Art Therapy Activities Art Therapy for Children Coping With the Illness

I'm Deb shoemaker and I'm an art
therapist with integrated therapy
associates and I'm going to present to
you now some basic information about how
to help children using art therapy cope
with the illness of a parent my initial
approach is to create a safe place for
that person again I would do some
emotional literacy training in helping
that child identify their feelings
asking later on maybe some education
about the disease that their parent has
their might the child might have
questions about what what is that
disease or disorder or illness then
often there's the fear of the unknown
and for children sometimes that comes
out in other ways so I'll hear about
that maybe from the other parent or from
their parent or guardian privately maybe
about some kind of meltdown behaviors at
home or at school even and then
hopefully in art therapy the child will
have a chance to express their feelings
in their artwork about the fear and in
the beginning and then it becomes a
grief and loss issue again and and just
getting them not to keep it bottled up
inside and that was some basic
information about how art therapy can
help a child cope with the illness of a
parent