Working with children

I am doing a series of reflections as part of a post graduate course on Narrative Therapy. Overall there will be about ten reflection papers on various concepts and practices that currently form and shape Narrative Therapy.

What I found valuable in readings about working with trauma and children is the care taken to facilitate the building of “territories of identity” (Ncube & Denborough, 2008; White, 2006) which has helped children speak about trauma in a way that does not re-traumatize them.

I used this approach in a recent first time interview with a 17 year old gay teen whose mum described him as having been traumatized by an encounter with an adult male.  No other details were provided. Our conversations explored various parts of his life such as his love for children, his uncertainty over loving a best friend, and his own knowledge about his sexual orientation since age eleven.  I was wondering how to ask about the details of the trauma but after twenty minutes the details gushed out as he described how a man had tried to have unsafe sex with him without his knowledge.  The tellings about other aspects of his life had somehow equipped him to speak freely on this trauma event.  I am thinking my respectful and curious response as an audience to his tellings also contributed to his feeling safe enough to say more.

Michael White further wrote about avenues for therapeutic enquiry into children’s responses to trauma.  In the same interview, which I transcribed for a clinical consultation with Chris Dolman, I attempted to identify such a response and discovered that I had missed something subtle.  The boy spoke about an “uneasy feeling” and “didn’t want to do it”. After discussing with Chris, it dawned on me that somehow I held notions about the word “response” that were limited to action based responses.  I have now expanded my meanings of “response” to include expressions of feeling and intent that could indicate an entry into conversations about the absent but implicit.

Reading about the experiences of using the Tree of Life metaphor has also sparked off my interest in using it to invite conversations about difficult times in the coming out process of gay men (Ncube & Denborough, 2008).  My main consideration is how to invite meaningful conversations in a short span of time and being careful about re-traumatization. I am excited about the next two months when I facilitate a brief support group programme for gay men.

References

Ncube, N., & Denborough, D. (2008). Chap 4: The Tree of Life: responding to  vulnerable children In Collective Narrative Practice: Responding to individuals, groups and communities who have experienced trauma. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

White, M. (2006). Chap 7: Children, trauma and subordinate storyline development. In Trauma: Narrative responses to traumatic experience. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.