This article has been written by storytelling specialists, Tonya and Natasha, from Little Creative Days
Do you struggle to find ways to identify safeguarding issues?
Using stories to make sense of a situation is a practice as old as time. It is for this reason that stories can be an ideal way to help you identify issues that need addressing. This can include safeguarding issues.
Children will naturally use metaphors and stories to help them work through their problems. Therefore, stories, props and storytelling techniques work really well if you’re trying to identify a problem. This is also a technique used by many child psychologists when they are helping children with emotional problems. This means it is a tried and tested method.
Young children generally struggle to articulate their feelings and emotions. So, using props or role play can be a great way to help a child articulate a problem.
Pre-schoolers in particular will often act out roles that they have seen in everyday life. This can include exchanges that they have seen between family members or between themselves and family members. So when you see the children playing just observe and listen to what they are acting out. Especially if they’re playing mummies and daddies. Also watch how they play with dolls and teddies as again this can be quite telling.
You can also use role play to help a child overcome a problem. For example, to help them prepare for big school or moving house.
What to do if you observe something that gives you a cause for concern?
First things first, don’t base your feelings on one thing. Put your observations together with some other things you might know about the family in question. If you still have concerns then focus your attention on the child a bit more. You will need to then plan out what stories might be relevant to what you’ve heard and read them to the child.
When asking questions stay with the story or in their world as this will help the child to feel more relaxed about talking. Using open ended questions such as who, what, where and when and using the character from the story makes it less personal for the child and easier for them to talk about what’s going on because it’s not about them.
Stories are also very comforting for a lot of children so reading a story with a child who may be trying to make sense of things can also be quite relaxing for them and again enable them to feel that they can open up about their feelings.
Little Creative Days
Tonya and Natasha, the storytelling sisters, are authors of a series of books about a little dog called Pojo who gets itchy paws and goes off on adventures.
They have won multiple awards for their puppet making kits that accompany the stories including Teach Early Years Excellence award for Communication and Language Resource.
