Sets of exercises for children's art therapy. Art therapy for parents of “rare” children: how to overcome stress

Dear Parents! For some of you, art therapy is still an unknown area, about which you have heard little and have little trust, maybe some of you are already familiar with art therapy, its methods and features, and perhaps you have already been captured by the spontaneous, creative, bearing the joy of experience is the spirit of this method. Of course, in addition to creativity, this method has many advantages - and we will emphasize them once again.

Art therapy:

Helps develop the child’s emotional sphere, strengthening trust in the world;

Helps to go through the adaptation period easier - relieves negative stress conditions - anger, anxiety, resentment, abrupt departure of the mother for a certain period of time, etc.;

Develops the child’s sensory abilities - sensations, perception, intelligence, fine motor skills, speech, imagination, creativity; enriches the child’s social experience, develops the child’s communication skills;

Art therapy helps to understand the world, explore it, develop experimental and experimental activities;

Helps develop a harmonious, spiritually developed personality;

Reveal problems and shortcomings in the development and upbringing of a child, his experiences and conditions, relationships with the world.

When working with your baby, remember that the baby’s hands are not yet developed enough, they are awkward and clumsy. Children do not yet know how to regulate the strength, accuracy, and direction of movements. Often the absence or unformation of these skills makes the child angry and upset; tell him, help the child - how to correctly perform a certain action, but do not criticize him in any way.

We are sure that your child’s life, emotions, sensations, and outlook on the world are important to each of you; we suggest you use the following games, which contain areas of art therapy, when communicating with your children.

Drawing on wet paper

Dip a piece of white paper into water, then remove excess water with a sponge. Apply any color to the paper, let the child notice how the paint “spreads” across the sheet, how delicate, blurry halftones appear. Give your child the opportunity to experiment on his own. When the drawing is dry, think with your child what it could be - a house, a forest in the fog, an evening sunset or something else.

Prints on paper

You can print on paper in different ways– half a potato, foam rubber, a compressed piece of tape, a crumpled piece of paper, a lump wool threads, autumn leaves, applying paint to these materials.

Game “Traces of Unseen Animals”

You can draw or glue an image of any animal onto a sheet of white paper (you can even invent a non-existent animal and draw it) and invite the child to mark the tracks of this animal; with a piece of crumpled paper you can draw falling snow, and with a piece of potato you can draw the “imprint” of the sun. Fantasy here can be limitless; remember, it is not the product that is important, but the process itself.

Monotype technique

Game "Winter's Tale"

Take a clean sheet of paper and a small piece of thin or half-woolen thread, soak it in paint and draw various patterns with it, drawing it across the paper.

Spattering of paint, random strokes, blotching

Games “New Year's fireworks”, “Friendly colors”, “Bubble burst”, “Snow is falling”.

On a clean sheet of paper, hit the brush soaked in paint with your finger at an angle of 90 degrees. As a result of applying multi-colored splashes, you can get New Year's fireworks.

Hatching. Scribble. Graphics

Game "Help the hedgehog collect vegetables"

Using crayons and pencils, teach your child to draw straight lines - building a path for the hedgehog, who needs to find a drawn apple, a pine cone, or a mushroom (drawn by you) at the end of the sheet.

Using finger paints

Games “Draw a mustache for the cat”, “Draw wheels for the car”, “Draw needles for the hedgehog”.

Games with plasticine

Game "Plasticine patterns"

Teach how to pinch off small pieces of plasticine from a large one, make balls, then press on them to get a plasticine “spot”. And if you press the ball and pull it down with your finger, you get a plasticine line.

Game “Plasticine mosaic”, “Decorate the pie”, “Lay out a path of pebbles”.

Apply plasticine to a plastic board or cardboard in a thin layer 5 mm thick. Using a knife, determine the outline of the pattern (pie, path, Ryaba chicken, etc.). Offer cereals to your child - peas, beans, coffee beans, small shells, pebbles, beads, etc. Using the indentation technique, show your child how the picture can be decorated.

