By Fatima Halloum
It’s not every day a young boy from the western suburbs gets to spend the afternoon away from school, celebrating the launch of his very own book.
But for 10-year-old Aryan, the achievement is incredibly bittersweet.
Following his parent’s separation last year, Aryan began seeing GenWest child and youth counsellor Elly, who would visit his school every Wednesday to help Aryan cope with the ongoing impacts of family violence.
“We prioritise creative arts therapies methods, for a number of reasons,“ Elly said.
“Kids might be at a developmental stage where simply talking about their experiences is not particularly helpful or meaningful.
“So we draw on a range of modalities and do a lot of play, art and music, and we’re passionate about the role of creativity in highlighting kids’ resources.“
Very early on, Elly noticed that Aryan found it difficult to discuss his experience of family violence and the young boy felt very protective of his dad.
“Alongside that, he was a highly creative child who loved drawing, loved writing stories,“ Elly said.
“He and I talked about how powerful it was for children with difficult experiences in childhood, [to have] resources that were written by other people who had gone through complex experiences.
“I asked him, ’would you one day like to create something that could be used for other kids going through family violence?’ and he said ’yes’, so immediately we began working on this book.“
The story is titled The Puppy’s Life, and in the preamble Aryan writes, “Aryan wrote this book because he wanted to show other kids that it’s OK to talk about family violence. And other kids also experience it.“
The book follows the life of a puppy, struggling with the complex emotions and questions that arise when parents separate due to family violence.
“When the puppy would hear his parents barking, it felt like thousands of animals in a stampede,“ Aryan wrote in his book.
“The puppy couldn’t make the stampede stop, he felt like he was lost in the middle.“
The pictures of the puppy decorating the pages of the book were also hand-drawn by Aryan.
“He illustrates very easily, he did like 10 or so pages in one session, and then we spent a lot of time finetuning the book itself and thinking about how he’d like for the book to be used,“ Elly said.
“It’s always incredibly powerful to see yourself or your experience represented – that’s what this book was about for Aryan.
“A message we particularly wanted the book to communicate was that ’all feelings are okay’, and that it is a really complicated experience going through family violence .. it is a rollercoaster. The book is about showing other kids that their feelings are valid.“
Details: www.genwest.org.au/resources/the-puppys-life/
