Well, at least it's interesting.
So, one of the recommendations from the Seay Behavioral Health Center (where youngest spent eleven days) was that adolescents in sticky family/mental health situations tend to benefit from family therapy a lot in addition (or, in some cases, in lieu of) regular individual counseling. The reason being that oftentimes family dynamics for these kids are greatly skewed.
After research on the Internet, I trusted my gut and chose, made an appointment, and we saw our new family therapist last Saturday, then again last night. She does a lot of hands-on "play therapy;" and yes, it works for adolescents, too. I was completely fascinated with our activities & the results.
On Saturday, we were instructed to pick ONE color of crayon per person; once we did that, she sent us to a large mural paper & told us to draw a scene or picture on it together. The catch was that we could not talk or communicate in any way. It was quite an interesting picture, let me tell you, but that's not what surprised me. Her assessment of the photo really made me think she's bugged our house.
Looking at the different colors each person chose, within the picture drawn, we could see mostly red (my hubby). Next, as far as amount of color seen, was Youngest and me, about equal, with Youngest with the slight edge. Lastly, with only a few additions to the picture, were Middle and Eldest. She then told us to look at that picture and imagine it as our family. Huh? Well, okay, there it was.
Hubby is the BMOC, the Main Man, Large and In Charge, Head of Household. He has the most presence in the house, and in the picture. A lot of his drawings were either leading the drawing or adding something to someone else's drawing (adding a hat or a tie or something). He tends to be somewhat of a control freak. Good virgo, he is.
My color (brown) was very present, but it was mainly in "helper" or "reactive" roles. I added things I thought the photo needed to be complete, bark on the tree, whiskers on the cat... I tend to react to a situation and help finish it, not always a good thing, when the kids need to learn to navigate these relationships themselves.
Youngest (blue) had easily as much, if not more, presence than I did, and all of his drawing was in the very center of the picture. Taking the metaphor to its accurate conclusion, she guessed that he takes up a lot of emotional room in the family and always seems to be in the center of every situation.
The two who had the least presence in the picture were Middle and Eldest (purple and black). Just as in the picture, Eldest tends to do her thing and then drop back, while Middle just gets lost in the shuffle.
Last night, we got to draw another picture, except this time we were allowed to talk. We were all surprised (but probably shouldn't have been) to discover that this was more difficult for us to do than the one where we couldn't talk. This one mainly gave her an idea of how we communicated as a family.
Our homework this week is interesting. Each one of us has one day in which all of the family's attention will be focused on that one person. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is for: (a) Youngest to relinquish all the attention he normally commands, (b) Middle to actually feel attention on him and accept it, and (c) me to not try to compensate for the other two as the attention is focused on only one child. I'm so excited to try this out (not to mention having a day for just me, too!) and see where it goes.
This therepist sounds like she is great!!! I hope that she will offer wisdom to help you guys. I love you all so very much.....Mimi
Posted by: Mimi | November 30, 2007 at 07:27 AM