Today is World Arts Day and you know that we are very committed to how its strength and magic accompany and make our children with autism grow. You know that in the VICON Method Music is our best ally but today we want to make a special mention of other Creative Artistic Therapies that, although less known, are equally fantastic as a resource for growth in our children.

Music Therapy, Art Therapy, Dance Movement Therapy, Drama Therapy and Psychodrama. These artistic-creative therapies implicitly carry a different way of conceiving health and illness .

These forms of treatment are based on a holistic conception of the human being, more positive and comprehensive, in line with the definition of the World Health Organization in which illness is not so much the absence of health but rather the difficulty or inability to access health. own potential within the specific context in which the person lives, associated with a deprivation of physical, mental and social well-being. The creative artistic therapist knows how to empower people by humanizing the coexistence between them, making them protagonists of their time and space, their now and the destiny of their own lives.

In many countries around the world, creative arts therapies already have significant development as scientific and professional disciplines. In our case, the applications of art therapy for children is a truly exciting field, it seems that it is a field in which disabilities and abilities are not organized equally and allow us to be with everything that this entails. Children who do not have the ability to articulate their emotions and internal processes in words with the same ease as an adult. This is the reason why art therapy is an optimal resource for children to express their emotionality in a healthy and creative way.

All children can benefit from art therapy. It is especially beneficial for children with oral expression difficulties, such as children with developmental delays or autism, very shy children or children who have not yet mastered the language. It is also true that in children with language it can be a way to work on non-verbal language, creativity and artistic expressiveness. Art Therapies are also used by child psychologists as a therapeutic complement in the case of children who have gone through emotional trauma, abuse, catastrophes or family losses.

Working with artistic media reduces stress , improves mood and general disposition. It facilitates the child's communication and expressive abilities as well as increases serotonin levels in the brain, helping well-being and reducing anxiety.

With these disciplines we work to promote emotional and mental growth . Unlike art instruction, it develops life skills such as independence and collaboration. Art is an outlet for self-expression, imagination and creativity . The visual arts are very impactful and collaborate in cognitive development, visual and spatial orientation, fine motor skills and planning .

Art is a natural fit for autism , as it can help people with autism express themselves through images, while also being a relaxing activity. Face-to-face interactions, such as conversations, can be stressful for people with autism, making it difficult to understand what the individual is feeling or thinking. Many people with autism struggle with communication but most of them are visual thinkers .

Music Therapy: any musical activity, singing, dancing, listening to music, playing an instrument... brings all cognitive cavalry into play and stimulates practically all cognitive functions.

Art Therapy: painting with fingers, hands or feet, making a collage, modeling, sculpting... all contact with materials allows us to explore, do excellent sensory and sensitive work and promotes interaction with others and strengthens bonds . Even picking up one of those cameras that we have forgotten in a drawer can be a plastic resource that will not leave our little ones indifferent.

Dance Movement Therapy: how I walk, how I breathe, how I sit, whether I work on the floor, standing, in a chair or on a bed, everything gives unparalleled possibilities for bodily expression, if we add to all this the power of The music creates an exquisite combination that no child or adult can resist.

Psychodrama and Drama Therapy : they are disciplines that emerge from the same father but the therapeutic approach is different. Both encourage spontaneity, creativity and change. Their methods are not exclusive. How little we do theater and what more subtle and excellent benefits it awakens us, with puppets, with Chinese shadows, with our hands and a flashlight, with costumes with a curtain... it gives us the ideal setting to recreate a space of magic, surprise, scare or laughter …which will not only awaken the interest of our little ones but will put us in a different, creative and imaginative situation that will make us connect with them, with our audience in a spectacular way.

We know that we are not in an easy time to be able to attend good therapy in these disciplines but who is going to leave us behind and why not try some activity that has a different breath, that has another texture, another smell, another color... We encourage you to let your imagination fly because when it comes to art it is within us and our children, so take advantage of it to stimulate the growth of your attachment, encourage interaction and family fun?

Cristina Oroz Bajo