Craigan Usher
Dec 1, 2012
Citations
0
Influential Citations
1
Citations
Journal
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Abstract
w i t w a g a a l e t p n W hile reading children’s literature in our training program, my colleagues and I discovered that Katniss Everdeen, Bella Swan, and “Some Pig” are outstanding child psychiatric educators. Therefore, our novel approach to training includes a bookstore field trip, where we pair a faculty member from child and adolescent psychiatry who teaches development with a children’s literature expert. At the conclusion of this tour, we require child and adolescent psychiatry residents to read and review at least one children’s or young adult novel. We do this exercise to reinforce the power of fantasy and literature in the lives of the young people and parents with whom we work, to immerse child and adolescent psychiatry residents in the world of their patients, and because stories written for and about children and teens provide longitudinal “case” material, which can be essential for physicians in training who may have worked with children and families for only days or weeks and thus may not readily recognize links among the past, present, and future. During our tour, we stop first at infant board books. Here, among copies of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Good Night, Gorilla, we discuss the importance of primary caregivers taking time to read with their young children, noting that literacy correlates with book exposure and child– parent interaction. We also read a book aloud, watch children and parents do this in the infant/ toddler area, and explore the skills fostered and benefits derived from the experience of reading together—including physical intimacy, shared attention, the softening of a parent’s voice as he moves from talking mode to reading mode, and the stimulation of curiosity. When we move to books meant for toddlers and preschoolers, the residents begin to reflect on their own childhoods and those who are also parents on their experiences reading to their own