Narrative Therapy is gaining momentum worldwide, and ISEP’s teaching staff includes one of Spain’s most renowned specialists. Ginnette Muñoz is a consultant for the clinical area of ISEP e-Learning Training and began using this resource as a result of her experience in the world of theater as a director and playwright, and her work as a child and adolescent psychologist. She recently spoke in one of Catalonia’s most important newspapers, Ara, about tailor-made stories as a primary educational resource for resolving conflictive situations with children.
Narrative therapy originated twenty years ago in Australia. Through storytelling, children recreate the lives of people, identifying with them and experiencing situations that help them overcome challenges. Creating therapeutic stories that help guide children to resolve their conflicts is a new procedure for addressing problems, adapted to the functionality of the child’s mind. “Children are learning and adults set limits, but we need to teach alternatives with language that is understandable to them, like storytelling, because their age is not ready for rhetoric or discourse,” notes Muñoz.
Currently, stories are primarily for entertainment, featuring princesses and knights as protagonists. Muñoz believes these stories lack information: “Storytelling has a magnifying value because you take the child to their own ground, while creating a bond and moving away from sermons or punishment.” A personalized story serves as a mirror for the child to see what might happen if they don’t change a behavior. “You set limits through the story,” adds Muñoz in her interview.
To develop the narrative, it must be clear what is to be worked on (aggression, fears, etc.) and what is to be conveyed. Then it is necessary to find resources, real actions, that they can imitate in conflict resolution. The story can never be the result of improvisation, and the outcome is fundamental: “there can be a happy ending or one that is not desired, especially in cases of children who do not tolerate frustration, so they understand that things don’t always turn out as one wants,” says Muñoz.
The protagonist of the story can be a hero or an anti-hero and can take human or animal form. “The first has defined qualities, values that allow him to achieve any goal, while the second is contradictory, not as brave or handsome, and therefore, the child can identify more with him because perhaps they think they are like that,” points out our child and adolescent psychologist. But in some cases, children may not realize that they are the protagonists. Narrative therapy is aimed at children aged 2 to 9, and until age 6 or 7, they do not organize their thoughts into logical structures or clearly understand the principle of reversibility.
Humor or magic can be added, like a fairy giving advice or a wizard warning of the consequences of the protagonist’s actions. The story must clearly reflect the negative consequences of the protagonist’s attitude or conflictive actions, but Muñoz makes it clear in the report for Ara that parents’ attitude is fundamental to correcting a certain behavior and adds, “if we keep repeating that our child is a scaredy-cat, they always will be.” “Life can be reinvented, rebuilt, and storytelling is a magnificent tool for the child to see the benefits of not being such a scaredy-cat.”
Principles of Narrative Therapy
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- It is a respectful, non-blaming approach.
- It separates people from the problem and empowers them to recognize their skills.
- It enriches the perspective on their own story.
- It defines the meaning we want to give to their life.
- It takes into account the subject’s external conditions.
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Source: Narrative Therapy. Ara Newspaper. March 28, 2015. Consult the full article (in Catalan)