Counseling Children

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Counseling Children

Dr. Esther Park

13th Class— last Group

+ Skin Hunger : Christine, Virginia, and Mama P.: Touch and Rhythm !  Any questions? Any comments?

!  Mama P’s sense of humor, her warmth, and her hugs; rocking and holding the traumatized and neglected children she cared for.

!  Importance of physical affection and stimulation into care; patterned and repetitive experiences appropriate to their developmental needs that they missed

+ The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog

!  Mark, a six-years-old boy, is in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Mark is a bony little child in a loose diaper sitting in a cage. Mark’s crib had iron bars and a plywood panel wired to the top of it. It looked like a dog cage. The boy rocked back and forth, whimpering a primitive self-soothing lullaby. He was filthy with his own feces, there was food all over his face and his diaper was heavy, soaked with urine. He was being treated for severe pneumonia, but he resisted all procedures and had to be held down to draw blood. He tore out his IVs, he yelled and screamed at staff and he threw his food. The closest this hospital had to a psychiatric unit was the PICU (where the ratio of staff to patients was very high), so Mark had been transferred. There, they had jury-rigged his crib/cage arrangement. And once placed in the cage, the boy began to throw feces and anything else he could get his hands on.

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!  According to his records, Mark’s mother was a 15 year-old girl who left him with her own mother permanently when he was two months old. Mark’s grandmother, by all accounts, was a kindhearted, nurturing woman who adored her grandchild. Unfortunately, she was also morbidly obese and had related health problems that made her very ill. When Mark was 11 months old, she was hospitalized and died several weeks later.

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!  During her illness her boyfriend, Bob, babysat for Mark. Baby Mark’s behavior became difficult, surely a result of losing both his mother and his grandmother in such a short time. Bob still grieving himself, didn’t know what to do with a crying, tantrum young child, and being in his late sixties, he wasn’t physically or mentally prepared for such a challenge. Bob was not malicious. He made a living as a dog breeder and he began keeping Mark in a dog cage. He made sure the baby was fed and changed, but he rarely spoke to him, played with him or did any of the other normal things parents do to nurture their children. Mark lived in that cage for five years, spending most of his days with only dogs as his companions.

+ How the sequential development of a child’s brain is affected by trauma and neglect?

!  The understanding help us find possible treatments

!  How to stop Mark from throwing feces and food at the staff

!  Unpredictability and the unknown make everyone feel anxiousness and less able to process information accurately; less therapeutic

!  First impressions; first session

!  Doctors told Arthur that Mark’s brain is permanently damaged.

+ Developmental Disorder: Lack of Opportunity or Lack of Capacity? !  He cannot stand, walk, talk.

!  3 million words by age 3.

!  First, succeed in feeding him.

!  Change his room—environments—to a quieter room. Decrease chaos and sensory overload surrounding him.

!  Minimize the number of staff interacting with him.

!  Began physical, occupational, and speech/language therapy.

!  Psychiatric help by spending time everyday + Dr. Perry

+ Life Changing Questions

!  Who can I trust? Trust

!  Who am I? Identity

!  Who wants me? Belonging

!  Why am I alive? Purpose

!  What do I do well? Or, In what am I thriving? Confidence