Tales from the 'Story Doctor'

Stories can be a very effective tool today in addressing specific and general behaviour challenges in children, and there seems to be more and more need for such tools in our complex modern lives. I have worked with this tool in a two year contract with the Australian Government from 2001 to 2003, piloting Creative Parent Support Programs. This work often involved home visits to families where I observed difficult situations and then wrote a story (often feeling like a ‘story doctor’) to help heal the difficult behaviour. The work then extended into running Creative Discipline Courses for parents and teachers where the participants were encouraged to use imaginative approaches (songs, poems, stories ….) to handle discipline challenges – see table of documented story outcomes in the listed conference papers. The home visits plus the workshops has produced some very successful results, confirming for me, the parents and the teachers the place for metaphor and story in child-rearing practices. (Refer to my first posting for some examples of stories for specific and general behaviours).