Description
Therapeutic goals: grief processing
Age group: recommended 2-7 years old
Secondary target group: older children
Form of the work: individual
Brief content of the work:
Preview: „Life is a little bit like the wind. When the wind leaves, kites stop soaring, fur stops flying and trees stop fluttering. But where does the wind go? And where does life go when it leaves the body….”
Life is like the wind is written by a clinical child psychologist. Her aim was to encourage youngsters to share and discuss tough, hard topics with family, friends and also themselves. The book presents the death like the wind.
The book shows the feelings we have when a loved one pass away, it shows how can we cope with it, how can we remember them, and how variuose way people can think about death.
Description of the possibilities of professional pedagogical/therapeutic work:
This book can help children to talk about this tough topic, talk about death. After reading the book it can help start a conversation about death and life and children can share their feelings and thoughts about it. Parents, teachers can also tell their opinion and they can discuss it. The point is to start talking.
With this book children can clarify their feelings, resolve their insecurities, and with it they can create their own conclusions.
Helpful questions after reading:
- How are you feeling right now?
- Which part of the book was the most memorable and why?
- Which part was the best/worst to hear and why?
Complementary methods
- Let children draw anything what they want. It will help them express their feelings.
- Let children show, tell their hard feelings. Tell them it is okay to feel uncertainty, fear, sadness, anger.
- Speak about their supportive people, things, resources. Who will help if there is any problem? What cheers you up when you’re sad? What is it, who is it that calms you down?
Description of the recommender’s experience from his own work with this piece:
Among others I used the book with a first-grade boy whose grandmother had died. Although at the beginning of our meeting it was difficult for him to articulate his feelings, after reading the book he was able to speak. He told me that he kept old photographs of his grandmother, used to take her clothes out of the closet, and used to pray to her in the evenings. He also went to the cemetery with his grandfather to take care the grave. When we finished the speaking, he draw the grave with the flowers on it and told me that is was calming to speak about his grandmother.
It didn’t pass language editing!
The recommendation created by:
Kürthy Anna, Workplace: Zichy Miklós Primary School in Zsámbék, Hungary, Date last updated: Dec 16th 2022
Recommended citation procedure:
Kürthy Anna. 2022. Recommended professional procedure to the literary piece of Shona Innes Life is like the wind. In Kotrbová, K. et al: Biblioterapia.sk. Bratislava: PRO SKIZP – Association to support the development of the Slovak Chamber of Clinical Physics, Laboratory Diagnosticians, Language Speech Therapists and Therapeutic Pedagogues, 2023. ISBN 978-80-974667-0-1 Available on: https://www.biblioterapia.sk/en/publikacia/reccomended-procedure-to-literary-masterpiece-life-is-like-the-wind/
This article was created thanks to the support of the the program of the European Union Erasmus+, Key action 2 – Cooperation among organizations and institutions, KA210 – Small-scale partnerships for cooperation in the field of vocational education and training. Project title „Prototype of the on-line study tool for bibliotherapy”, project number 2022-1-SK01-KA210-VET-000082483. It represents the opinion of the author only and European Commission is not responsible for any use of the informations contained therein.
