The evil of thinking too much

Saturday, 23 May 2009 20:47

There are moments when I catch a view of Sam, and he seems to be locked away, deep inside his head, struggling with an intense something - sadness? Blue-ness? It scares me because in moments like these he won't explain his thinking to me.

His dad caught him on camera the other day. Sam was sitting on the beach, hitting a stone into the sand, in an abstracted way. His head was intensely turned down and he seemed in a very distant, far way place inside himself. Sam's dad asked "Do you love yourself Sam?" and Sam answered "I don't know." He was very deliberate. Very slow.

I thought I had detected something similar in Sam - that behind his eyes, inside, he struggles with things he doesn't - perhaps can't - express to us. Sam's dad says perhaps Sam is a troubled boy inside.

99% of the time Sam is happy, energetic and bubbly. I wonder sometimes if Sam trips between his age maturity and his intellect. Because he has been able to read since such a young age, we don't always appreciate that everywhere he goes, he processes information - like newspapers and conversations. I leave observational reports his daycare teachers write on the table - and I've caught him reading these. He can read print and handwriting.

So - options. How do we go forward:

1. For goodness sake! He's just turned 4. Childen do not communicate in the same way as adults, so don't interpret it in the same way. Don't punch at shadows. (The evil of thinking too much could be mine.)
2. Perhaps just try a few things - without overdoing it, talk to Sam more about emotions, both positive and negative. If he has vocabulary on negative things, he may feel more comfortable expressing negative emotion.
3. And definitely - stop leaving things like daycare observation reports laying around!
4. Other?

I might try printing out the yellow smiley faces across a range of emotions and see if I can use this to help Sam talk about feelings. It might be a way he can describe how he is feeling at different times.