Building Resiliency: Guiding Children’s Experience In Recounting Traumatic Events

 EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
CLOTH GAME

GOALS: 

1. To help each child/adult develop greater skill in self-regulation of autonomic nervous system
2. To learn the elements of creating a therapeutic game: calming, activating, calming, social engagement.

OBJECTIVES:

1. The child will begin to track heart rate, breathing and other sensations to identify his/her resiliency zone through playing games.
2. The game leaders will track each child/adult and help each child/adult begin to learn how to track calming/comforting sensations as well as sensations connected to the low and high zones with the goal of identifying his/her resiliency zone.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Supplies:   Depending on size of Group – you can use cloth or sheets - one queen or king size for every 6-8 older children/adults or 10-12 younger children.

1. Lay sheet  or cloth on the ground
2. Invite children/adults to gather around the sheet
3. Instruct children/adults to grab the sheet with both hands and to hold on tightly
4. Start with instructing the children to move the sheet up and down as slowly as they can in unison.   After a few minutes, instruct the children/adults to stop, then ask them what they notice about their breathing, heart rate, other sensations????
5. Next instruct the children/adults in unison to move the sheet up and down very fast. After a few minutes, instruct them to stop .  Ask the children/adults what they notice now about their heart rate, breathing and other sensations.
6. Invite the children/adults to again move the sheet very slowly up and down for a few minutes and then invite the children/adults to track.
7. Next, invite the children/adults to move the sheet up and down and then to stop as the sheet is over their head and invite them to greet the child/adult across from them (social engagement).   After they do this a couple of times., you can then again ask the children/adult to track.

There will be some children/adults that will have a difficult time during the calming part of the game (he/she may be stuck in the high zone) and conversely, there may be some children that look disconnected(stuck in the low zone)… These are children/adults that you may need to work with  individually  to help him/her access his/her resiliency zone.

SUPPLIES:    

Sheet or Cloth, small soft ball

EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
GROUNDING LIKE A TREE

GOAL:

To learn the skill of Grounding

OBJECTIVE:

To learn how to sense pleasant or neutral sensations by connecting to the image of  grounding like a tree.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Invite the children to imagine that they are a tree with roots

• Stand like your favorite tree, imagine the roots growing into the earth. Pay attention to how the roots are going into the earth.
• Imagine the branches of your tree as you move your arms. Move the branches of your tree.
• Imagine what the tree would feel like on the inside when you imagine yourself being your favorite tree.
• Imagine the trunk of your tree and sense the strength of the trunk.
• Bring attention to your whole body and move in any way you would like, being aware of what happens on the inside.
• Pay attention to the sensations that are pleasant and notice what happens next.

Note:  Adult Facilitator tracks the children and notices if any of the children are having trouble with the exercise.   If a child is having trouble, individual attention may be necessary to help the child learn to ground.

 Experiential Exercise 
DRAWING WITH CRM SKILLS

GOAL:

To learn how to use drawings to track sensations connected to a resource

OBJECTIVE:

Children/Adults will learn how resourcing by using drawings.

INSTRUCTION:

Children/Adults will make a drawing of something that gives joy, hope or peace.

After making the drawing, the child/adults will be asked to:

1. Can you tell me about your drawing?
2. As the child/adult talks about the drawing, you can ask the person what is noticed on the inside?
3. You can also ask if the adult/child would like to touch a part of the drawing that they especially like. Invite tracking.

SUPPLIES:

Paper and crayons

EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
RESOURCE SYMBOL

GOAL: 

1. To create a visual image of a resource
2. To share resources with others
3. To begin learning how to track and how to develop resources

OBJECTIVES:

1. Each person will identify a personal resource
2. Each person will be invited to create a symbol representing their resource

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. The trainer asks the group to think about something that makes them feel joyous, calm or peaceful from their past. It is explained that it can be a person, a place or a thing.
2. The trainer places a poster board sheet in the middle of the floor or table.
3. Each person takes a turn identifying a resource.
4. After the resource is identified, the trainer asks resource intensification questions to amplify the resource
5. The participant is then asked to draw a symbol of the resource on the paper
6. While the next person is describing their resource, the previous participant is drawing the symbol of their resource
7. When everyone is completed, the participants are asks to either touch or look at their symbol and then to notice what happens on the inside.