Dough plastic techniques

Game “Bake pies”, “Colorful butterflies”

By spending time in the kitchen preparing food, you can make salt dough, add food coloring to it (beet juice, carrots). This way you will get a colored dough. Let the baby sculpt as he wishes, help the baby sculpt what he wants. Then put the resulting product in the oven and bake. The resulting figures, with certain processing, can be used as key rings, talismans or refrigerator magnets. In any case, the creative process itself is important for a child.

Game "Pits"

Make lumps of dough with your baby, pressing your finger on the lumps to form holes - hide the raisins in them (a piece of berry, beans, peas). You can do this with regular dough, bake it and offer it to your baby to try.

Sand games

Before you start working with sand, keep in mind that the sand must be safe - sifted, washed and dried, pierced in the oven, and it should not contain large, sharp objects, debris, glass, stones that could damage the baby’s skin.

Learn to pour sand into cups of various sizes, from one cup to another. If there is no sand in the house, you can use small grains, such as semolina. And coarse grains also have their advantages.

Game "Hide your hands"

Invite your baby to hide his hands in the sand, containers filled with different grains from small to large.

Game "Pour the cereal"

Invite your child to use a small spatula, scoop or funnel (you can use your hands) to pour sand or cereal from one container to another. " Once upon a time there was a little mouse in the world. She was very thrifty. She kept various seeds and cereals in her hole. Let's help the mouse put the grains into jars, boxes, and bags. Now stocks will be well preserved».

Game "Sand Mountain"

Invite your child to build a mountain out of sand. Teach him to rake sand with a shovel or palm. “This is what high mountain it worked!” Then attach a twig or flower to the top of the mountain. “And at the very top a flower grew! Let’s water it from a watering can so it grows!”

Game "Hide and Seek"

Hide small figures of animals, people, toys (kinder surprises) in the sand. “Please help me find naughty toys, they hid from me and don’t want to come out. We play hide and seek with them!”

Water games

Game "Boats"

Fill plastic box water, lower paper boats there, ask the child to imitate the sea wind blowing on the boats. You can arrange a competition to see who is stronger.

Game "Pour the water"

Invite your baby to pour water from glass to glass, let the baby listen to the sound of overflowing water and train the muscles of his hands.

Game "Catch a Fish"

In a container filled with water, place pictures - “fish” made of thick paper, or plastic, ask the children to take a clothespin and catch the fish. Let the child put the catch in a bucket.

Game "Colored Water"

Take several plastic, transparent cups. Apply paint to the brush and place it in water. Show how paint from a brush quickly dissolves in water. Dilute several colors and let the child try to dilute the paint himself.

The above games keep children occupied; they do not require expensive materials or costs, but require your time, attention and participation, your praise and approval. Be generous with yours positive emotions. Your praise and approval are priceless for a child; give your child the opportunity to be free in his imagination, thoughts, speech, creativity, because this gives him confidence and trust in the world around him. Regularly arrange an exhibition of your child’s works, show them to guests and loved ones, and constantly update it.

Harmonious developed personality a child, with her inherent love of beauty, is now in your hands. And how you build a model of your behavior and communication with your baby now, without putting it off for a long time, depends on his later life and fate.

We wish you good luck!

Art therapy (art therapy) is a method of psychocorrection that was first used in psychotherapy by A. Hill in 1938. Through simple exercises that are more reminiscent of children's pranks, you can not only diagnose the mental state of any person (both adults and children), but also successfully fight many nervous disorders.

Art therapy – exercises for children – is:

getting to know your inner self;
formation of an idea of oneself as a person;
creating a positive self-perception;
learning to express your feelings and emotions;
relieving psycho-emotional stress;
, communication skills, and abilities to various types creative activity.

So, by creating and imagining, you can understand your emotional experiences, understand yourself and your inner world, or you can help your little one overcome shyness, become more sociable and open to communicating with people.

Everything you need for classes

The choice of consumables is limited only by the limits of your imagination

Consumables are selected by the psychotherapist depending on what problems art therapy is designed to solve in each specific case. When choosing exercises, very great value has the age of the patients, as well as their mental and physical condition(injuries, genetic diseases etc.).

