MYSTICAL MENTORS By T. Stokes Trauma in a Child’s Hand


Any child with emotional difficulties must be handled with greatest of care. Just as the mannerisms and deportment can be very telling of an adults state of mind, in a child it will be even more evident. It is well known in psychiatry that any mental disturbance will be accompanied by a disturbance in gait and gesture. No gesture is more telling than those given by the hands.


Since the hand is the closest organ to the brain this must be the first area for investigation. While teaching many years ago i would watch how the children held their hands and often would ask a particular child to stay behind after class to chat. This led to the first diag- nosis of many problems.


The Royal College of Psychiatrists say for a child to be a fully rounded complete human being he/she needs 3 things. The child must be born to a 2 parent family, a man and a woman. Both must be seen to love the child. The child must be breast-fed to full term.


If deep trauma is clearly shown, the Royal College of Psychiatrists also say, in their instructions to counselors, that any problems up to the age of 6 known as the “latency period” are not easily resolved and can lay dormant within the psyche and a later life upset will bring back all the hurt and the loss and is often transposed into other areas.


Modern trends in child psychol- ogy are very different from 40 years ago. Gone is the “spare the cane spoil the child” mantra. This purely authoritarian atti- tude even in military training has proved not to work, it just builds later resentment.


The handprint shown is of a child brought into the clinic by the mother who found dealing with the child “stressful and difficult”. This child is bereaved. The father was killed traveling to work. The child, around the age of 6, can’t grasp that death is final and that daddy is not coming back. Bereaved children will ask questions such as “Can we go to see daddy?” or “Is he having regular meals in heaven? Why can’t he talk to us?” etc. This loss poses a threat to the child who needs to feel he/she is living in a warm safe familiar world and can be trans- lated to the possibility of the same happening to them. It is always best to answer their questions honestly but gently because this helps them with the hierarchy of events later unfolding in their lives.


Experts say 5% of children will need expert help and additional support to navigate their grief. The other parent is going through their own bereavement process and the child’s needs are often overlooked. Care must be taken in how the death is spoken of. Such things as Daddy is asleep may cause the child to fear sleep


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because then they may not wake up. Behavior may dete- riorate badly as in this case where bedtime produced screaming fits, mealtime is tantrum time and screams for junk food were common. The child was extremely disobedient and willful.


This hand has the thumb crooked at an angle, (1) this unnatural pose shows acute anxiety and is often seen in child bereavement cases. The 2 fingers on the subcon- scious side of the hand are also slightly crooked as the lower phalanges do not show in the ink (2). This shows deep emotional turmoil, which is not helped by the poi- son line crossing the luna base to the lifeline (3). This is always seen with food and drug allergies, behavioral disorders ADHD and similar problems for which chil- dren are drugged.


The large gap between the head and lifeline (4) shows that the thinking is not engaged with the life energies. These people are always impulsive and accident- prone. This coupled to the short index or Jupiter finger in the fully and many lined hand shown, is the classic symptom complex for neuroticism and anxiety disorders and is enhanced by the many breaks in the lifeline round the thumb. This shows energy and ‘life’ disruptions, yet the hand is good in its long term prognosis, but careful handling now is vital.


Many parents find a scrap- book of the lost parent, in which the child can write in things and draw pictures, is a good meth- od of externalizing the grief. Along with a soft toy or teddy bear to talk to about things helps. A good diet with fruit and vegetables is essential.


From around the time of puberty children react very differently to close family deaths, as they come to understand more of the long- term consequences of loss. They have to learn


how to survive without the loved person. This trauma can re emerge and manifest in a sense of isolation and loneliness, educational problems and self harm with possible attempts at suicide. The other aspect is that early extra responsibilities may have to be shouldered after the loss. Youngsters show grief in different ways and this can emerge at different life stages and have to be faced again.


Elizabeth Kubler-Ross first enumerated the 5 stages of grief, which at some time we all have to undergo, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and grief.


Please be mindful of this and watch for each stage to deal with it sympathetically, especially with children.


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i Oracle 20/20 November 2011


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