my apprehension. She took out another crochet needle and some yarn from the basket, and began showing me how to hold the needle and yarn between my fingers—how to begin to crochet my very own cloth.
Each of us perceives, learns, and communicates in the world through our five sensory systems of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory processes. Sensory systems play a vital role in child development as the primary means of early learning during infancy and young childhood. Even the child's later cognitive development is shaped and colored by the experiences of his sensory-motor stage of development (Piaget, 1951). Our senses literally act as transmitters of information to the brain and as such help to influence the evolution of our overall level of intelligence (Pearce, 1977).
If we were to view child development through a lens of perfection, we would hope to see a synchronicity emerging among the sensory processes whereby each sensory system interacts in a balanced way with the others. In the course of normal growing processes, however, early life experiences, together with innate personality traits, affect the child in a way that produces a preference in sensory function: One sysrem is used more readily chan the others in a given task or experience.
For example, one child might rely primarily on her auditory sensory system to process music (becoming entranced in the sound of the melody), while when reading she would use primarily her visual sensory system (making pictures of the words). These are typical and expected sensory preferences. Another child, however, might engage his kinesrhetic
GATHERING INFORMATION 101 sensory system to process the music (responding primarily to the beat of the music and his own movement impulses), while when reading he might prefer to use his auditory sensory system by reading aloud (making sounds rather than pictures of the words).
We emphasize the word primarily because it is important to remember that in complex experiences such as reading or listening to music, all sensory systems are in operation on different levels of consciousness. One, however, is relied upon more dominantly. The two children just mentioned have different sensory strategies for processing the same experience of reading and listening to music. Teachers often see this difference in the classroom and parents often experience it in the home. One child will grasp a new concept most readily if it is explained to him vocally, while another will need a diagram or picture.
Sensory preferences become sensory imbalances whenever the preference results in a problem—be it emotional, behavioral, or psychosomatic. The child who prefers to read aloud develops a sensory imbalance when he can only read aloud. At this point, the preference has become crystallized into a fixed mode of responding which limits die child's choices and impedes his range of experiences. The consequences of sensory imbalances are most clearly manifested by learning disabled children in whom the imbalances are severe enough to produce observable difficulties. Because they experience the world in a different sensory- perceptual level, learning disabled children encounter barriers that are not experienced by others. The failures in cognitive and motor per- formance diat occur because of rhis difference then lead to emotional and behavioral maladjustments which are only a symptom of the real problem. The following case highlights this dynamic but subtle interplay between sensory functioning and emotional well-being.
M a r y ' s S p e l l i n g B e a r
When eight-year-old Mary was brought to the office by her mother, she was shy and very reluctant to speak. According to her mother, Mary was having a very difficult rime with spelling. It seemed that no marrer how hard she tried, her efforts to spell turned out "wrong." Although she was doing very well in her other subjects, Mary's repeated failure with spelling was upsetting her a great deal. Her mother naturally feared that this cycle of failure would undermine Mary's progress in the other areas.
102 THERAPEUTIC METAPHORS FOR CHILDREN After working unsuccessfully with a tutor to help with the spelling problem, the school counselor suggested that an evaluation by a child psychotherapist would be helpful to determine if there were an emotional block.
The only information I could elicit from Mary was that she liked teddy bears and had a collection of them in her bedroom. By using the techniques described in the upcoming chapters, I then isolated the sensory imbalance that was creating the problem. Mary, it seemed, was a very visual person. She was able to describe her vatious teddy bears to me in vivid language. Her auditory sense, however, was less accessible. The problem was that her readier was emphasizing phonetics in spelling, continually encouraging her to "hear how the word sounds" in order ro learn how to spell it. But Mary needed to see how the word looked in order to remember it.
To help overcome the immediate problem in spelling, I suggested that Mary pick one word and imagine seeing the letters of that word going across the chest of her teddy bear—almost like a T-shirt insignia. Interestingly enough, Mary spontaneously chose the word easy, dosed her eyes, and to her delight found that she could see the letters e-a-s-y going across her teddy bear. Since we could not retrain her teacher to use more visual techniques in teaching spelling to Mary, we simply made this game our secret. Each night Mary dutifully used her teddy bear as the background structure for learning her new spelling words.
