Support grieving children and families in Slovakia

“Today, we created a giant!“ that was the first thing a small boy told his parents after the end of the session. We are meeting together in the corridor. His parents have been only a bit further away – in the neighbouring consulting room. Johnny has been in the playing room – a therapeutic room containing different stimulating toys.

The thing is that we unwound from a roll of paper a pretty big piece today.

“What size do we need?” “At least as big as you are.”

Johnny was quick to lie down on the paper and remarked with a smile: “I can fit in it.”

“And what to do next with the paper?” “We need to trace on it a head, hands, legs, the whole body…it needs to be as big as you are.” “So draw an outline around my body.”  So I do. His outline appears on the paper.

“Now, let´s paint it all over with different colours – the head, the hands, the legs, the whole body according to what you can feel in that part of the body. We have different colours available here. Which colour would represent which emotion?” Johnny has already known a big range of emotions; we have been working with them pretty often. It is totally up to him which colour he will assign to which emotion. Every child can express the same feelings with different colours.

Step by step Johnny is picking from the range of colours and brushes. Big paper requires big brushes, big paint rollers, big sponges as if you were painting a wall. Johnny starts rolling the brushes, applying and imprinting colours, until the outline is transformed into a boy full of colours.

The legs are all yellow because when he is joyful he runs, he jumps, he is moving around. The belly is painted in green because it is pleasant for him to eat well as well as stroking his belly. He has chosen the blue colour for the eyes. When he put a teardrop in the eye, it became clear to me. He put several colours in the heart because he feels there the red love, the yellow happiness, the blue sadness, the black painful crack. He painted the hands in brown because he can express his anger with them.

Johnny lost his sister six months ago. Every child is coming to terms with the loss of a loved one in a different way, with its own range of emotions and it is quite natural. We are helping children at PLAMIENOK Counselling centre through therapeutic and creative techniques. Play and creative techniques create a safe environment for children to freely express their feelings in a playful way. We are picking the techniques with the intention to help children realize which feelings they have inside and to be able to express them subsequently. The burdensome feelings lose their intensity this way and children feel better. This is how we help children in coming to terms with their loss.

Links:

• Website of Plamienok.