Book of the Month August 2020 - The Scared Gang are Asked to Tell

​The Scared Gang Are Asked To Tell - How to Enable Narrative Expression and Affect Regulation by Éadaoin Bhreathnach and illustrated by Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell.

Éadaoin Bhreathnach, consultant occupational therapist, attachment counsellor and creator
of Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) has produced this pack as the latest in her series
about ‘The Scared Gang’. It comprises five A4 booklets which are easy to read and
illustrated with the familiar series characters.

The first booklet is written for professionals to introduce the pack and is entitled ‘How to
Enable Narrative Expression and Affect Regulation’. It sets the context for the pack’s
creation for children who are being asked to talk about difficult things, arising from Éadaoin
being asked to run training for the NSPCC Young Witness Service in Northern Ireland.

It goes on to identify the symptoms traumatised children who are being asked to talk about
their traumatic experiences may show, including impulsivity, increased activity levels,
aggression, dissociation and loss in muscle tone. It is highlighted how important it is that
the adults around the children are monitoring these symptoms and behaviours and learning
ways to help neurobiologically regulate them.

The books are intended to be a resource for professionals to read with children to help
them understand how stress might make them behave as well as to help professionals learn
how to create a safe regulating space for them. This section then breaks down how to read
the four other books – The Waiting Room, The Playroom, The Last Visit and Little Tools to
Stay Calm – clarifying that they do not need to be read in any particular order and
suggesting ways to build a regulating “tool kit” and encouraging each child to join the
professional in this process.

Éadaoin recommends a pathway of meeting the child first and building a rapport before
introducing the books, using snacks and regulating tools in the sessions and pausing to make relevant links for the child between what might be going on for them and for the Scared Gang characters.

The final section breaks down what each book does and how the therapist might support
the child in each area – the waiting room, play room and last visit - being “an enabler” who
helps them follow their inner drive for regulation. It is made clear the therapist only
intervenes “when she anticipates the activity may activate anxious behaviour” and would
then steer the child towards regulating activities.

Finally, creating a ‘Regulating Tool Book’ for each child is discussed and Éadaoin strongly
states the importance of adults helping the child find their own subjective narrative as is the
process in Éadaoin’s ‘Just Right State Programme for Children’. She warns of the dangers of
adults passing on their bias and influencing the child’s subjective experience. This is a tricky
area as we make sense of our experiences within secure attachment relationships of which
traumatised children have rarely experienced in their early lives, if ever. I wonder if a
traumatised child may struggle to find the words or even images to construct a narrative on
their own and whether it might have been helpful here to be clearer about the role of the 
adult, highlighting the value of “borrowing an adult brain” in order to co-create meaning
with the child around their sensory experiences, alongside highlighting, as this guide does,
the importance of allowing the child’s story to come through.

The booklets are written in a young child-friendly way (I would say approximately 4 – 10
years as a rough guide which clearly relates less chronologically with traumatised children)
and each cover a topic: ‘Little Tools to Help Stay Calm’ gives some sensory suggestions for
kids with different needs such as chewy jewellery for dissociative Frozen Florence, a stretchy
band around Run- Away Ronnie’s legs and for Fired-up Freda I particularly liked the idea of a
spiky mat to dig her fingers into instead of digging them into herself.

‘The Waiting Room’ booklet describes the likely behaviours traumatised children might
display when in an anxious place. The dissociative types like Day-Dreamy Derek and Sleepy
Sue zoning out or even dropping off to sleep and the more physically activated children like
Run-away Ronnie zooming around the room. I felt this booklet is likely to be most useful to
the adults accompanying the children so that they might recognise the behaviours and help
the children make sense of the feelings driving them and know how to help them with
those.

‘The Playroom’ booklet helps children understand what might happen when they have a
sensory therapy session. I enjoyed the description of the regulating capacity of different
foods and how each child tends to show what their body needs – Fired-Freda likes to hang
and stomp on an air cushion, Day-Dreamy Derek likes the tent and rocking horse, Frozen
Florence likes to draw on a blackboard and use a sit-in cone called a ‘rock-a-round’. I could
see how this section would help children to understand themselves and also again suspect
that the adults might benefit most from these descriptions, particularly adults who work
with groups of children in schools, health, care and therapeutic settings.

‘The Last Visit’ describes the SAI therapist telling each child their sensory story which she
has observed from their behaviours and encouraging them to make their own book of
sensory needs, highlighting that adults do not always understand what is going on for
traumatised children and what they might need. It ends with the words “They all sat down
quietly and concentrated on writing their own book” which, if it reflects some of the
feedback Éadaoin has received following wider use of this approach, I was very impressed
by!

Whilst this pack is not created to be an in-depth guide to sensory work with traumatised
children, I would recommend it for those seeking some simple, child-friendly, how-to ideas
on supporting with the sensory needs of traumatised children in potentially stressful
settings.

Sez Morse MA UKCP
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist
DDP Practitioner, Consultant & Trainer