Individuals vary in their capacity to handle stress, as well as the triggers that affect them. It’s important to gain insight into how your child perceives stress and to identify the triggers.
Identifying Stress:
For younger children, articulating their stress can be a challenge. Instead, we can gauge their emotional state through their behavior. Watch for indicators such as alterations in sleep and eating patterns, increased clinginess or withdrawal, and a rise in crying and tantrums.
In this article, we’ll explore how older children can employ response art to enhance self-awareness of their emotions and mental state. I’ll also provide insights on how you can use this technique to engage in meaningful conversations with your child on the topic of stress and even other difficult topics.
Response art can be done with a direct prompt or indirect prompt. An example of direct prompt “Make art in response to this word: stress” and indirect prompt could be sharing a story and ask your child to response to the story through art. An example of a story to share is The Boy with Big Big Feelings.
It is important to ensure that you are providing your child a physically and psychologically safe space for this activity. Our role in this activity is more of a support and listener. You are also encouraged to give your child a variety of art materials that they can use freely.
What does it mean to have a psychological safe space? It entails offering an environment free of judgment, a space where mess is accepted during the expression, a space where thoughts and feelings are respected.
The key word is “make art”, not “draw”. So, children can express themselves freely using any art materials, colours, lines and shapes to express stress visually. During the process, watch how they use the materials, the feelings, if they make any speech during the process. We can be there to give nods and affirmation to their feelings, refrain from commenting until they finish the process.
When they have finished with their work, we could ask “would you like to share about your art work?” If their responses is no, we could then ask “is it ok for me to describe your work for you?” Typically, they will begin to share once you provide an objective description. Keep in mind that our role is to offer support and listen, so try to avoid asking too many probing questions.
The responses I have received from my students varies from happy stress to an overwhelmed feeling. Most common key phrases I heard from them are “a lot of work to do”, “I’m scared I cannot finish them”, “things I don’t like to do”. In summary, stress to them is an overwhelming of workload that they do not enjoy.
During their sharing at the end, I also asked them what do they do when they feel stress. It is necessary for them to know that they could have solutions when they are overwhelmed and you are their support. We will explore different ways to help them to cope with stress in the next article.
