therapeutic storytelling

As we doing our play therapy in general hospital, another activity we can do to interact with the kids there is story telling. We can convey our message by using metaphor and imagery in the story to change the way the kids see their lives and the world, at the same time offering healing and growth to them. The story can be an encouragement and comfort for the kids. So today, Alex teaches us about narrative skills in story telling such as how to maintain eye contact with all the participant, get their attention, physically and mentally prepare them to listen story and etc.. The most important thing is the story teller has to enjoy telling a story. In order to make the story more interesting, the story teller has to add adjective and description in story to the children. This is to help the children more involve in the story and  visualize the story. We are actually given the chance to tell a story in front of the ‘kids’. The story i choose to tell is about the prodigal son. What Alex said is true that kids might feel hard to connect themselves with the story. Thus in order to relate the story to their age, I change the ‘father’ to ‘Daddy Rabbit’ in the story. When we playing different roles in the story, we need to pay attention to our voice and tone. It is to differentiate which character we are playing.  

      Another thing we can do is puppet playing. We can either use the puppet to tell the story or use the puppet to interact with the kids. Again, we have role play in puppet playing. Each of us have the change to play/talk to the puppet and showing an emotion by using puppet. I never though it can be so challenging. Puppet is not just we play with it by using part of our hand but the whole self have to be commited into the role. In the past, my understanding about narrative skills is how we create and tell a story. But from the training today, I get to know more about the therapeutic technique about storytelling and how we choose a story. One particular thing that I need to remind myself is my speed. When I talk, I used to talk fast. I have to slow down my speed in my speech else the children or my client might not manage to get what I trying to tell and if I talk too fast, they seems to have hard time following me. It’s time to me to prepare one story in mind so that I can use this technique to approach the kids there. Alex suggested the story can be related to how to dealing with pain as the kids were suffering from physical pain. By doing so, the story can be valuable source of healing for kids.