SUPPLIES:
Poster Board paper

Crayons or color markers

 EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
CREATING A TREASURE CHEST OF RESOURCES
CREATING A BOOK OF TRESURED RESOURCES

GOAL: 

1. To create a variety of resources for children and adults to draw upon
2. To share resources with teachers, colleagues, friends and families

OBJECTIVES:

1. Each child/adult will identify resources and create a treasure box of resources or a book of resources
2. Children/adults will increase ability to track sensations connected to the treasures in the treasure box or book

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Help children/adults identify resources
2. Provide for children/adults the following to select different items for the treasure box/book
   1. a variety of photos, objects, colored rocks,
   2. paper and crayons for drawings of resources
   3. magazines to cut out images of resources
   4. other art supplies to create resources.

SUPPLIES:

Art Supplies

Magazines

Paper

Crayons

Colored rocks

EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
SEA STAR COMMUNITY
By Susan Reedy, LMFT

Skills: Tracking/Grounding/Resourcing 

Ask children what they know about Sea Star. Share a few interesting facts.

• Sea Star eat by pushing their stomachs out of their mouths and stretching them over the digestible parts of its prey, such as mussels and clams. The prey tissue is partially digested externally before the soup-like "chowder" produced is drawn back
• The underside of a Sea Staris covered with hundreds of tube feet, which it uses for walking around, for attaching tightly to rocks, and for holding on to prey. To move, each tube foot swings like a leg, lifting up and swinging forward, then planting itself on the ground and pushing back.
• Some species of Sea Starhave the ability to regenerate lost arms and can regrow an entire new limb given time. 

Have the children stand with their arms out and legs straddled and talk about how our bodies are similar to the shape of a Sea Star. Talk about how the Sea Star has all of its important organs in its “core” or center and how the legs extend from the middle. Have the children feel how their arms and legs extend from the middle of their body. Talk about how their arms and legs are an extension of their central nervous system and lots of times the use their arms and legs while they are in the resilient zone but sometimes they get bumped out of the resilient zone and their arms and legs have a mind of their own.

Ask the kids to give some examples of what happens with their arms and legs when they are bumped out of their zones:

 (for example: kicking, pushing, hitting, pinching, ripping things up, running away, etc.)

Explore how just like Sea Star get a chance to grow new arms if something unpleasant happens to them, we also get a chance to get back into our resilient zone and use our arms and legs in helpful and pleasant ways:

(for example: holding hands, helping someone up who is falling, petting a dog, running to help someone who is carrying something heavy, hugging someone)

Exercise 1: Grounding

Tell them they are going to experience what it is like to be a slow-moving Sea Star.

1. Start out by lying on your back on the floor. Curling up in a tiny ball, wrapping your Sea Star arms around your legs and exhaling all of your air out of your body.
2. Take a slow inhale while opening up your arms and legs out on the floor like a Sea Star. Let your arms and legs rest heavily on the ground and notice all the places where the ground supports your body.
3. Slowly begin to curl up again and wrap your Sea Star arms around your legs as you blow all the air out.
4. Repeat about 3 or 4 times.
5. Notice all the sensations of curling in tight and opening out wide.
6. After the last inhale and stretch, feel the length of your arms and legs, the weight of your body on the floor and bring your attention to any sensations in your body that feel calmer or more pleasant.

