One remedy hits the spot!

I was prescribing for an 8 year old boy who was expressing difficulty in accepting the changes in the relationships between family and friends. That transitional period when older siblings suddenly want to stop playing with you or school friends begin to want your opinion on everything can be difficult to understand. Everything is changing and you have got to decide how to cope with these changes.

I have changed the names in this lovely update.

“We were on the beach with Tom’s sister and her friends to celebrate her 13th bday. After being there for about an hour, Tom created a large circle of stones and sat inside it placing his shoes as an entrance/ exit marker and told myself and Aaron that this was his circle and no one else was allowed in it unless he said. He then lay down in it for a while. He went in and out of it throughout the afternoon.

Later he decided we should dig a big hole for him to hide in. Then he wanted me to cover him over with a blanket. He waited there patiently while I went (after he asked) to encourage the girls over to see this nice place to lie down and then jumped out on them at the last minute!

He spent the last bit of the afternoon playing with a little toddler who was nearby us on the beach and was very keen to make friends … it is unusual for Tom to have much patience with little ones, usually wanting to get back to focusing more seriously on his ball skills or something like that. But he played rough and tumble with this boy for a long time – really gentle and really playful.

Then last night he had a nightmare which he just told me about – he’s been reading this book called ‘Auggie and me’ which is the follow on from a book called ‘Wonder’ about a boy with severe facial disfigurements who gets bullied but gets through it and makes really good friends …in the nightmare Auggie and his friends were fighting a group of teenagers. Auggie was trying to protect something from them (Tom wasn’t quite sure what) and he went to hide it somewhere … then one of his friends told him that the teenagers were now on the floor where he’d hidden it and Auggie screamed very loudly. Tom said the scream woke him up, that it had almost been like he had been the one screaming.

It’s made me reflect on all these things. I see that the remedy has brought back the really playful, more innocent and less self conscious boy we know. I wonder if in the dream and on the beach he was trying to protect these qualities from these teenage siblings he now has who are in a very different mode from him.

I think (along with being out in the sun) his whole face and demeanour looks different, brighter and more open, and much less worn out looking which is such a lovely relief”!