A sharing of Journeys
JAne's Journey
Jane (not her real name) was feeling lost and somewhat frustrated with her 6-year-old son who was showing behavioral difficulties at home and in the classroom. He had been recently assessed in school and was determined to have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).
In recent weeks, her son's behavioral challenges seemed to increase and Jane simply did not know what to do to help her son.
When we looked at what else was happening within the circle of her family life and her children's life in recent weeks, it became quite clear that Jane was deeply affected by her beloved grandfather's hospitalization facing his end-of-life.
Her son was picking up on Jane's emotions and did not know what to do with these feelings that he was experiencing. The only way that he knew how to release these feelings were to act in ways that were getting him into trouble at school and with his parents.
With guidance, Jane learned to acknowledge and value the grief and loss that she was feeling within herself and then to express these feelings to her son in a way that helped him to understand what she was feeling and why.
Her son was a sensitive child and partly due also to his ADHD difficulties, he was not as socially astute and mature as his peers. So Jane learned to phrase her words in ways that was concrete and clear. She also helped him to express his feelings through drawings and to listen to him without any preconceptions. Reading picture books together on death and dying was another way that helped him understand the family situation.
When Jane's grandfather passed, both she and her son were in a better place because of the time that they both spent understanding themselves and each other.
Melanie's Journey
Melanie (not her real name) was puzzled by her 7-year-old's son's tears every time she mentioned about attending summer camp.
The previous year, her son had happily gone to summer camp for a week by himself, away from his family, and had enjoyed it tremendously. So his tears did not make much sense to Melanie.
She asked him if he was bullied at summer camp or was hurt in some way and he always said no. But for some reason, he did not want to go to summer camp this time. Any mention of it would bring him into anxiety and tears.
We looked at the recent trips Melanie had taken with her children and one trip seemed to stand out. It was a trip to a town that had experienced a severe natural disaster and many lives, including the lives of children, were lost in the disaster. They had visited a memorial and museum in this town and her son had asked her many questions about what had happened.
Upon returning home, her son had quietly asked Melanie to prepare an emergency backpack for him to keep in his room, in case they had to leave the house when a natural disaster happened. Melanie complied and her son did not pursue this any further.
From this narrative, we explored the possibility that her son did not want to go to summer camp because of his fears of being separated from his parents if a natural disaster struck while he was at summer camp.
Melanie gently approached this topic with her son and her son confirmed his anxiety and fears with her. With that, Melanie decided that it was all right for her son to not go to summer camp but to stay home and to work on ways to help him feel safe and secure at all times.
Suzie's Journey
Suzie (not her real name) wondered about her 4-year-old son. She could see how intelligent he was for his age. He could read simple words, ask thought provoking questions and make interesting conversation with anybody he met. Yet he seemed to struggle with the little things in daily life.
Her son would become tense when others were too close to him or in busy crowd-filled places. In such situations, Suzie could see him slowly becoming increasingly uncomfortable, leading eventually into a meltdown. He seemed to have sensitive hands too and said his hands hurt whenever he touched textures that were not smooth or soft. These sensitivities were also interfering with his day in preschool. As much as he loved being in school, he also did not want to go to school and the morning routine at home for Suzie was a bit of a struggle.
Based on Suzie's description, we looked at how we could address her son's sensory sensitivities. She learned that for some children, the way their brain interprets the stimulus on their senses may be different from what we would normally expect it to be. So for her son, a rough texture would be interpreted by his brain as "pain" whereas we would normally expect that interpretation to be "different (not smooth)". His resistance to different textures were not that he was simply being difficult, but rather that there was a cause behind it.
These sensitivities also explained his meltdowns in busy crowded places. His senses were simply overwhelmed by the noise around him, the presence of others, and the energy it took for him to attempt to organize what was going on in his environment. What to others is a non-issue because the brain is able to filter relevant information versus irrelevant information at any single moment, for Suzie's son, this useful discrimination of his surrounding stimuli was not occurring. He was receiving and attempting to process all the information that was coming through from all his senses.
When Suzie began to understand what her son was experiencing, her son's difficulties became understandable and accepting to her. She learned to notice his subtle changes in body language so that she could safely and quickly remove him from certain environments before he became overwhelmed. She also learned to slowly introduce different textures and environment to him in a safe and comfortable surrounding. Her son too gradually learned how to manage his difficulties by letting Suzie know when he had had enough and needed to stop or leave the activity.
Suzie felt a closeness grow between herself and her son because she could now understand his experience of the world around him.