This study intends to report the cases helpful to wisely cope with and troubleshoot lots of difficulties in home, school, church community by improving the low self-esteem and sociability of children in divorced family with fine arts therapy and thus ...
This study intends to report the cases helpful to wisely cope with and troubleshoot lots of difficulties in home, school, church community by improving the low self-esteem and sociability of children in divorced family with fine arts therapy and thus to suggest the way to help the children in same needs.
2 children participating in this study, Child A and B are siblings and 8-year-old girls as pupils at 2nd grade in elementary school respectively. In home and church community, 2 children often read their mom's face with keeping her unseparable. They are also left out in the cold from their comrades in church and school community, even showing the attitude of speechless nodding to the question of teachers. Upon the first visit to church, they were speechless and expressed their mind with nodding or shaking their head until next 3 months.
After 3 months, they also expressed little of voluntary speech or actions. Due to these problems, the test was proposed to this researcher and it was performed for 2 hours at 2 times per week (totally 19 times) from November, 2001. After fine arts therapy, 2 children had an enhanced self-esteem and sociability in home, school and church community respectively as follows:
First, the picture projection test showed that child A and B recovered psychological stability at home with higher self-esteem and activity energy. And both of them had a confidence in school life with playing their own role. According to the behavioral observation, 2 children recovered their own confidence in home and church community without reading their mom's face, which showed their improved self-esteem. In the analysis of writing test, the self-esteem of child A and B had higher scores after fine arts therapy than before the therapy.
Second, the picture projection test showed that child A had more facilitated interaction with her mother. In school life, her identity and psychological stand were also restored. Although not yet completely opening to external world, child B can also give us a positive expectation. Child B had a stable affection to her family and mother with her own role recovered in family relationship. According to behavioral observation, child A and B became less shy in both church and home with better expression and brighter faces, which warrants their enhanced sociability. In analysis of writing test, both children had higher score in sociability after fine arts therapy than before the therapy. In order to get over the limitation of case study, 3 questionnaire tests were done besides picture comprehension and 3 behavioral observation by 3 persons except therapist. However, there are some limitations as follows:
First, it is a case study targeting 2 subjects so that it is difficult to generalize the result of this study.
Second, there is no consideration of variable factors for any change according to developmental phase of children.
Based on these results and limitations, I hope that there will be the development of more various fine arts therapy programs with follow up studies around this field.