along better together. If we follow the rules not to steal other people’s things or to hurt others, we
get along better together. Rules exist for our safety and our well-being.
Then she might give them some egg cartons, sheets of cardboard, felt pens, plastic discs, and dice,
asking them to get into small groups and make up their own games but without any rules. It is not
long before the kids are calling to her, “Teacher, we can’t do it. How can we have a game without
rules? It’s impossible even to play without rules.”
STORY 64
SOMETIMES TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENTherapeutic Characteristics
Problems Addressed
■ When terrible things happen
■ Loss
■ Grief
■ Parental conflict
■ Parental separation
■ Lack of skills to manage troubled timesResources Developed
■ Accepting it is okay to grieve
■ Accepting some things cannot be changed
■ Learning to change the things that can be changed
■ Learning to look to the future
■ Making choices to influence the future
■ Discovering it is okay to feel good again
■ Accepting personal responsibility for changeOutcomes Offered
■ Optimism
■ Future-orientation
■ Self-determination
■ Control (in part) of your future
Steve loved watching cartoons, especially those about adventures in outer space. While watch-
ing them he wasn’t thinking about other things, like his pet dog, King, who had been run over by an
automobile just in front of their house. King had been his best friend. Steve could talk to him about
anything. He would sit there with his head on Steve’s lap, looking understandingly into Steve’s eyes
when his parents were having yet another fight. Not long after King died, his best human friend,
Danny, moved out of state when Danny’s father got a new job.
Steve often thought life wasn’t fair. He lay in bed at night, tears in his eyes, thinking how hor-
160 Healing Stories, Teaching Stories