Stress Related Behavior

Today we have our first session with Dhruti, a play therapist who has a skill set and experience that seems to be a perfect match to help with what our daughter is going through with her eyes.  Before my daughter met with her, she did a half-hour intake session with my husband and me (with my daughter not there yet) to understand her background.   I learned more in that half-hour than I expected to.  

Through our conversation she helped us understand that children are born with three types of temperaments.   These are nature, not nurture temperaments and we have the temperaments throughout our lives.   Our personality is our temperaments modified by our experiences.    The three types of personalities are (in general terms): Easy Going, Fearful and Feisty.   These are broad generalizations of detailed, well-defined types, but we immediately answered that my daughter was Easy Going and oh, yes, without a doubt my son was Feisty.  (It may be notable at this point to mention my husband and I agreed that I was Feisty and he was Easy Going.)

She said that a trauma or significant change in life situation can cause a child’s temperament to change as they cope with what’s happening in their lives.   The easy going child will have fearful behavior surface as they cope.    As we mentioned things we’ve seen her doing since her vision loss, she said they’re all fearful-based behaviors.   Some of what we mentioned included:

- Making faces, including tongue sticking out
- Licking people
- Hitting people when upset
- Making animal or non-verbal sounds
- Acting like an animal
- Becoming more shy in situations she normally would be outgoing
- Focusing on memory, “Mom, do you remember when…” and telling stories
- Becoming angry more easily and remaining upset for longer
- Attempting to be even more independent than she was before, to prove she’s not dependent

The last one in that list we spent some time talking about.   I had told a story of how my daughter had gotten up, dressed herself, asked what she could have for breakfast, had gotten the plate and cup down by herself and selected the granola bar she wanted.   She brought the granola bar to me (I was still asleep in the bed) to ask me if that was the one she liked?   Dhruti said that that last step, the one where she realizes she’s lost something because she can’t tell which granola bar it is, will cause her to work even harder to be more independent.

With that comment, I told a follow-up story of how she suddenly decided to make our bed, throw pillows and all, the other day.   We were impressed (I really was) and I’m sure we told her how happy we were and proud we were she had done it all by herself.   What Dhruti said was that in these cases, it may sound counter-intuitive, but you don’t want to over-praise.   You want to tell her thank you and acknowledge her work, but you don’t want to make it sound like it was anything other than a job well done.   She said you don’t want to encourage her to overcompensate for what she’s lost.   This will help keep her in better balance.

At about that time my daughter had arrived with Uncle Jonathan and after about two minutes of shy introductions, happily went back to play with her, “new friend, Dhruti who wanted to have a play date with her.”   She apparently had a great time.   We have an appointment next week in which we will learn more.   While my daughter was going to the bathroom Dhruti quietly said, “I see what you’re talking about with the stress.   We’ll talk more when we meet again.”   And because we didn’t want to talk about it in front of my daughter, that’s how we left it for today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had the best time playing with the toys at Dhruti’s office today.   He isn’t in particular need of help from her, but I think he’d be glad to go and play with her toys any time.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her first appointment with a play therapist today.   Read above for more details.    She quite liked Dhruti from what I can tell.   She told me all about the toys they played with in the play room.   We heard a lot of laughter through the walls as well while they were playing together.