Introduction: Defining and Explaining Bibliotherapy
Emotional pressure and fears among children often occurs when children strive to cope with difficulties. In this situation, literature can become a powerful therapeutic tool for promoting healing and emotional intelligence. Sharing stories helps children gain insight into their problems is often regarded as bibliotherapy.
Heath et al. (2005) believe, “”stories are helpful in offering potential insight into personal problems…and in creating a safe distance, bringing a childe or adolescent indirectly to the edge of sensitive issues” (p. 564).
Sullivan and Strang (2002) agree that bibliotherapy is a psychological approach allowing individuals to cope with complex problems. This is an emerging strategies used for resolving clinical problems as well, including emotional development of children.
Engaging a child with reading a story about a protagonists overcoming difficult situations and solving complication problems is effective for those who experience similar challenges.
More importantly, this therapeutic approach enables children cope with such emotional and psychological stresses as parents’ divorce, death of relatives, and bullying of senior students. All these problems will be disclosed to define the specific principles and literature necessary for surpassing emotional frictions and facilitating emotional healing.
Dealing with Children Fear By Means Of Bibliotherapy
Bullying
Bibliotherapy is an approach that can become useful for children facing emotional difficulties. However, before applying this technique, individuals should be identified in accordance with the character of problems they encounter. At this point, bullying is a frequent problem that children can deal with in a learning environment. In order to solve the problem, the bibliographical material should reflect these socio-emotional constraints.
According to Sullivan and Strang (2002), “it is important to take into account the recipient age, reading level, gender, background, and interests” (p. 76). All these strategies and aspects are applicable to the problem of bullying. Heath et al. (2011) assure that properly selected stories and books should promote healthy relationships between a teacher and a student, as well as between students.
In addition, such a strategy can also shape social behavioral patterns enclosed in such features as empathy, inclusiveness, and kindness. As a result, coping with bullying through interactive reading can contribute to developing social skills and enhancing support and assistance.
Problems of bullying and harassment are also addressed in the studies by Heath et al (2005). In particular, the researchers focus on an individualized approach to considering these social and psychological problems. What is more important, the research outlines specific literature that would be pertinent for dealing with bullying.
The books address both the children who suffer bullying and the one who pose psychological and emotional pressure on other emotionally unstable children. Aside from the chosen material, there should be systematic algorithms and instructions that provide a necessary assistance for children suffering from teasing and bullying.
Death
Negative attitudes and stressful situations hamper children’s adequate perception of the surrounding world. As a result, children often have to encounter such adult fears as war, crime, and death. Nature of children’s anxieties and fears provides predictable patterns to studying the main causes and underpinnings of these phenomena. In this respect, Pearson (2003) explains that that increased anxieties often move to another stage of much more dangerous fears.
For instance, children’s fears of large animals can be replaced with the fear of muggers, robbers, and other criminals. In order to understand the nature, stages, and varieties of fears, it is purposeful to distinguish between such notions as latency, duration, intensity, and situational context that are closely associated with fear.
While experiencing fear, children often apply to overt and covert strategies to express and resist the object of fear. In this respect, Pearson (2003) insists, “bibliotherapy can be a powerful tool for helping children identify internal and external resources as well as develop subsequent coping strategies” (p. 16).
To be more exact, Rozalski et al. (2010) refer to “identification, catharsis, and insight” as the basic principles of literature healing (p. 34). These strategies are also pursued by Sullivan and Strang (2002) to understand the nature and main characteristics of children’s fear and emotional stress.
Overcoming these stages, a child can experience emotional release while reading a specific story. Aside from understanding the actual strategies of coping with social adversities and challenges, such as death and war, reading a book is not enough. Rather, choosing the most relevant literature is the first step in a bibliotherapy process.
Divorce
Bibliotherapy is considered as a powerful intervention tool for overcoming such social problem as divorce. In this respect, children whose parents divorced are reluctant to release their emotional state. By expressing aggression, unsociability, they try to distract themselves from solving the problem.
Heath et al. (2005) explains that using literature as means of healing can provide children with an implicit insight into their internal problems and help them understand that this problem can solved through understanding and overcoming similar experiences presented in the book.
Because divorce poses an emotional pressure on children, emotional intelligence skills are indispensible to them to handle the stress efficiently (Sullivan & Strang, 2002). Heath et al. (2005) also emphasize, “effective therapeutic involvement pulls the student into the story and engages them into active participation” (p. 567).
As a result, active engagement can help preadolescents understand how their inner concerns with patients’ conflict can be revealed and how those displays can be managed successfully by means of reading. Hence, children should begin reading and show their deep interest in the story.
As soon as they get the essence of the story, they start comparing the fiction with the real experience to define how their personal stories can be solved.
Practical Application of Bibliotherapy in Class
A bibliotherapy process is an activity that can be implemented in class. This approach becomes especially effective when children interchange their experiences and emotions about what has been read in the classroom. Many scholars agree that reading literature can significantly contribute to children’s stable emotional development.
In particular, Sullivan and Strang (2002) argue, “incorporating bibliotherapy into the academic curriculum is a natural process that will also augment reading skills” (p. 77). What is more important, children can widen their experience in working out coping strategies and socializing with their peers.
Because a classroom setting can create a number of social and emotional difficulties for children, school professional should apply to a bibliotherapy approach to accomplish remediation.
Pearson (2003) also agrees that a classroom setting perfectly suits for initiating games and questionnaires based on the read stories. While interacting in the class, children can imagine themselves as protagonists of good stories to be emotional distracted from struggles and conflicts in reality.
Overall, the overview of existing studies on the topic proves that bibliotherapy is a powerful therapeutic instrument that can enrich counseling strategies and provide a solid theoretical basis for building different strategies for children who suffer from emotional and psychological stresses.
References
Heath, M. A., Sheen, D., Leavy, D., Young, E. & Money, K. (2005). Bibliotherapy: A Resource to Facilitate Emotional Healing and Growth. School Psychology International. 26(5), 563-580.
Heath, M., Moulton, E., Dyches, T., Prater, M., & Brown, A. (2011). Strengthening Elementary School Bully Prevention with Bibliotherapy. Communique, 39(8), 12-14.
Pearson, Q. M. (2003). Helping Children Cope with Fears: Using Children’s Literature in Classroom Guidance. Professional School Counseling. 7(1), 15-19.
Rozalski, M., Stewart, A., & Miller, J. (2010). Bibliotherapy: Helping Children Cope with Life’s Challenges. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 47(1), 33-37.
Sullivan, A. K., & Strang, H. R. (2002). Bibliotherapy in the Classroom: Using Literature to Promote the Development of Emotional Intelligence. Childhood Education. 79(2), 74-80.