Nya Nallekort, Nya Björnkort, New Bears
Pris: 380:-
Det finns nu en ny version av de klassiska nallekorten som blivit en del av tusentals behandlares resurser. De nya nallekorten visar en store bredd av känslouttryck och är mer människolika. De är en perfekt resurs för socialarbetare, psykologer, psykoterapeuter, lärare, konsulter m fl. Björnkorten bygger på idén om att tala om känslor är något grundläggande för vårt känslomässiga och mentala välmående. Denna uppsättning av 48 olika kort är ett enkelt hjälpmedel för att identifiera och undersöka känslor. Frånvaron av text gör att korten kan användas med personer i alla åldrar, omständigheter och situationer. Man kommer snabbt på olika sätt att använda Björnkorten och hittar vägar till nya samtal. Björnkorten publicerades först 1992 och har fått en efterföljare i Nya Nallekort. Korten är laminerade och säljs i en pappkartong. Ett 42-sidigt texthäfte på engelska medföljer.
För mer information och tips se text nedan
The Bears cards are grounded on the principle that talking about feelings is one of the cornerstones of emotional and mental health.
The ‘new’ Bears Cards have a wider range of emotions, a new bear design, new colour pallette and a new booklet – all packed in a stronger polypropelene box for longer life.
In hospital
I am a counsellor at the Solaris Care Cancer Support Centre, based in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth. At this innovative centre, volunteer therapists provide a range of complementary therapies and professional counselling free to people with cancer and their families. At a recent day for carers of people with serious illness, we used two St Luke’s resources.
As part of a section on feelings, we put out The Bear Cards and asked participants to choose a card representing a feeling they had recently experienced. Each person then told us all a little about the feeling, what it related to and what they did about it. We found this to be a very gentle and non-threatening way to encourage honest sharing between people who were often practised in stoically concealing their feelings, even from themselves. People responded to each other with spontaneous words and gestures of empathy and support.
At the end of the day we put out the Strength Cards and asked people to choose one to represent a strength they had and one representing something they were working to strengthen. This activity was an opportunity for self-validation and for hope and led seamlessly into each person saying what they would most remember and had learnt from the Carers’ Day.
Jill Lawson, Counselling Psychologist
One-on-one counselling
I am a professional counsellor. I was working with a male client who came to me with a bag full of issues. He had difficulty trying to express how he really felt about the problems that were troubling him.
We worked through situations and during this time he learned new skills to enable him to change circumstances. We progressed through the sessions but there was obviously an issue hidden in the background of everything.
So at the beginning of the next session I gave him The Bear Cards to look at and I asked him to choose bears to say how he felt.
Using this resource enabled him to confront an issue that had remained hidden from his childhood. We were then able to work through it.
Since experiencing the positive outcome my client achieved using The Bears, I have stocked my practice’s bookshelf with more items from the Innovative Resources range. I have seen time after time that it has been of benefit to my clients and to me to have these resources at my finger tips.
John V. Furphy
Bears as magnets
During our last school holiday program in Eaglehawk, we ran an afternoon of activities with about 40 local kids. One of the activities involved drawing pictures of ourselves and decorating them, including the use of The Bears stickers.
Another activity was making fridge magnets using pegs. One young girl quite independently decided to make her own magnet design, stuck the stickers on the magnets, then cut the magnets to match the size of the stickers. She then proceeded to give a magnet to every person in the group, asking them to select the one they most liked.
So, it’s quite possible that there are a lot of fridges in the Eaglehawk neighbourhood adorned with Bear sticker magnets. I thought this was quite beautiful, demonstrating her creativity and generosity. So, if you ever decide to produce Bear magnets, remember a certain young girl from Eaglehawk.
Julie Cairns, Program Manager, Community Capacity Building Team.
In training sessions
I particularly like using Innovative Resources’ cards at the beginning of a training session as I feel that is a critical time to model behaviours and initiate group bonding. I am very mindful of this important time and work hard to make sure all participants feel safe and comfortable within this new group environment. It sets the scene for the rest of the day.
The Bears cards used for this activity are invaluable. They are so versatile, friendly, quirky and unassuming which adds to their charm and usability in an infinite number of ways. I’ve used them to check out feelings, particularly at the beginning of training, as it’s useful knowing what ‘baggage’ is being brought to the session; sometimes I use projections of how they would like to feel and the stages needed to achieve their goal.
