6 Ways Art Helps Kids De-Stress
There are six ways in which arts and crafts help promote healthy stress management. (Based on the article How Arts Helps Children Express Grief, by Crossroads Hospice- follow link for more information)
Arts and crafts allow children to communicate without using words.
Kids who have experienced unusual stress often find it challenging or even physically impossible to talk about their experiences and emotions. Trauma can directly interfere with the part of the brain that manages language capacity, impeding development and leaving children with limited capacity to communicate verbally.
Artistic expression engages parts of the brain that don’t rely on verbalization, so art can help them to find their voice, and know that what they have to say matters.Art also lets kids who may feel shy about their language skills or grasp of English, share their story and express themselves. We create to make sense of the world around us, and art helps give youth a voice even if they have trouble communicating verbally because of language barriers.
Arts and crafts provide space for children to communicate and collaborate.
Collaborative art projects give kids the opportunity to work toward something collectively, problem solving and creating as a team, and communicating their ideas effectively to be understood by others.
The ability to work well on a diverse team with different opinions and ideas and create a strong and cohesive final product is important in life and a sought after skill in the workforce today. Building critical “soft skills” like this are also especially impactful learning opportunities when creating with adults, to see these behaviors modeled.
Art is the perfect avenue for practicing collaboration because projects are often open ended, and there are no right or wrong answers- the perfect environment for exploring collaborative processes.
Arts and crafts help children feel in control.
Art projects give children choices and can help re-establish their sense of control. Stress and trauma are chaotic often involve a loss of control. Art projects can help children regain a sense of control over their actions by providing them with choices and control within a safe space.
Arts and crafts allow children to release their emotions and even learn to self regulate.
Art builds social-emotional skills: Social-emotional learning, or SEL, recognizes the importance of goals such as the ability to: set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and understand and manage emotions.
Art and creative self expression helps teach kids social-emotional skills because there are often no right answers and they are challenged to think in different ways than in other school subjects. In the classroom and beyond, social emotional skills have a huge impact on how kids move through the world, and interact with others and themselves.
These skills are what allow students to identify and regulate their emotions even when their environment is out of their control, and give them the ability to think through the outcome of a situation before moving reactively — like taking a step back and walking away instead of punching someone.
5. Arts and crafts help children express their thoughts on abstract ideas.
Children’s thoughts concerning abstract subjects, such as the afterlife or the distant future, may be difficult for them to explain verbally. Children can begin to concretely express their thoughts about abstract ideas, and how these thoughts apply to their grief, as they create their artwork.
6. Art lets kids have fun!
Art lets kids just be kids. An opportunity to create provides space for kids who are experiencing stress or tough circumstances to just have fun. The days of the kids like those we work with through our partners are often consumed with scary, adult problems, but art is a way for them to have fun and stretch their imagination.
Childhood is the time of life when we are naturally inclined to let our imagination get carried away drawing magical creations; writing silly stories; and performing without adult inhibitions. Art allows kids to dream and create and just have fun. For kids who experiencing traumatic stress, imagination is also an important skill that helps them imagine a positive future for themselves.
https://crhcf.org/Blog/how-arts-and-crafts-help-children-express-grief/