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Rocket was 8 years old when his parents consulted us. They did so because the relationship between the boy and his mother had become “almost intolerable”. He constantly attacked her both verbally and physically and his mother “had actually begun to worry what she might do to him.”
The relationship between the boy and his father was less marred by conflict, but the father was aware of his wife's predicament.
Both parents felt that Rocket's motor coordination was immature, and that he was ungainly and slow. He was in the second half of his first school year. The home-room teacher shared his parents' view of him. He had problems reading and writing. He had not had his intellectual functioning tested, but he had one individual lesson a week of remedial reading instruction.
His sister was 3 years younger. She was bright and mature for her age. There were “signs of sibling rivalry,” but the parents “had the situation well under control.”
Play observation indicated that his problems were particularly related to a destructive, conflictive relationship to an internal mother-figure, and that he was belatedly experiencing an oedipal conflict together with intense sibling rivalry.
He functioned well intellectually, but his vocabulary was rather limited, with a poorly developed capacity for abstract thinking.
He displayed poor motor coordination, and also had symptoms indicating impaired eye-hand coordination. I recommended testing of cognitive functioning and, if necessary, more remedial tutoring.
The treatment started out as play therapy, 1 session a week, and lasted for half a year with 24 sessions altogether. His attempts to express his internal conflicts in the sandbox were laborious. His development was impeded by his inclination to think in concrete terms, and by a limited vocabulary.