If you plan to draw during an art therapy session, stock up on paper of different sizes or cardboard. Colored pencils, felt-tip pens, crayons, paints, charcoal - all this will help you express your experiences on canvas.
To create a collage, you'll need the same things, plus scissors, glue, and clippings from magazines and newspapers.
If you are sculpting, plasticine or clay will help you.
And when you decide to play music, don’t get hung up on classical musical instruments. After all, anything can sound.

The choice of materials for exercises with elements of art therapy is limited only by your imagination. Use whatever you see fit. These can be photographs, natural materials, fabrics, accessories, cereals and much more.

A bright, cozy room with large, comfortable work surfaces is suitable for sessions. Quiet classical music will not be superfluous. It will help you relax, open up, and tune in to creativity.

During the exercises, the psychotherapist should act as a consultant regarding creative process, materials and techniques, but in no way should it influence the creation of the work or its interpretation.

Everything you need for the “Clouds” exercise

Drawing with preschoolers

Art therapy helps children aged 3-4 years to explore the world, study the properties of objects and substances, and develop fine motor skills.

Art therapy exercise “Fingerprints”

Prints

And for this exercise you will need watercolor paints. Dip your baby's fingers one by one in different colors, and let him put imprints on paper with them.

It turns out that you can draw so many things with just one child’s finger.

For a preschooler or elementary school student, you can suggest that when the paint dries, you can complete the prints with a pencil. What images can you create from them?

Guess what mood the little artist is in

Self-portrait

At about 3 years old, the child begins to recognize himself as a separate person. Already at this age, you can try to analyze his emotional state with the help of a self-portrait.

Ask your little one to draw himself the way he sees himself. Developing the theme further, let the child portray members of his family. You can learn a lot from such a drawing about what place a child’s relatives occupy in a child’s life and how he relates to each of them.

Exercise “Self-Portrait”

With children suffering from Down syndrome

Art therapy exercises have proven themselves very well when working with children suffering from Down syndrome.

“Sunny” babies, in the first stages of their development fine motor skills, use shoulder and forearm movements. The following exercises can be used to help them develop palm, pinch and pincer grip.

Chicken grains

Show your child how to leave a dot mark on a horizontal sheet of paper with a felt-tip pen or pencil. It's like you're scattering grains. Let your baby try to repeat your manipulations, holding the pencil correctly.

It's raining

Let the baby learn to carry out vertical lines on a horizontal surface.

sun rays

Let's complicate the task. We draw lines in different directions.

Art therapy helps children with Down syndrome develop proper grip

Bunny jumping on the grass

The kid draws lines on a vertical surface from top to bottom and bottom to top.

Winnie the Pooh is coming to visit

Draw horizontal paths for Winnie the Pooh on a vertically positioned canvas.

Cooking porridge for the animals

Using circular movements of the brush, we draw doodles on the paper (on horizontal and vertical surfaces), as if stirring porridge.

Footprints in the snow

We learn to paint with a brush using the dipping method. The brush is placed flat.

Firework

We use the touch method for drawing, placing the brush vertically.

The tweezer grip is formed through sculpting and appliqué activities. And also when stringing small beads on a thread and when pulling thin threads out of fabric.

With older children, you can perform more complex exercises that allow you to diagnose their psycho-emotional state and correct it

With teenagers

To develop imagination and creativity and to relieve tension and resolve internal conflicts in adolescents, more complex exercises can be used.

Flower

Invite your child to close his eyes and imagine a beautiful flower. What color is it, what size is it, what does it smell like, where does it grow and what surrounds it, what is the flower’s mood and what are its problems? Why not write a story about this flower?

It is very important, if a teenager has composed a sad story, to try to find ways to cheer up the flower, to make his world more colorful and happy. Naturally, putting the images that arise in the child’s imagination into forms on canvas.

Exercise "Mask"

Mask

Let's say there will be a masquerade ball at school soon. And everyone will have to come there wearing masks. Why not make your child a mask with his own hands.

And then you can act out the story that could happen with this mask at the ball.

Tale of a Hero

What does it take to write a fairy tale? Just a pen and a blank sheet of paper. Where to start? Every fairy tale must have a hero or heroine. Then it’s logical to come up with a reason.

Then the situation should be developed. Let the hero overcome obstacles, fight evil, defeat dragons, find new friends, fall in love, save, heal and, in the end, get everything he strived for.

