Susan Perrow, M.Ed.Hons is an Australian author who works with 'story medicine'. She passionately believes that 'stories know the way'. She writes, collects and documents stories that offer a therapeutic journey for the reader – a positive, imaginative way of addressing challenging behaviours and traumatic situations, including environmental grief and loss.
Susan has an extensive background in teaching, writing and therapeutic storytelling. She travels nationally and internationally giving keynotes and running seminars for teachers, parents and therapists. Her therapeutic story work has led to the publication of three resource books - ‘Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour’, ‘Therapeutic Storytelling: 101 Healing Stories for Children’ and ‘An A-Z Collection of Behaviour Tales’. They have all been published by Hawthorn Press (U.K.), and the first two have now been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Serbian and Croatian.
A mother of three sons, and a grandmother of nine children, Susan’s home is in Lennox Head on the East Coast of Australia.
This charming and beautifully illustrated book essentially offers
something called “story medicine” as a creative strategy for
parenting, teaching and even counselling. The key concept of story
medicine or healing stories is that the right story, told at the
right time, can unlock something within a child and eventually
bring about desired (or much needed) change. One example would be
of a child deliberately annoying other children and destroying the
peace in the classroom for the whole group. The teacher might then
read the story about Obnoxious Octopus so the whole class is
presented with a template for solving the problem and behaving or
responding differently. The child concerned might now receive
positive attention (without having to act annoying to get it) and
the other children are inspired to try different ways of behaving
around this particular child. When everyone is receptive – the
dynamic might just shift! The teacher in me whispers that some
stories may well need to be told repeatedly – say every day for a
week (or weekly for several months) – but presented in the right
way, an improvement may occur given time, given patience and a
positive (constructive) attitude. These stories are written for an
audience aged 3 – 9 years – but of course they could be used too
with another audience (say adults in a teamwork seminar) or adapted
for older children. And of course we can do more than just telling:
we can create our own picture books, act the stories out with
puppets, dolls or teddy bears. We can use them as a starting point
for writing and telling our own tales. When my own children were
much younger (they are all teenagers now) I remember how I could
really get their attention by inserting their names in to stories
and adding extra (personal) details that were not in the original
story. A portal opened where they were not only listening – they
became participants. And often that would come out in their play
later. While cooking their dinner I would overhear their teddy
bears quoting lines from the story and running wild with the
storyline (and many new storylines exploded onto the scene!) A
related idea that became very popular in the primary school my own
children attended was of making Story Sackis. They would contain
book plus toys and props to actually act out the whole story. This
is any idea that would work well with this book too. Parents or
teachers might get a stuffed octopus (to stay with that example) as
well as some toy fishes and involve a group of children in enacting
the whole story – first what went wrong and then a much better
outcome where everyone is having fun.
*literacytrust.org.uk*
As a teacher and mother both I think this book is lovely and based
on sound therapeutic and healing principles. The author has really
done her research and found positive inspiration in situations
where children struggled or something negative occurred. To look
within yourself for an innovative way to proceed (as a teacher) is
an attitude that can help transform real life situations.
On the back cover she is quoted as saying that the stories may not
be “magical pills” but they can be a wonderful alternative to
nagging or lecturing. Now any parent, teacher or counselor is going
to appreciate that!!
*Imelda Almqvist*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
