Therapeutic tales, difficulty by difficulty

Most advice about therapeutic stories stops at the principles. Match the protagonist to the child's world, validate the fear, give the protagonist agency, leave the moral unstated. All true, and none of it tells you what to write on a Tuesday evening for a seven-year-old whose grandmother died in March.

This page goes the other way round. It starts from the difficulty, names what the child is usually afraid of underneath it, and offers an archetype built to carry that fear. Seven difficulties, the ones that bring parents to this form most often.

A word on where the archetypes come from, because it matters on a page like this. Molicka's bajkoterapia documents its own set and matches them to their own difficulties: the brave small animal, the wise elder, the parent who is absent and returns, set against hospital stays, the dark, separation and a new sibling. The bibliotherapy literature matches existing picture books to a child's situation. Neither one supplies the seven carriers below. Those are ours, built to the pattern those traditions describe, and offered as craft rather than as findings. Swap any of them for an image that fits your child better.

How to read an entry

Each entry has the same three parts, and the middle one does the work.

What the child fears is rarely the event. A child whose parents are separating is not usually frightened of a legal arrangement; she is frightened that she caused it, or that love is a thing that can stop. Write a tale about the event and you write past her. Write a tale about the fear and she recognises it before the second page.

The carrier is the archetype: the situation, structurally the same as hers, that the story happens to instead. Its job is distance. Close enough that she recognises the shape, far enough that she can look at it.

What the tale must do is the one move that entry cannot skip. Everything else in the story is yours.

How the age bands change the shape

Three to six wants a concrete carrier, a short tale, and a resolution that arrives before the end. Six to ten can hold a longer plot and a protagonist less like herself, and needs the protagonist to act rather than be rescued. Ten and up sees through the allegory, which does no harm, and can take an ending that leaves a question open. Each entry notes where it moves.

Divorce or separation

What the child fears. That she caused it. That the parent who left can leave again, or leave her. That love turns out to be conditional, and she has not been told the condition.

The carrier. Two harbours and a boat that belongs at both. Not a broken home, not a house split down the middle: an arrangement with two places in it, where the boat is expected and kept at each. The point of the image is that belonging is doubled rather than halved.

What the tale must do. Put the cause somewhere the protagonist plainly could not have reached. Weather, tide, a decision made by the harbours. A child listening for whether she did this will hear the answer in where you put the cause, not in a reassurance at the end.

By age. Three to six needs both harbours shown as warm and the boat visiting both inside the tale. Ten and up can take a boat that is angry about the arrangement, which is often the more useful story.

The death of someone close

What the child fears. That the person is gone and no adult will say plainly where. Younger children often fear it is reversible and they are failing to reverse it; older ones fear that forgetting is coming and that forgetting is a betrayal.

The carrier. A keeper of something that continues. A light that is passed on, a seed from a tree that fell, a song somebody still knows. The continuity has to be real inside the story rather than a consolation offered at the end.

What the tale must do. Not undo the death. A tale that brings the grandmother back as a star is doing something gentler than it looks: it teaches that the loss was not final, and the child has to unlearn that later. Let the loss stand and give the protagonist something they carry.

By age. Three to six needs the fact stated once, concretely, without euphemism, because "went to sleep" makes bedtime frightening. Six to ten can hold the protagonist's anger. Ten and up can be left with the question of what is owed to the dead, unanswered.

A new sibling

What the child fears. Displacement. His worry is arithmetic rather than rivalry: a fixed quantity of love has been divided, and his share has fallen.

The carrier. A second lantern lit from the first, which does not dim it. Or a nest that is rebuilt bigger rather than shared out. The structural claim is about supply, and the image has to make that claim without a sentence explaining it.

What the tale must do. Give the older protagonist something that is his because he is older, and let him choose to use it. The tale fails if the older sibling's reward for being displaced is being told he is a good big brother.

By age. Three to six wants the lantern literal and the tale short. Six to ten can carry resentment for most of the story and resolve late. Ten and up rarely needs this one.

Hospital, a procedure, or a diagnosis

What the child fears. Being done to. The loss of say over her own body, in a place whose rules she does not know, possibly without the parent in the room.

The carrier. A small creature who goes into an unfamiliar place carrying a map, meets the inhabitants, learns their names, and comes home. The map matters: it is the piece that converts an ambush into a journey.

What the tale must do. Name the frightening thing accurately, in the story's own terms. A tale that skips the needle teaches that the story cannot be trusted about the parts that matter, which is the opposite of what you need on the morning of the procedure.

By age. Three to six needs the sequence in order, because the fear is largely of the unknown order of events. Six to ten can take the protagonist being frightened and going anyway. Ten and up wants accuracy above comfort, and will forgive a hard detail before a false one.

The dark

What the child fears. What the darkness might contain, and the fact that he cannot check.

The carrier. A creature whose eyes work differently at night, meeting the ones who live there. The dark becomes an inhabited place with its own ordinary residents rather than an absence full of possibility.

What the tale must do. Populate the dark. Emptiness is what the imagination fills; a dark with a known badger in it has less room. Resist giving the protagonist a light, which solves the night by ending it.

By age. Three to six is the centre of this one. Six to ten can meet something in the dark that is startling before it is ordinary. Ten and up has usually moved on to fears with fewer edges.

Being hurt by other children

What the child fears. Being small. Being alone in it. That telling an adult will make it worse, which is often a reasonable prediction rather than a distortion.

The carrier. A protagonist whose problem has the same shape in a different setting, and who is not an obvious stand-in. A fox who is being hunted is too close. A fox who is the only one of her kind at a crossing, whom the others will not let pass, is the right distance.

What the tale must do. Let the protagonist tell someone, and let that go well. This is the one place where the tale is allowed to model an outcome rather than a feeling, because the child's own prediction is the obstacle.

By age. Six to ten is where this lands most. Ten and up needs the ally to be a peer rather than an adult, or the story stops being about them.

Before you write it. Ongoing harm is a safeguarding matter first and a storytelling one second. A tale is what you offer alongside an adult doing something about it, never instead. That is our line rather than a citation, and who can benefit is where the wider boundaries and the helpline numbers are.

Moving house

What the child fears. That the known place held part of her, and she is leaving it behind rather than carrying it. For older children, being nobody in a place where everyone already knows each other.

The carrier. A creature who moves shell and carries it. Snail, hermit crab, a bird rebuilding with material from the old nest. The image has one job: to say that some of what she is comes with her.

What the tale must do. Move one specific, named thing from the old place to the new one inside the story. Not the idea of home. A cup, a stone, a way of doing an evening.

By age. Three to six needs the object literal and present. Six to ten can hold the grief for the old place without the tale hurrying it. Ten and up is more concerned with the social arrival than the leaving, and the tale should follow.

When the index is the wrong tool

The seven above are difficulties that pass through a childhood. They are not the same as a child in ongoing danger, in acute crisis, or carrying something a clinician should be treating. For those, a bedtime tale is not the intervention and this page is not the reference. Who can benefit names the boundary carefully and lists where to call.

What a finished tale looks like

If the difficulty is clear and the blank page is the obstacle, read a whole one before you write. FamRoots publishes ten healing tales in full, no account needed, each short enough to read in a sitting. Read them for the shape rather than as answers to this index: they are not keyed to the difficulties above, several are written for adults, and four of the ten are in Polish.

The anatomy of a healing tale covers the four moves in order. If you would rather not start from a blank page at all, FamRoots writes the tale from a short intake and emails it when it is ready; the first three are free and it asks for no card.