After writing a fairy tale, you can try to find similarities between its hero and the author of the story and draw a parallel between them.

Exercise “Working with creative waste”

With parents

Work in groups. Individual drawing

In groups

Art therapy can be done individually or in groups. Group exercises allow you to look at a problem from different points of view and find best option her decisions.

Man is a social being. And all facets of his nature are best revealed in the process of communicating with his own kind.

This exercise is perfect for starting classes in a newly created group. Each participant in which, using paper and colored pencils (paints, chalk, clay, charcoal), tries to symbolically depict their momentary state on canvas.

It is not at all necessary for a child to be an artist. Draw colored lines and shapes, doodles and blots, shapes and images. At the end of the work, group members share their impressions of each drawing, without evaluating it in any way.

Drawing with a partner

Well reveals the subtleties. Group members are divided into pairs. Big leaf paper is placed on the table between the partners, and each, after carefully looking into the eyes of his partner, begins to draw - spontaneously, without thinking.

Communicate using colors, lines, shapes. Try to find out something about your partner, share any associations and emotions that your partner’s drawing evokes in you.

When you finish drawing, you can exchange your impressions of the session, analyze what is happening and your feelings during joint creativity.

Its advantage is that all group members can take part in it at the same time. Start drawing on a piece of paper (which each group member will receive, as well as colored pencils) something very important to you.

At the psychotherapist’s signal, hand your sheet to the participant on your left, and you yourself will receive from the participant on your right his started drawing and continue working on it. Bringing in some of my own touches and additions.

At the signal from the group leader, give this drawing to the neighbor on the left, and you yourself will receive the next one from the neighbor on the right. And so on - until your own drawing is returned to you, having been in the hands of all members of the group and supplemented by each of them in accordance with their understanding and feelings.

Try to understand your feelings when you see this collective creation. Share them with other group members.

Art therapy is, first of all, ease of self-expression, an opportunity to look into your inner world and make it brighter, more fun, more colorful.

There are a great variety of art therapy techniques and exercises. They give the child the opportunity to materialize his inner world and look at it from the outside. Develop motor skills, imagination, and creativity.

Select exercises based on the child’s age and psychological state. Don't try to influence the outcome. And you will soon see that art therapy can change a lot in the life of your beloved child and, accordingly, in yours...

Video “Psychology on canvas. How does this work?"

Dear parents, it has finally happened! On the blog “Grow Smart!” An online course will start very soon, which will be entirely devoted to creativity: with children, for children and for parents. This is a wonderful unique project that was developed by an experienced psychologist, Montessori teacher and art therapist. The main goal of this project is to teach parents to help their children cope with their experiences and problems, establish high-quality trusting relationships with them, and work through emotions.

As you have probably already noticed, I really love all kinds of creativity, I love creating various crafts with children, so I am as happy as a child that we are starting this wonderful project. I am sure that after completing the course you will master a new amazing way of communicating with your child and will be amazed how you lived without it before;)

“Art therapy is the only psychological technique, for working with children, which everyone can master, which cannot harm the child’s psyche, and which is capable of working miracles.”

This course is created for:

parents of children from 0 to 10 years old,
teachers, psychologists,
speech therapists, defectologists,
everyone, everyone who works and lives near children.

You will learn:

It’s wonderful to understand children of different ages,
help children overcome emotional difficulties,
select clues to solve behavioral problems,
spend time with children with joy for yourself and benefit for them,
interact effectively with your baby.

Online course “Creativity education, or Art therapy - it’s easy!” will give you the opportunity:

study art therapy,
create a creative environment for your baby,
learn to diagnose a child’s problems and provide assistance to him,
get acquainted with various areas of art therapy and learn how to apply them,
each lesson to master various art therapy techniques,
open creativity in your child,
master a wonderful tool of mutual understanding,
improve your parenting competence.

