May, 2022 - 聖文嘉中英文幼稚園(利東)

Drawings peek into the inner world of children

Written by: Unleashing Mind Professional Counselling Academy

Psychotherapist Lee Wai-Tong

Painting can give us room to express our feelings. I use a brush to create a dialogue with myself in another language, soothing my emotions or gaining insight and unlocking my heart.

Crying over trivial stuff

In my past child counseling sessions, some parents came to me for help. They did not understand why their son, Ming, often cried over trivial things, such as being late for TV, late for dinner, or when his father came home late, etc. They mentioned the situation to Ming, but they did not understand why, which caused them trouble. Therefore, I suggested conducting a drawing assessment for Ming to understand the environment in which Ming grows up in his mind, which may help to understand the reason why Ming loves to cry.

Drawing reveals the reason for crying

Ming drew a “family story”. While drawing, he expressed his feelings that his parents were busy with work all day, so he often played alone at home. When his parents came home, Ming wanted to play with them, but his father soon became impatient. In Ming’s mind, it seems that his father is always angry; whenever his mother sees this situation, she will argue with him. In Ming’s eyes, his mother always looks sad when she argues with his father. In Ming’s mind, he knew that his parents loved him, but when he saw that his father was angry and his mother was sad because of him, he felt sad.

A peek into the inner world through paintings

Later, I met with Ming’s parents again. They never imagined that the quarrel in front of Ming was deeply engraved in their son’s heart. In addition, the father also found that his tiredness after work affected the quality of parent-child interaction. In this regard, I taught the father some relaxation methods and suggested setting up a “calm zone” at home to give everyone a space to relieve their emotions, and the parents promised to avoid arguing in front of Ming.

A month later, Ming no longer cried over trivial matters and the parent-child relationship was better than before. Painting can reflect children’s inner world view. In the process of creation, children project their inner world intentionally or unintentionally, so that we can understand their inner world and help them grow up healthily.

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Self-protection mechanism of children

Written by: Psychotherapist Lee Wai-Tong, Unleashing Mind

Professional Counselling Academy

One day, a colleague told me that he/she had received a call from a mother who was anxious to bring her son to see me. On the phone, I learned that the boy had pointed a knife at his neck several times in the past month, threatening his mother to give her change to buy snacks, or else he would stab himself in the neck. The mother, on one hand, of course, was surprised at her son’s behavior, and on the other hand, worried that he might stab himself accidentally, so she had to give him money. But the boy did the same thing many times afterwards, which made the mother feel distressed.

The first time I had a play therapy session with the boy, he entered the playroom, sat down on a chair and looked at me with a smile on his face, so I invited him to choose the toys in the room: “You can choose any toy and play with it in your own way. The boy looked at me and said, “Really? I responded again, “You can choose any toy and play with it the way you want. So the boy stood up, swept all the toys on the table to the floor, and looked at me with a smile.

At this point, I was thinking that this was the first time I met with the boy and he responded in such a way, so I could imagine that he had a lot of anger in his heart, but he had suppressed it for some time, so now he let it out in this way.

Later, I used games and creative psychotherapy to allow him to slowly express his inner feelings of dissatisfaction with his parents, for example, his father blamed the boy for breaking the computer for no reason, but in fact it was his brother who did it; when the boy did something wrong, his mother beat him with a coat hanger …… When his emotions were released, the boy did not do these behaviors anymore. And he also became cheerful.

Children need the protection and love of their parents as they grow up. But if a parent causes harm to a child and does not deal with it properly, what the child can do is to use his or her limited ability to protect himself or herself, such as becoming rebellious, silent, or telling lie. We all understand that parenting is not perfect and it is normal to misunderstand and blame our children sometimes. However, the important thing is that when we find out that we have misunderstood or blamed our children wrongly, we can open a space for parents to communicate and let our children express their unhappiness.