Chapter 23 - The first therapeutic visit
Dr. Price did not make Isolde rewrite an apology ten times.
We had used that pattern enough in life.
Instead, the first visit centered on questions.
Tamsin asked:
“Why did you give me little food?”
Isolde answered:
“Because I thought asking for more showed you were testing me.”
“Was I?”
“No.”
“Was I hungry?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Why didn’t you just give me more?”
Isolde’s eyes filled.
“Because I wanted to prove I was right.”
There.
No sophisticated adult explanation.
Then:
“Why did you hit me?”
“I was angry.”
“Because I took the recorder?”
“Because you were not obeying me.”
“Do I have to obey everything?”
“No.”
That answer cost her.
Then Tamsin:
“Can I still eat at your house?”
Isolde looked at Dr. Price.
The therapist said:
“Not today.”
Good.
No child promises.
Then Tamsin held out her friendship bracelet? Not in prompt. Better maybe a small drawing.
She had drawn:
A table.
Three plates.
One broken.
Isolde looked at it.
“Is that the dinner?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want me to know?”
Tamsin pointed to one plate.
“I wanted more.”
Isolde cried.
Quietly.
No hug.
At the end, Tamsin waved.
Then told me in car:
“Grandma looks older.”
May you like
She was sixty-one.
Conflict ages everyone in a child’s eyes.
