Narrative approaches: Helping children tell their stories.

Abstract

(from the chapter) This chapter focuses on narrative approach that is used to explore the child's narratives. The key to a narrative approach is the way therapist and child co-construct together. Children learn this skill through social play including the rhymes and stories hopefully told to them by parents, caregivers or teachers, and other children as a part of childhood play. In Narrative Play Therapy therapist and child use question-and-answer interactions that children have learnt from a very early age. Narrative therapy can be used in play therapy as a way of helping children express and explore their experiences of life. The therapist and child construct a space and a relationship together where the child can develop a personal and social identity by finding stories to tell about the self and the lived world of that self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)