Pretend You Are a Turtle: Children's Responses to Metaphorical versus Literal Relaxation Instructions

ABSTRACT

Despite the widespread use of metaphors to teach relaxation, there is no research to explore whether children prefer and/or respond better to metaphorical compared to literal instructions. Thus, our primary goal was to investigate preference for and compliance with literal versus metaphorical instructions commonly used to teach relaxation to children. We exposed 33 non-clinical preschool children to both literal (e.g., squeeze your shoulders up to your ears) and metaphorical (e.g., pretend you are a turtle going into its shell) instructions. We assessed preferences by asking children to identify their “favorite” exercise(s), and coded compliance with instructions. Our results show that all children preferred metaphors to literal instructions. Although there was no overall difference in compliance to either set of instructions, compliance was high with both sets of instructions, and boys were more compliant with whichever instruction set was administered first. Our findings also suggest that internalizing symptoms and higher levels of cognitive functioning are related to greater compliance with metaphors. We discuss clinical and research implications and make specific suggestions regarding the effective use of metaphors in child behavior therapy.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaphors
• relaxation training
• compliance
• child therapy