TWI for the Children

"How to Help Children Cope with Trauma"

Training Workshop

26-28 June 2000

An "Art Therapy Workshop" was conducted in at the Dom I Porodica Orphanage in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina during the period 26 - 28 June 2000.  Participants included: Bobby Houser, Lisbeth Willis, Nicole Wilkes Roche, Allen Priester and Kimberly Fraioli.

When Kimberly  became too ill to stay in Sarajevo, she told us how to do the activities she had planned to do at Dom I Porodica in Zenica. She left all materials with us and we followed her plans exactly. Lisbeth Willis and Nicole Wilkes Roche were in charge of the art activities and worked with half of the group in the family while Bobby Houser and Allen Priester worked with the other half playing games that encouraged the children to share - and we introduced musical games such as 'musical chairs', which they had never played before.

The purpose of the art activities was to encourage the children to be creative, to learn to relax and use all of the mobile skills, to move to music and to feel how colors affects their actions. Lisbeth and Nicole were in charge of the art therapy activities.

ART THERAPY :

The art therapy program included all of the children and this was accomplished by going to each of the individual group homes within the orphanage, therefore we had approximately 16-18 children in each group. We divided each day into three parts with one hour for each family group: the first part of the morning was for the young children ages 5 to 7; following this group, ages were 8 to 12.

The program with the children under 13 was the "Paint by Music" program and this artwork done using Kimberly Fraioli's tapes. This was a new experience for these children and the results were very successful - and fun for the children. From the professional viewpoint, we were able to access the actions of the children as the music changed tempo and those children who had tendencies to be over-active displayed their change in moods as Kimberly predicted they would do. The even-tempered children definitely changed their art styles as the music moved from slow to rapid.

The second part of the art therapy program was to stay with the music, but to change the colors of the finger paints as the music tempo changed. It was amazing to watch the children's emotions change as the music tempo and the colors changed. They loved this activity and we plan to repeat some of the activities again. As each art project was completed, the children's artwork was hung up immediately. The purpose of hanging their work was to give them a sense of pride in their work, to complement their work and to give them time to tell the group about their painting.

We brought the children's' paintings to the United States and hope to organize a time to exhibit them.

The caregivers in each family worked with Lisbeth and Nicole, so they learned how to duplicate what they had been doing. We left some finger paints and paper with each family group and encouraged them to repeat the activities. We discussed the importance of having art exhibits within the family home area to give the children recognition and to teach pride and self-confidence.

Click Here for the Art Therapy Instructions.

DANCE AND GAME ACTIVITIES:

The purpose of the dance and game activities was to introduce new dances and games to the children and their caregivers and to involve those children who had been identified as be anti-social and disruptive. Bobby and Allen were in charge of the dance and game activities.

The purpose of this part of the group time was to keep the art group small and to provide a different small-group activity that would involve children with erratic behaviors , who had a history of being unsociable and difficult to control.

We used various music tapes to give the children an opportunity to feel the rhythm and beat in the different music. They tapped out these beats with their hands and feet. The musical activity that brought both happiness and extreme anger was musical chairs. Some of the more aggressive children would scream and hit in order to 'get a chair' and would go and hide under a table when they didn't have a chair. However, after coaching and explaining that this was just a game and we wanted to have fun - that it wasn't a serious game to 'keep them from' getting a chair all of these children finally became happy with the game.

We discussed why this made them angry and how they felt when they didn't get a chair. As a part of the learning to control your temper, discussing how you feel is an important part of the process.

Anger management is one of the major teaching topics in the CTT Workshops for adults and this was our first opportunity to work with the young children. Before these workshops, we had only worked with the teenagers.

TEENAGE ART THERAPY - MUSIC - GAMES AND DANCE ACTIVITY TIME

Materials used: Polaroid camera, pencils, large piece of art paper (size of an 8x10 table), colored markers, glue.

This art project was to have the teenagers select an area (city, store, school, etc.) and theme - then draw and paint it and put herself/himself somewhere in the painting doing what they wanted to do (sales person in the store, walking their dog, etc.).

The purpose of the activity was to give the children an opportunity to dream, work together in small groups (they were divided into two groups and put in opposite ends of the room so as not to disturb each other), to be creative and to encourage each of them to find 'a spot' in the area.

The rules of the activity was that the group had to select (1) a team leader (2) someone to draw their thoughts (buildings, trees) in the place each wanted their 'place' to be, and all would then color their part of the picture.

As they worked on their "place", Lisbeth and Nicole took a picture of each one. They cut out their own picture and then pasted in where they wanted to be in the picture. It was interesting to watch them select the project leaders. Some who argued to be the leader and won - suddenly didn't want to be the leader. Some said they couldn't find themselves in the picture. Some of them didn't want to cut up their picture, because they wanted to take it to their room and keep it --- they said they had never had a picture of themselves.

We decided this was an excellent activity for this age group and we will repeat it in the future. We brought their pictures back with us and will exhibit them. Following the art activity, we played games to teach team work, fair play and good sportsmanship. Following the game time, we danced 'group dances' like the Bunny Hop, Square Dancing, Circle Rhythm dances. The teenagers were joined by the younger children and we had the teenagers teach them some of the dances they had learned. Teaching leadership skills has been a  topic at each of the workshops.

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