A Safe Place: ways in which nature, play and creativity can help children cope with stress and crisis – establishing the kindergarten as a safe haven where children can develop resiliency

Abstract

This article presents a way in which the innovative Nature Therapy conceptual framework coupled with creative therapeutic methods can help children develop resilience and support their coping with uncertainty and stress. It refers to the Safe Place programme that took place in 110 Israeli kindergartens, helping over 6000 children after the Second Lebanese War. It is based Ayalon and Lahad’s 2000 BASIC PH integrative model of ‘resiliency’ highlighting the importance of the kindergarten in such development and challenging the tendency to use the kindergarten as a deductive, preparatory course for school and schooling only. The article integrates theory with examples from practice which can help readers to incorporate them into their own work.

Keywords:

• Nature therapy
• trauma
• resilience
• stress
• creativity
• Nature

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank and express my gratitude to Viviana Melman and Sarah Horodov for their comments on this article and on the Safe Place programme described in it; to all the group counsellors and kindergarten teachers who participated in the Safe Place programme; and to the Israeli Trauma Coalition – for without its subsidy this programme could not have been carried out.

Notes

1. Safe Place is a joint programme of the Nature Therapy Center and the Community Stress Prevention Center (CSPC), certified by the Educational‐Psychological Services and the Ministry of Education, and subsidised by the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC).

2. In this article, we distinguish between PTSD and a traumatic experience. The former is an anxiety disorder consisting of psychological‐physical‐social clinical symptoms. A person continues to experience a crisis even long after it is over, as if it is going on in the present. PTSD symptoms harm one’s functioning and the quality of his life in general. The latter, the traumatic experience, is a normal reaction phenomenon that one experiences after a crisis event. The symptoms are supposed to disappear within two to three months. If they do not, one might suspect post‐trauma (Lahad & Doron, 2007; Noy, 2000).