The course consists of 13 lessons:

1 lesson. Fundamentals of art therapy. Creating a creative space.
Lesson 2. Art therapy. Diagnostics, assistance and development through drawing. Variety of drawing forms.
Lesson 3. Art therapy. Diagnostics, assistance and development through modeling. Various ways sculpting.
Lesson 4. Art therapy. Variety of work forms. Creation of new techniques.
Lesson 5. Fairytale therapy. Possibilities of the method and methods of application in everyday life. Ways to write therapeutic fairy tales. Individual and group work.
Lesson 6. Play therapy. Play in a child's life. Developing creativity through play.
Lesson 7. Sand therapy. Setting up a sandbox at home. Various sand therapy techniques.
Lesson 8. Phototherapy. The path to knowledge of the world and oneself.
Lesson 9. Bibliotherapy. Literature in a child’s life and its safe use. Organization of a child's literary space.
Lesson 10. Cinema therapy. Proper Use the possibilities of animation and cinema for raising children. Independent creation.
Lesson 11. Tissue therapy. Using the capabilities of fabric in communication with the baby. Tissue therapy techniques.
Lesson 12. Puppet therapy. Making dolls for a child and with a child.
Lesson 13. Question and answer.

Seminar presenter: Yulia Shevchenko, psychologist, psychotherapist, art therapist, Montessori teacher, presenter of programs for parents, mother of two wonderful sons.

Duration:

13 lessons of 2 hours

Dates and times:

The webinar has taken place, you can buy a recording by filling out a request at the bottom of the page

Price:

each lesson separately: 250 UAH / 800 RUR
full course: 3000 UAH / 9600 RUR

20% discount:

listeners full course Montessori at home
for students of the Academy of Parenting Excellence course (one full level)
listeners of all master classes at the conference “Development and education of a child from A to Z”

Attention! All classes will be recorded, and recordings will be sent to online course participants the day after the class, so you don’t have to worry if you are late for the start of the class or are unable to participate.

After registering for the Webinar, you will receive payment methods for both each lesson separately and the entire course!

Most people do not want to know the history of their childhood and do not realize that what was laid down in childhood predetermines their actions. They do not realize that they are trying to avoid dangers that were once real, but are no longer so.

Alice Miller

Working with parents is not only one of the important areas of a psychologist’s activity, but also necessary to consolidate the achieved result. It is fathers, mothers and legal representatives who turn to a psychologist with a request, “hoping to “fix” or “fix” the child with minimal personal effort.” However, parents themselves are often accompanied throughout their lives by the complexes (or internal attitudes) they received in childhood. Anxious parents pass on their emotional state to their children. Aggressive parents also unwittingly instill the skills of aggression in their child. At the same time, every parent considers himself a role model and does not want to change.

The modern world is a very clearly structured system and puts strict limits on parents. We are surrounded by a lot of complex technology and various information. Business communication becomes dominant. Even close people speak very little to each other. Methods for assessing the correctness and incorrectness of our actions accompany us literally throughout our lives, starting from birth. Children are assessed by parents and teachers, and adults are assessed by their superiors. Often we cannot communicate in a basic way, which means being who we are.

For harmonious development What is much more important for a child is not his intellectual, but his emotional and volitional development. Children want to see in their parents, first of all, support, non-judgmental love and to feel safe next to them. Babies react with a “revival complex” to the appearance of their mother. Gradually, this subtle connection turns into more formalized relationships and is limited to phrases like: “Have you done your homework? Why didn’t you clean the house?”

Parents forget about their parental purpose and become a teacher, commander, nanny, or in some cases a despot for their own child. Conducting educational work, conducting tests and questionnaires to improve parental competence is ineffective under the current conditions. The parent, following his guidelines, sincerely believes that he is doing everything that is best and necessary for the development and upbringing of the child. In fact, the main work needs to be done with the parent. But attracting an adult to work on oneself is very difficult.

IN this material The personal experience I gained during the previous academic year is presented. It used art therapy methods that make it possible to most accurately and sincerely convey a person’s feelings and conditions. It's no secret that the verbal form of communication often distorts its content. While conducting the classes, I tried to use all human representational systems: auditory, kinesthetic and visual. At the same time, the verbal form of communication is reduced to a minimum, thereby relieving the tension of the participants. The process of drawing is a good means for emotional rapprochement. In addition, parents are given the opportunity to escape from everyday serious matters (many parents consider games and communication with the child to be frivolous matters).