The simplicity of the cards is not to be undervalued as they carry huge messages around the issue of change that some people find incredibly daunting. Having the cards to use and work with adds a very different dimension to the training. They are visual, effective and informal, yet powerful.
Judith Holloway – Freelance Trainer, Worcestershire, UK.
Bears chart family tree
Heather Bryant works for The James Family as a social worker in Schools* in Rotorua, Aotearoa/New Zealand. She finds that using The Bears cards when meeting with children for the first time is a fun way to get to know their family (Whakapapa /family tree). Children identify who is important to them, as well as a little more about their relationships, when discussing the reason for choosing the particular Bear card they chose for family members.
Children often like to take copies of their family tree home (a digital camera is handy for this). This often generates conversations with family members when reflecting on the pictures together.
One young client who Heather had met for the first time was struggling with reintegrating with her family after living most of her life with relatives. After creating her family tree she wanted to take it home. She returned to the next session saying that her family ‘had changed already’. The family tree had been a non-threatening way of sharing her perceptions and feelings about relationships with family members.
*Social Workers in Schools is a joint early intervention initiative of The Departments of Child Youth and Family and Education.
Breaking down language barriers
Julie MacKenzie is a social worker with the State Coroner’s Office (Victoria), working in the area of grief and loss. Recently Julie was involved in counselling a woman who, while visiting her family in Australia, had suffered a traumatic bereavement. While many of the extended family members were fluent speakers of English, the young woman was unable to speak English at all. A family member could act to a certain degree as translator, but was concerned about the needs of the young woman to sufficiently express her sense of grief and loss.
It was only at the beginning of the session that Julie realised it was going to be impossible to converse in English. She reached for the pack of Bear Cards that she always carries with her and spread them out on the table. Through the translator she invited the young woman to select some of the cards that expressed how she was feeling.
‘Her first reaction was a huge smile as she connected with the Bear characters,’ Julie said. ‘She sat and studied the cards and then selected three of them. With the help of the translator and using the Bear images she was able to communicate how she was feeling.
‘I think just being able to pick out the cards and show them to us was a big communication in and of itself. The Bears were another way to tap into feelings more accurately and break down the barriers of language. The extended family members were impressed that counselling could include such a creative form of communication beyond words.’
Bears in Uganda
Though I was unsure that they would work in Africa, I remember our first use of The Bears.
They were laid out on a table at the back of our meeting room ready to ‘do their stuff’. Participants were invited to circle the table and then, when everybody had had an opportunity to see all the cards, choose a Bear that reflected their feelings. They were then invited to share with their spouse in a time of reflection and ‘couples enhancement’.
None of them had experienced this before. They circled the table pensively and then one made the mistake of selecting a card prematurely. The ‘wrath’ of the group fell upon them. Do not break the group rules in Africa! We joked about a suitable Bear for the perpetrator and the ice broke.
They began interpreting the feelings attached to the cards for each other and reserving particular ones for themselves. It was as if the cards gave them permission and a focus to talk about their feelings with each other. I was watching this and wondered what an on-looker would think of the animation, laughter and bubbling conversation around a table with a few Bear cards.
During the couples conversations one man began to offer his wife of over twenty years a verbal bridge into his world. The protective walls of rigidity, sternness and control were slowly, haltingly breached. He invited his wife into the vulnerable areas of his inner world. He stumbled to grasp at words that would convey the impotence he felt when he came home with little and was confronted with her list of legitimate needs.
She was stunned by his unaccustomed honesty and candour. Her heart responded and she voiced her longing to be involved in his world; to bring to him her gifts of diligence, hard work, resourcefulness—not in a demanding way, but as an offering to him. She wanted to be seen by him as someone of worth and value, as someone to love and include in their fragile existence together. The conversation had started with brittleness but as the words were found, a listening was made. The look in their eyes said it all. For perhaps the first time in their relationship they had truly heard each other. They had given themselves a precious gift—the gift of listening and intimacy.
Barry Davis, Wesley Institute, Sydney
Bears attend a conference
During 1999 The Bears had the privilege of attending the Australian Forum for Social Justice Conference.
Jacinta Lithgow (Executive Officer, Good Shepard Social Justice, Melbourne) took The Bears to a conference entitled ‘Imagine That: Living Justly Through Memory, Story and Imagination: An invitation to explore a new perspective.’
Participants were introduced to The Bears on the Friday night and were invited to choose a Bear that they came with, but which they wanted to leave aside for the weekend. Once chosen, these Bears were put outside the circle.
