The Furious Case Of An Innocent Child

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Legend has it that Children have impressionable minds! What they see and what they hear leave deep impressions on them. And with these interpretation of children, develop a myriad of emotions in them. And emotions need to be expressed! Children have their own unique ways of expressing them. They don’t care whether its harmful, unless they are taught otherwise.

This is what young Abhi Karmarkar (name changed)was going through. Abhi was a 7 year old innocent child. He had in those few years experienced fear and rage. Abhi was only 6 months old when his mother suffered from a severe asthma attack. She was hospitalized. Due to complications, she had to stay in the hospital for two months. Little Abhi was living with his grand parents and Papa. He would cry to meet his mom, but she would be nowhere in sight.This had made him very insecure. The worse was yet to come. His Papa left within a month to Abu Dhabi for work. Being in the construction line, he had to travel and be on site for most of his working time. With even Papa gone, Abhi felt very scared. His primary caregivers were out of picture.

Abhi’s mom came home after two long months. Abhi reacted in the most unpredictable way. At 8 months, it was obvious that when Abhi would see his mother he would be delighted. But on the contrary, Abhi did not want to go to his mother. He preferred to be left with his grand parents.  Slowly, after a few weeks of seeing mom around, Abhi started going to her. Things started settling, or at least the Karmarkar family thought so. By age 5 they both shifted to Abu Dhabi. He was reunited with his father, but he had no clue about what a father has to do in his life. This was a huge change in Abhi’s life. It affected him in ways that he could not express. He started eating junk food. Due to his excess weight gain, he was teased by his peers. All of this was too much for him to take. But emotions had to be expressed one way or another.

When Abhi came to me for therapy, he was uncontrollable. He would break his toys out of anger, he would punch the window glass, not caring about the consequences. He also burnt his toys and broke furniture at home. Every time his emotions started raising, he would want to destroy something to take control of them. That had become his way of coping.  I had within a few sessions understood that all he needed was release. He had pent up emotions of fear, anxiousness, mistrust and anger. All these emotions were making him insecure.

When I started therapy, I made it a point to get into his world. He had made a world for himself where he was in control. Being a big fan of transporters, he had a case full of their toys. Iron man, Superman and even Hulk were part of the game. Together, we would sit throughout the session and play his games. I allowed him to take control initially, but after a few sessions I noticed he was getting calmer. So I helped him to learn new techniques to express his anger. We would have pillow fights, we would punch Bo Bo dolls, we would go running in his garden together. He started showing behavioral changes that helped him adjust to the environment.

Once he was able to express his anger and fear, it was time to help him learn to deal with them. During play sessions, he learnt about how to deal with insecurity. We made family games with his toys where he had an opportunity to express his insecurity within his family life. We also had family sessions where his parents were part of the games. His biggest challenge was to trust people around him. With time, he started trusting his mom and dad. His eating habits improved and he was better able to express his anger. The boy who burnt toys once, was now building toys out of Lego and blocks to express his anger. He started painting, started going for walks with his parents and even started experimenting with cooking.