As I excitingly walked around my kitchen a few days ago, talking to my Wife about my latest intervention / hypothesis or in some instances, general nonsense, I realised how in many ways the process of writing a children's book has been incredibly cathartic in helping me deal with my own trauma of the pat few months. Work has been incredibly stressful. Moving house with a noisy toddler is the stuff nightmares are made of. This pandemic has hit us all in so many different ways and at some point when this is all over I will enjoy a long exhale of joy and be proud that as a family we got through this. And this is the part I want to pick up on. While I'm strutting around my kitchen, my Wife is looking at illustrators. (She helps when she gets a few spare minutes!) I then realised how much I have enjoyed talking about my project with my Wife.
During the course of my work, it has been inevitable that when discussing mentoring, my son's name has come up numerous times. In many ways, this project has helped me identify and clutch on to creative problems that have alleviated my own stress and worries.
I began to reflect on my current research question:
How can we utilise children's books to mentor Parents and Children through trauma, while simultaneously promoting family growth?
What if I were able to reinterpret this question and apply it to my own family. Has this project in some ways enabled me to answer the question but in a different way. What if I were able to use this model to create practical exercises to combat trauma and to use it for promoting family growth?
I've decided that I would like to create some workshops, where I invite parents with their children and together we explore, how we can utilise children's books as a way of addressing our traumatic event and enabling us to develop mechanisms to shield and protect ourselves from elements of the past. I am not inquiring as to how we can totally eradicate theses memories. I am instigating a model that may be able to give solidarity and strength to families in need.
Through my stakeholder interest at Guille-Allès Library, Guernsey, I have been put in contact with the Sunflower Project.
It's an amazing organisation and part of the Youth Commission. I have written to them and expressed an interest in working with them when I return to Guernsey in the Summer. The Sunflower project deals specifically with bereavement and illness in families. My current book deals with separation but it is important for me after the completion of my M.A. that I pursue these themes in a deeper context.
To test this out, I will be producing a workshop with a family I know. They have recently moved to the U.K. from Dubai and I am very interested to see if I can help in some way by testing this model. The purpose of this small workshop would be to see if the children are able to express themselves in some way in order to compartmentalise these issues. I am not a child phycologist bu I may be able to use this research to aid further studies.
As we stand, the world is in a perilous state. As my research has developed, it has become more and more important to me to put children at the heart of everything I do. What better way to support this by helping in some small way to the bonding and mentoring between parent and child. If I can help one family, this would have been all worth while.
My son is a little too young to fully understand what is going on in the world right no but it is still upsetting to observe his inquisitive nature when he sees someone with a mask on. He still does not fully comprehend it. Our jobs as parents it to mentor, nature and love. All echoes that are in my work.
Slowly I realised that in researching this project, I was navigating my own family through trauma.
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