I learned so much from reading book Margot Sunderland’s book Using Storytelling as a Therapeutic Tool with Children (2000 published by Routledge). She explains that when it comes to feelings and emotions, children’s natural language is that of metaphors, stories, and imagery rather than words. She explains that when children can identity with the feelings of a character in the story, it helps them to process and work through their own emotions.
Young children often want to re-read their favourite stories, or ask to have their favourite story read to them. Or them may just want to hold their special book, flip the pages and look at the pictures, and sometimes they enjoy having their parent or teacher re-tell a story in their own words or with puppets or toys.
A feeling that many preschoolers have to work through when starting preschool is that of missing mummy or daddy while they go to work. They are in a new setting, their concept of time is very different from grown ups, and they don’t have a lot of prior experience to fall back on to reassure themselves that mummy or daddy will come back.
One story that I have read with preschoolers over and over is Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, published in 1992 by Walker Books Ltd. Preschool children love this simple story as they are able to identify with the experience and emotions of the baby owls in the story whose mother has gone way. These little owls experience feeling scared, sad, worried, impatient, and finally they end up comforting each other. I especially love the joyful smiles and happy reactions that never fail to come to the children’s faces when we all finally turn to the page where mother owl comes back to her owl babies.
In the early stages of starting preschool, children need a bit of time to gain their own life experiences to feeling assured that their parents will always come back for them. After the first days and weeks that they settle in to preschool or kindergarten, start to make friends, gain confidence, then, soon enough time seems to fly by as they are busy happily playing. Because they now feel assured that indeed their parents will always come back for them.