People then chose a Bear that they wanted to discover or be for the weekend. These Bears were brought into the circle and for the rest of the weekend everyone wore the sticker for their Bear. Any newcomers went through the same process as well. On the Sunday morning everyone became their Bear for a group photo!
Jacinta said ‘I also took along the Strength Cards. I wasn’t sure why-just in case. We used them after a story telling session about East Timor. This had been pretty heavy and we needed to move on to something more hopeful. The Strength Cards were introduced as The Bears’ friends. They were passed around the group-the cards ‘choosing’ a person randomly. When they were all handed out, we began a spiral-a spiral of strength. People came forward, named their strength and placed it in the spiral. There was lots of laughter and we built a really nice place to move on from.’
The Bears as picturebook illustrations
Debra Kitic works with the Department of Education, Training, Community and Cultural Development in Wynyard, Tasmania. She sent us a story written by a Grade 2 child with whom she was working. Stacey had had a difficult time during the illness and hospitalisation of a younger sibling. She was normally a bouncy articulate little girl who had little trouble expressing her feelings and who loved to write stories.
Debra decided to use The Bears with her and found them really useful in enabling Stacey to talk about her feelings about her sibling’s illness. She and Debra wrote the story together and Stacey chose a Bear to illustrate each page. She also shared her story with her class which brought an added dimension to the experience.
‘I find The Bears help younger kids talk about difficult things in a fun way,’ Debra said. I would normally use them with less articulate kids so it was great to find that Stacey enjoyed using them too.
(Names and details have been changed to maintain confidentiality)
Bears, babies and Bucharest
At a meeting of the Australian Breastfeeding Association (formerly The Nursing Mothers Association) six years ago, Nicky Partridge was introduced to some cuddly little characters. No, not the bunch of bouncing babies that were also present for the meeting, but The Bear cards-just as cute, almost as cuddly but decidedly more hairy.
The facilitator spread all the cards out and asked the mothers to select three that expressed how they were feeling now, and three that showed what they would like to be feeling more of in future. It was a case of love at first sight for Nicky; she fell for The Bears straightaway and since this simple lounge-room introduction they have become her globe-trotting companions. They recently travelled with her to Bucharest in Romania:
‘I used The Bears at the end of a training as a way of encouraging people to express how they were feeling. I placed all the cards in a circle on the floor and we all stood around the edge. I asked everyone to select a card that represented how they were feeling.
Each person then introduced their Bear and described how they were feeling. Words like happy, joyful and excited were used and also overwhelmed, tired, and sad that the training was coming to an end.
I really love The Bears. They are a great way to reach closure. There are so many reasons for this, I think. Firstly, the Bears have no words. This is great for bridging the language barrier. Also using the Bears is such a non-threatening way to express feelings. People are exposing their feelings but they are doing it standing behind a Bear.
The Bear characters are so light-hearted and fun. They are also a relatively quick way to get people talking about and reflecting upon feelings. Also, I really like how physical using them can be. Activities that involve standing and moving around can be created with the cards.
The Bears go to University
The Bears were discovered playing on the page of the University of Queensland’s prospectus for students of Social and Behavioural Sciences. We asked Catherine Young, Marketing and Communications Office for the Department, how they came to be there. This is the background information that Catherine generously offered us:
‘The Bears cards are used within seminars where social work students are learning the skills of counselling and group work. In this particular exercise they were being used to introduce the concept of reflection of feelings, because they each represent a feeling and the images assist students to find a richer vocabulary to accurately identify various feelings in people.
‘I have also used The Bears to help students who are role-playing a client to tell their ‘story’ by choosing a card to represent their feelings at different times in the life event. Having resources like The Bears provides variety in teaching, and gives students ideas for their later work. Several students have borrowed my set to use in group activities on field placement.’
Bears in the classroom
The classroom teacher of Prep and Grade 1 and 2 asked me to take the children in groups of four and do an activity with them so that I could pick up on any speech problems.
I used The Bears cards, shuffling these on the floor and asking each child to choose three. We looked at them one by one and decided what the Bear was feeling and saying. I would look at that Bear and say what I was feeling and each child would follow what I’d said. This way I was able to pick up on any speech problems, other than just pronunciation or grammar that was developing.
