Opening Channels for Expression
By Matilda Raffa Cuomo and Deborah E. Lans

In a group of 21 7-13 year olds, working with their mentors (judges, lawyers and other court personnel), picture book stories about family, friends, trips, summer vacations and school prevail. But one girl, 8 years old, creates a book about the twin towers and the destruction there.

Lead by Robert Quackenbush, a psychoanalyst and author of 170 children’s books who is one of a number of art therapists working with Mentoring USA, the youth and mentors presented to the group the 12-page story books each pair had drawn during the mentoring session. Talking about the drawings gave each participant an opportunity to describe the story and the emotions surrounding the events pictured. The 8-year-old, could express feelings about a terrifying event she had seen repeatedly on television and which had touched in a variety of ways, her Lower East Side neighborhood.

Experts agree that children often communicate some of their most profound and difficult thoughts and emotions through art and symbols — ones which they often cannot express verbally. And adults, sensitive to the messages and process, can communicate reassurance through symbols as well as words in response.

By offering youth the opportunity to work one-to-one with their mentors, talking about their stories with trusted adults, and then to share their stories with a group, Mentoring USA provides a project through which the group can bond and support the individuals as they express their concerns.

Both goals are important at this time of uncertainty. Adults must offer children opportunities to ask questions about recent events and, in turn, to address their fears and anxieties, offer reassurance and correct misinformed and frightening rumors.

Group discussion also allows a chance to put recent events into the perspective of traumas – both personal and societal – through which the mentors have lived, and from our own history, to allow us all to remember the various difficulties we have overcome. The arts, because they open up different channels for expression, often indirectly, have a crucial role to play in the ongoing healing and coping we all must experience.

Matilda Cuomo is the Founder and Chairperson of Mentoring USA and Deborah Lans is the Executive Director

Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel: (212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2001.