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Guesswork here. I’m not sure. There could be other angles I haven’t thought of.
Most successful authors of children’s books are parents. Good ones. They have close, loving relationships with their children and so a deep understanding of their child’s interests and responses. They use this in developing the characters, themes, and plots of the stories. Time shared in reading can nurture the bond between child and adult. And, with age appropriate books, it can help develop an enormous range of mental, emotional and ethical skills in the child. But we are talking here of well-adjusted relationships.
A psychologist is more likely to be called in after a family has reached a crisis. It usually means that the dynamics within the family have already been dysfunctional for a dangerously long time. So the psychologist’s job is different form that of the loving parent reading and writing children’s stories. She might ask the child to tell a story in his own words and illustrate it, or draw pictures and explain them, or play with dolls and toys and observe the scenes that the child creates. It is a complex process of discovering how the child observes, thinks and feels as a result of what happens every day at home, carefully avoiding suggesting anything by viewing unseen from behind a mirror window. The other members of the family must be interviewed and assessed to see how they all treat each other, what the dynamics are. Then the most difficult part begins… to gently show them what has been going wrong and why, and to win their willing cooperation to create change.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at November 2, 2016 1:36 AM MDT