I was amazed that this pack of Bears brought out such animation in these youngsters, some of whom, three days into their very first days of school were not saying much at all. The children imitated the Bears beautifully in their facial expressions, their hand and body gestures and their speech. It was also very interesting watching what cards each child chose and for what reason. The happy little girls chose happy bears with smiles on their faces and cards that were bright yellow, etc.
One little boy who gave the impression that he didn’t really want to be a part of the activity chose two Bears that had their backs turned. I made the suggestion that maybe these Bears were a bit rude for not paying attention. His interpretation was that the Bears were in fact shy. When I looked at his reasonings I realised that he had perhaps chosen himself in these cards. He was in fact shy and not sure of himself and his environment. Even so, he was able to express his feelings via the Bears.
What an incredible tool to be able to use in activities and to also help to read and understand the young children in today’s busy and sometimes confusing world.
Janice Brawn, Integration Aide, Lucknow Primary School, Bairnsdale.
Working with families
I used The Bears with a mother and her four daughters. The girls aged 3, 8, 11, and 13 had been removed from home for protective reasons. The eight-year-old in particular had been the subject of neglect and abuse. After some time, three of the children were returned home and I was asked to assess the appropriateness of returning the 8-year-old to the mother’s care.
One of the issues was that no matter how well we could put pen to paper regarding a genogram, the mother was unable to explore her family of origin with me. Even talking about her own mother and father was very difficult and often raised her own feelings of being abandoned and neglected. It was clear that some part of her parenting of her four children was related to her own childhood.
One of the strengths of this mother was that, even when all the children were removed, she found the inner and outer resources to paint and wallpaper the house including the children’s bedrooms. This gave me an idea and the next day I took The Bears out to the mother’s home. I introduced The Bears as a way of looking at the woman’s family as she saw it rather than trying to gather information for a genogram which was an unfamiliar concept.
As soon as she saw The Bears her eyes lit up and she began to laugh. She seemed to feel at ease with them and was prepared to give them a go.
We spent four sessions together placing The Bears on the kitchen table. In some ways this did not seem real, yet she was able to describe her family of origin as if she was telling a children’s story – incredible. It felt neither threatening nor disrespectful and was at times very powerful. The mother could see some similarities with her own parenting and also some comforting differences. What was important was that this was the beginning and that the journey once started could now not be stopped.
I gave the mother a copy of The Bears so that she could keep them as a sort of photo album. The 8-year-old was returned to her care about three months later and is still at home. The mother wrote to me some weeks later to say thank you, acknowledging that she has a long way to go, but that the journey is made easier knowing that there are people to help and to listen to her.
Joe Fleming – Social Worker WA
Family Sculpting
Ally is a six-year-old girl who was struggling to make sense of her family situation. She was living with relatives because of issues of physical and emotional abuse within her own family. The counsellor found that Ally could talk about the abuse but had difficulty talking of her feelings about being separated from her mother and siblings. It seemed from her behaviour that she was experiencing some confusion and sadness.
The counsellor spread The Bears on the floor and invited Ally to choose a card for everyone in the family. She chose a sad and frightened Bear for her mum and sad Bears for her siblings. Her carers were represented by ‘comfy, huggy’ Bears. Dad was an angry Bear and was placed apart from the other Bears. Ally said she did not want him close by as he ‘hurts us all the time’. When invited to choose a Bear for how she would like the family to be, Ally chose happy Bears and talked about the family being united again. She said she wanted to be with her mum and siblings and live close to her relatives. Dad was still represented by an angry Bear and Ally said, ‘We don’t want him near us. We can be happy without him’.
Tricia Steele, Social Worker, Inglewood & District Health Service
At the dinner table
Kevin Fitzgerald is a businessman from Melbourne, Australia. One day, in response to the exasperation he was experiencing while trying to have a dinner table conversation with his children, he invented a simple ritual. Everyone at the table was invited to share three short stories over the meal – the best, worst and funniest thing that had happened that day.
This incredibly simple ritual so transformed the evening meal with his family that Kevin had the words ‘best, worst, funniest’ printed on the back of his business cards. Now he enjoys sharing this simple idea with others and sometimes uses the same ritual to begin meetings and open group conversations.
The best rituals, like the best meetings, are often the simplest and this one, we know from our own experience, works brilliantly.
And you can add to it by using The Bears:
Can you choose three Bears, each of which represents the best, worst and funniest thing that has happened today or this week, or in whatever time frame you like?
Used as visual metaphors in this way, The Bears can help participants remember parts of the story they might otherwise have forgotten and act as reminders for how they were feeling at the time.