remind the child that this part of its history is not the whole life ; a child should not be reminded of the scary parts of its life the whole time . Draw a river or lay a rope on a long piece of paper on the floor to illustrate life . Encourage the child to talk about different events in its life and to put symbols of good things ( such as pearls , flowers or other nice things ), and symbols of bad or difficult things ( such as stones etc .), along the line while it tells its story . ( See Additional Tools 4.7.2 .)
HELP AND ACTION
Note . Stories do not need to be about the child . It is often easier to write about invented people . In either case , writing and telling stories can release feelings and thoughts that otherwise may be too painful or difficult to express .
Always take account of the child ’ s age and emotional maturity .
4.5 What is trauma processing ?
‘ Trauma processing ’ refers to the ways in which people integrate traumatic memories so that they become less disruptive and more tolerable . For children who have been traumatised by sexual abuse , it involves learning to understand , tolerate and accept what happened , but also to realise that what happened belongs in the past . In this process the child recognises and assembles the fragments of its experience and puts them together in a way that gives them meaning and direction . Trauma processing can take different forms . It may involve verbal and symbolic expression , or nonverbal expression through the body and play . Trauma processing can transform the child ’ s understanding of what happened to it . The child may shift from thinking “ this was my fault ” to understanding that “ the abuser was responsible ”.
The process of integration usually extends through childhood into adulthood . A young child and an older child need different information . The story also grows as the child grows . Children naturally express feelings and reactions through play or other forms of symbolisation like music and the arts . Adults play an important role in this process . They help the child to find words and meanings for their experience , provide points of reference and comparison , and give shape and context to the child ’ s life as it evolves .