A psychologist, conducting the proposed lesson, can use the material received as an opportunity for additional diagnostics. Often, in the process of drawing, the state of disharmonious relationships is confirmed (Figure 1) or the atmosphere of harmonious relationships in the family is conveyed (Figure 2). The preventive effect of such activities is also significant: the child’s sense of security increases, and the adult’s sense of empathy increases or is born.

I offer you one of the options for a lesson that I developed as I accumulated stimulus, theoretical and working material. First, seashells appeared, then a suitable musical accompaniment was found, and finally the parents came, who needed exactly this method. I believe that I managed to bring the positions of the parent and child closer together, and to do this in an unobtrusive form.

Joint child-parent lesson “Harmonization of child-parent relationships using art therapy” (author’s method)

Target: harmonization of parent-child relationships using art therapy.

Tasks:

organize non-judgmental joint activities between an adult and a child;
stimulate self-expression of emotional state through art therapy;
increase the competence of parents in the field of interaction in the “parent-child” system through joint classes;

establish friendly relationships between adults and children.

Participants: children (from 3 years old, no upper limit) and their parents. It is possible to practice with one parent-child pair or several.

Time: from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.

Equipment:

– musical accompaniment;
– seashells and other marine attributes;
– sheets of A-3 format (one sheet per parent-child pair);
– watercolor paints;
– tassels.

Progress of the lesson:

Those who come to class are welcome. Be sure to say the children's names. If children are small, you can address your parents not by their first name and patronymic, but by “dad” and “mama.” The child will not get confused.

Psychologist:“Today I want to invite you to take a short trip. To do this you need to prepare a little. Let's sit next to each other "child - parent." Position yourself so that you are comfortable. (Note: depending on the age of the children and the number of participants, the volume and content of the presenter’s instructions are adjusted). Close your eyes. Feel your body. Concentrate on your feet first, squeezing your toes as tightly as possible, then relax them. Feel the tension go away. Now let's work on the abdominal muscles. Tighten them for a while, feel their elasticity. We are often filled with excitement in the stomach area, so it is important that your fears and doubts melt away like fog in the early morning. Now turn your attention to the rib cage, which surrounds and protects our heart. Feel your chest expand and then return to its normal position. Squeeze your hands until the knuckles turn white and relax them, the tension goes through your fingers into the ground. The next area of our attention will be the neck, shoulders and head. Tighten them, close your eyes tightly, and then mentally relax all your muscles. If there is tension left somewhere in your body, tighten even more, and then relax. We have relaxed our entire body and are ready to begin our journey into amazing world images We are ready to travel into our inner world. Try to sit quietly for a while, with eyes closed by listening to your feelings.

Relaxation music plays (Anugama, author unknown).

You hear the sounds of water: maybe it’s the sound of the sea or the murmur of a small river. Your eyes are closed and you imagine the picture appearing in front of you. What does your imagination draw? Listen, take a closer look, where are you? Do you feel the softness of the grass under your feet or the yellow sand flowing through your fingers? Take a closer look at the surface of the water: rough or calm, cloudy or clear? Do you see any life in the river? Maybe you would like to get into the water and swim? . You are surrounded by sounds and smells. Fix the images that arise in your mind, look at all of them the smallest details. You feel the warm sun caressing your body. Time moves towards noon and it gets hot outside. Next to you lies a lemon, yellow and fragrant. Imagine its sour taste. You squeeze lemon juice into a glass, add cold water or ice cubes, make your “lemonade” and slowly drink this refreshing drink. Freshness and energy come to you with cool lemon juice. You are gradually transported from your dream place to a room. While your eyes are closed, feel your body, feel the frequency of your breathing and when you are ready, open your eyes.

Look around: there are seashells on the shore (the psychologist carefully arranges them during music). Touch each of them. Listen to how they convey the sound of the sea. A tree appeared in front of you: maybe it was a palm tree or a willow? It's up to you to decide. The ship is preparing to sail (a model of the ship is displayed). Jewels peek out from the chest (a small chest is placed on the table). Look what else is there. Touch it.

And now you are invited to draw the overall picture. Try to draw without discussing the plot as much as possible. Spontaneity gives us the opportunity to come closer to understanding ourselves and our problems.”