Once die spelling problem was resolved, we focused on opening up Mary's restricted auditory system by elidting positive areas of Mary's life in which sounds were her preferred or primary way of enjoying an experience. Such sounds as waves at the beach or her parakeet chirping in the morning constituted pleasant auditory experiences that could be utilized in subsequent metaphors to strengthen, broaden, and integrate Mary's auditory system into her daily life.
Although sensory imbalances may not appear to be the generating problem for all children, we have found that diey do play a consistently pivotal role in determining how the child copes with die presenting problem. It could be said that some kind of sensory imbalance is inherent in any emotional or behavioral problem, which is why sensory systems are a predictable, reliable and urilizable focus of treatment. By disentangling sensory imbalances from their emotional ramifications, you
GATHERING INFORMATION 103 can alter the entire psychodynamic constellation. Even when the pre- senting problem is not caused directly by a sensory imbalance, intervening on a sensory level will invariably re-order the dynamics in a positive direction.
A variety of sensory integration approaches to treating learning disabled children (Ayres, 1971; Cantwell, 1980) have been recognized as effective remedial techniques for increasing attention and concentration skills and improving overall learning abilities (Abrams, 1980). We have found that die concept of sensory integration or sensory synchronkity is also an effective focus for behavioral and emotional problems because the way in which children's sensory systems function in relation to the presenting problem and in relation to positive areas of theit life will serve as both a critical diagnostic tool and as a valuable resource in resolving the problem. Learning to observe and utilize sensory imbalances therefore provides a core foundation for change on many different levels.
The concept of utilizing sensory dynamics in therapy as a standard clinical tool rather than as one specifically associated with learning disabilities was also modeled by Erickson. Rossi explains rhar as a self- acknowledged "visual type," Erickson would routinely explore his patients' early memories to ascertain whether they were "predominantly visual or auditory" (Rossi, Ryan & Sharp, 1983, p. 35). He would then utilize these predispositions in trance work as a means of dealing with the presenting problem, whatever that might be. Erickson cites an example of a man who was able to distract himself from pain by focusing on the memories of the sound of crickets which he had enjoyed in his childhood.
As was often die case with Erickson, the techniques he utilized with his patients were first developed in response to his own needs. Because he lived in almost consrant pain during the last two decades of his life, he found ever new ways of utilizing his sensory memories and sensory preferences as a means of distraction from the pain. He recalled (Erickson, 1 9 7 1 / 1 9 8 0 , p. 123):
I was recovering the feeling of lying prone with my arms in front of me, head up and looking at that beautiful meadow as a child. I even felt my arm short as a child's. I went to sleep essentially reliving diose childhood days when I was lying on my stomach on the hill overlooking the meadow or the green fields. They
104 THERAPEUTIC METAPHORS FOR CHILDREN looked so beautiful and so blissful and so peaceful. It was the gentle movement of the grass in the breeze, but the grass itself was not putting forth the effort.
It could be said that Erickson helped to pioneer the recognition and utilization of sensory dynamics as they relate to a wide variety of clinical problems. Later workers (Bandler & Grinder, 1975; Erickson & Rossi, 1979, 1981; Erickson, Rossi & Rossi, 1976; Grinder, DeLozier & Bandler, 1977; Gilligan, 1986; Haley, 1967, 1973; Lankton, 1980; Lankton & Lankton, 1983) have added system and theory to the groundbreaking approaches developed by Erickson.
Our goal in working with children is to facilitate an ongoing experience of sensory synchronicity that can provide the child with a rich and accessible "treasure chest" of inner resources. One easy and natural way to begin this process of sensory synchronization is dirough sto- rytelling, an ancienr tradition tooted in rich, poetic, sensory-filled language. Unlike the historical storyteller who creates classical stories of sociocultural traditions, however, the therapist-storyteller is creating tailor-made stories (metaphors) based on the personal, idiosynctatic, and psychodynamic qualities of the child. The starting point fot the creation of these specially designed stoties is in developing a sensitive awareness to the sensory preferences that reflect the odierwise elusive inner world of rhe child. . . , , .... , ,,,. ... : -/..<,