Sometimes your child shows you what they can't yet say through a drawing, a game, or a story they keep coming back to.
I'm joined by Professor Dominik Havsteen-Franklin, art therapist and Vice President of the European Federation of Art Therapy, to talk about play as the language children use before words, and what changes when a parent picks up a pen and joins in.
Dominik is Professor of Practice (Arts Therapies) at Brunel University London, where he leads research on the role of the arts in wellbeing and resilience, including a large-scale NIHR-funded trial on arts therapies. He continues to practise as an art psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in the NHS.
We talk about the line game, a drawing exercise Dominik uses with his own children, Edward Tronick's still face research on how parents and infants find each other, and what happens when a child's play becomes the way they make sense of what's hard to say.
We also get into:
- Drawing each other's portraits: what eye contact does that small talk can't
- Why a child's play often returns to the moment just before something difficult
- Bessel van der Kolk on feelings that get stuck, and where Dominik thinks they go next
- Dominik on the unconscious as a language we don't yet speak fluently
- Why drawing "in your own way" matters more than drawing it 'right'
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Originally published on Spotify.