Reflection

It is carried out when participants need to speak out and is in the nature of non-judgmental communication. It can be a fascinating story about what he saw; a dream embodied in a drawing. Questions like:

How did you feel in your dream place?
Was it easy for you to choose general theme for drawing?
Did you help each other during the drawing process?
How are you feeling now?
How would you name your overall drawing?

Literature

1. Brenda Mallon. Creative visualization and color. M.: Galaktion, 2003.
2. Pavlov I.V. Communication with a child: interaction training. St. Petersburg: Rech, 2008.

Children with rare genetic immune disorders often spend long periods in hospitals. IN charitable foundation“Sunflower” are confident that it is not enough to make a diagnosis, even a rare one, it is necessary to teach a person to live with this diagnosis. Therefore, the foundation opened the “Bright World” training program in children’s clinics, which is designed to make hospitals not places of forced confinement, but areas of rapid development. A deficiency of immunity should not lead to a lack of self-confidence and problems with the child’s creative realization, says one of the program specialists, art therapist Alexander Runov, and parents can help him with this.

— What is the psychological state of the parent whose child is sick? rare disease and who is often forced to go to the hospital with him?

Psychological state, like all people, in different times can be different. There are general trends associated with a child’s illness, and there are absolutely situational things associated with being in the hospital. It happens that parents come to classes in difficult condition, and similar. It gradually becomes clear that this is general anger or rage, or tension, anxiety. These conditions spread quickly in a hospital ward where there are many people and it is difficult to isolate. One nervous, worried parent can drag down a lot of people. It happens that in the department, instead of large quantity separate parents there appears one Common Parent, big, angry sometimes, sometimes controlling. One of my tasks is to try to get people out of this Common Parent, make them back into grown men and women, not just parents.

— How does the work begin and what does it consist of?

To begin with, we are simply trying to physically separate children and parents: they already spend most of their time together in the same room. With great difficulty, the children were left in the corridor, we sat down. We start doing something with our hands, just doing something next to each other. The parents are very great experience conversations about the condition of their children. We try to sculpt to turn off the conversation, to make our heads rest, we do simple shapes. Soft children's plasticine helps: someone smears it on the sheet, someone rolls balls and worms, but everyone is busy with something of their own.

“Despite the fact that the door opens every now and then and the children are rushing...

Yes, it is an unusual situation for children when someone took their parents, not to a doctor, not to talk about their condition. They giggle: what, parents, do you draw? Haha! Children have their own separate group classes, there are also joint family classes, but now we’re only talking about separate groups for adults. It also happens that a parent has a difficult time in a lesson, and he lets the child in under the guise that “he can’t live without me,” the lesson stops, you can leave with the child, you can stay, but definitely without the child. It happens that they leave, but rarely, because after all, in the hospital this stay without children, such separate “adult time” is not enough.

— Do parents have a special attitude towards a sick child? Do children understand this?

For each specific family, everything is very individual. But imagine a situation when a parent just learns about the diagnosis and realizes that it is for life, that they need to go to the hospital, that they need constant monitoring from doctors, that many things in life will have to change. Stressful state. And there are a million different scenarios, but I often have to deal with a situation where a child reads the parent’s discomfort and feels a sense of guilt for his illness, for his peculiarity.

The parent, in turn, may try to compensate the child for everything that, in his opinion, the child is now deprived of, and may begin to make him special himself. For example, trying to make a child's life the safest or better than everyone else's. Sometimes this means that communication with peers, school, and walking without a mask are prohibited. Although there may be no medical indications for all this. The child gets used to this special status and learns to live like this. But this is only one of the possible scenarios.

In general, it must be said that children, in principle, adapt to everything better than adults and often feel much less unhappy than adults think. I saw with my own eyes “salochki” with a dropper at the ready and a mask that is used to discreetly stick out the tongue. It is much easier for them to cope with the understanding that “feature” is not about “worse” or “better.” This, by the way, is a very important and large layer - the attitude towards children with rare diseases in our culture and society. Often the hospital department becomes the only place for full communication between children and parents, where everyone understands everything, where there is no fear of condemnation, where everything is stable.