Exercise 2: Tracking and resourcing

1. Hand each child a container of play doh and ask them to wait to open it until given instruction.
2. Explore what it is like to “want to” open the play doh container. Ask them to notice where in their bodies they experience the “want to” or if they “don’t want to” open the play doh, ask them to notice where that sensation is in their body. Encourage them to describe the sensation in terms of color, shape, texture, etc.
3. Invite the children to open their play doh container, but not to touch the play doh yet.
4. Have them smell the playdoh and describe what they smell in sensory language. Have them notice if they find the smell of the playdoh pleasant or unpleasant. Encourage them to notice if their neighbor has a different experience than they do and process how everyone’s senses are unique and different, just like the colors and shapes of a Sea Star. It’s okay if some people find it pleasant and some people find it unpleasant. Ask each group to notice where they experience the sensation of pleasant or unpleasant in their bodies.
5. Invite the children to touch the playdoh, or not. Have them share with the group or with a neighbor (or their table partners) what they feel when they touch the playdoh. What is the temperature? What is the texture? Remember to use sensory words. Ask them to squeeze it through their fingers, or roll it in a ball, or punch it with a fist. Process all the different sensations of touching and molding playdoh.
6. Ask them to make a Sea Star out of the playdoh. Notice that they may or may not feel confident in their ability to make a Sea Star, and if they are noticing a sense of “oh no, I don’t know how” that they can use some of their other CRM skills to help them stay in their zone (like pressing their feet a little firmer in the floor to ground, choosing to bring one of their resources to mind, or remembering what it was like to be a Sea Star stretched out and held by the ground.) Remind them that there is no one right way to make a Sea Star and that the beauty of a Sea Star is in its uniqueness.
7. As the children are molding their Sea Star, talk a little more about how Sea Star know how to regrow parts of their bodies when they are injured. We can be like Sea Star when we learn about our resilient zone. We might have hard things happen to us, things that bump us right up out of our zone, but we have the ability to move back into our resilient zone, heal and “grow” through difficult and hard times.
8. Invite the children to bring their Sea Star over to a table when they are finished. Make a ring of Sea Star, making sure each child’s sculpture “holds hands” with the next Sea Star. Explore how they are all different, (in color, size, shape, thickness, etc.) yet they are all connected in this community of Sea Star.
9. Invite the children to think of things that a community of Sea Star might need and make some of those things out of playdoh and place them in the center of the community circle. They can comment and share with the other students what they are making and what value it will be to the community.
10. When all the sculpting or creating is finish (or time is running out!!), invite the children to look at their community and notice what they feel in their bodies. Spend about 30 seconds simply noticing what they see and what they experience “on the inside.”
11. Move around the circle inviting each child to share one word of what they notice when they look at the community they have created.

THERAPEUTIC EXERCISE
ANIMAL EXERCISE

GOAL: 

To help each child develop greater skill in self-regulation of autonomic nervous system

OBJECTIVES:

1. The child will begin to track heart rate, breathing and other sensations to identify his/her resiliency zone through the animal exercise
2. The game leaders will track each child and help each child begin to learn how to track calming/comforting sensations as well as sensations connected to arousal with the goal of identifying his/her resiliency zone.

GAME:  ANIMAL EXERCISE

Option 1:

1. Invite the child to imagine their favorite animal. What does the animal look like?  Ask them to describe their favorite animal. 
2. Ask them if they can imagine being their favorite animal. The adult facilitator can share his/her favorite animal and demonstrate.
3. As the children imagine being their favorite animal, what happens on the inside.
4. Notice the sensations of your animal moving in any way he/she wants.
5. Do it very slowly and when you move your body, notice what happens inside.
6. Bring your attention to sensations that feel calmer or more pleasant.

Option 2:

1. We can now make an animal out of play dough
2. The Adult Facilitator asks the child to share about their animal and as the child shares more details about his animal, he/she can be invited to be aware of sensations that are more pleasant or calm on the inside.
3. Let children know that we may get hurt, whether on the inside or outside, they can think about their favorite animal and pay attention to sensations that are more comfortable.