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This commentary looks at two sessions with a five-year-old girl called Grace. In these extracts from her intensive psychotherapy, we see a move from isolation, impoverished interaction and silence or whispers (interesting in a child who is bilingual) to symbolic communicative play and verbal interactions with the therapist. What accounts for this shift? The therapist is clear that there were no obvious precipitating causes for this increased communicativeness.
Grace is the eldest of two daughters, her sister being born when Grace was three years old. It is not known what each parent thought about the prospect of a baby, but there are often fantasies around about what the baby is going to like, what she will grow into, who she will take after. Pregnancy is often a time of hope, curiosity and emotional preparation for parents. I wondered about the anxiety, stress and disappointment aroused in the parents following complications in the pregnancy, a premature birth and a very underweight baby. I was not sure if the birth required a Caesarean section.
In her book, Through the Night (1993), Dilys Daws cites evidence from Blurton-Jones et al. (1978) that ‘difficult labours and births have a deleterious effect which can include severe sleep problems’. I was also mindful of the worries parents can have when there are problems with pregnancy and birth that they may have done something ‘wrong’ or that their own bodies may somehow be ‘faulty’. It does not state whether the father was present at the birth, a difficult and worrying time for both of them because of the problems during the pregnancy.
The months following the birth are likely to have been difficult for all three, given Grace's difficulties in feeding and sleeping. What happened to the parents' relationship in this period? Grace's mother felt unsupported by her husband because of his work