People's awareness of rare diseases is low, there are many prejudices, and not everyone has the desire to understand why a child wears a mask. And this is a mutual process. A child may not want to explain anything to his peers, and a parent may not want to explain anything to his peers. May want special treatment and understanding, but taking the first step and talking about the need for this special relationship can be difficult. There are families who are happy to go to the hospital every time because it is an opportunity to be in society. This also includes an absolutely material story, when being in a good modern hospital is physically more convenient and safer than at home, since the state does not always provide these people with what they are entitled to by law. The hospital becomes more desirable than home, but sometimes there is not enough strength for anything else. And we are trying to return this strength to parents, to figure out why being outside the hospital can be better or how to make it so.

- What should we do about it? We won't make the hospital worse, will we?

A person, including during classes, must understand how to make his life outside the hospital as comfortable, pleasant and convenient, where to get communication, for example. It is necessary to understand what is really associated with the disease, treatment, necessity, and what is rather a stereotype, a convenient model of behavior. There are people with sick children who live full lives, who simply live and teach their children this.

— As a result, what model of behavior do parents transmit to their children?

This is a very important question. What model do the parents of a sick child want to give. How to live? The child is sick. Throw all your energy into the illness and live the illness or live the life? The child is largely oriented towards his parents, but he may turn out to be cool and independent: he will separate from the parent and begin to struggle with this idea that he is somehow special, with this parent’s attitude that a child with a rare disease should live a rare life, not like everyone else. There are few such cases, but they do exist. My goal is to make sure there are more of these stories.

— How do children feel about their parents making them special?

It is interesting that alongside such control over a child’s life there can be an absolute disregard for one’s own life. The specificity of the diseases with which the Sunflower Foundation works is such that at any moment you can go to the hospital for an indefinite period, and in general, everything can change in the child’s condition. It’s difficult to make plans, it’s difficult to make plans. And some parents begin to simply go with the flow, not showing initiative and having a very vague idea of the child’s future after adulthood. It’s bad when the same model is perceived by a child, because it has no perspective at all. But continuity is not 100%, fortunately. We have a girl who, despite the fact that her mother has no life plans for her daughter and is skeptical about her activity in the future, has already planned a lot for her interesting life. She has a great understanding of what she can achieve, who she can become, what she can learn and what she can do.

— How not to make a child special?

In the event that you suddenly realize that instead of your personal life, your life together with your child suddenly happened and gradually only she remained, when you begin to use the word “we” more and more instead of “me and my child”, you need to be careful. The deformation occurs where there should be a separation between the adult and the child. Remember who you were before the birth of the child, before the diagnosis, correlate your goals and desires with what you have now. Goals and desires may have changed, this is absolutely normal. Think about to what extent this is due to the fact that the child is sick, and to what extent it is not. Should they all be related to the child?

A child’s illness may be accompanied by psychological difficulties in the parent. A person is not able to take it and cope with it at once. Don't be shy to contact a specialist. You don't have to deal with this situation yourself. Support may be required. Parents themselves are worried, and it’s hard for them, this can and should be recognized and worked with, without trying to focus exclusively on making the child feel good. If only because the condition of the parents seriously affects the child.

— Do classes within the “Bright World” program help people? Is their world becoming as vibrant as that of children?

Our classes can relieve parents of some of the stress and give them the strength to do something on their own. There is an outside perspective from people who have gone through a similar situation and can tell what it’s like ahead - this also gives a lot. Often you can look at children from the outside. They can do a lot on their own. On family activities This is exactly what we try to pay attention to. Parents go home and then report what they learned for themselves. Someone gave themselves and their child a little more freedom. Someone learned to make plans, even small ones, and implement them. Someone began to spend half an hour a day, an hour a week, one day a month to do what interests him. For some, this became creativity as a continuation of what happened in the classroom. Someone found out for themselves that this is a gym, a walk. They themselves learn to find strength and support, and they say that after this it becomes easier. All this is then transferred into communication with the child. Less desire to control, more personal freedom, understanding of one’s own and children’s boundaries. It looks like a quiet life next to each other, which is good without rare genetic diseases.

<\>code for a website or blog