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186 THERAPEUTIC METAPHORS FOR CHILDREN "Now cut that out. Stop picking on your sister so much. Doctor, this kind of stuff goes on all the time!" Brian resounded with, "But it's

true. She wiggles her feet all the time!" Poor Patty was looking like

a dented ping-pong ball in a never-ending match. At this point, a spontaneous idea popped into my mind and I interrupted the ping- pong game by refraining a number of behaviors.

"You're right, Brian. You're perfectly correct in your observation about your sister." Brian beamed with delight because he was being acknowledged.

"Patty does move her feet a lot."

Parry and the morher now looked somewhar confused at my ap- parently taking sides with Brian.

"And foor movement in young children is a good indicator of natural, underlying talents—like a ballerina or dancer of some kind. You know, all the srudies that I've read abour wiggling feet say the same thing: That kid will grow up to be famous, using the ability of those feet."

Looking directly at Patty, whose eyes had already defocused, I asked, "Could you show me again what is obviously a wonderful narural talent to continue moving and wiggling your feet as I speak?" She nodded and acquiesced with a big smile of surprise.

Brian, who now was in his own trance with his mouth slightly open, was asked to tell me if his feet moved a little ot a lot when he was playing in a soccer game.

"A lot," he admitted.

"That's right. And if your feet hadn't learned how to move a lot when you were younger [implying Patty's age as I glanced quickly in her direction], would you be the good soccet player you are today?"

"No," he replied.

Before Brian could resume his ping-pong march with his sister, I quickly acknowledged his abilities as an excellent drawer, handed him crayons and paper, and asked him to draw something fun.

T h e Battleship Boy

A pleasant eight-year-old boy named Matt entered the office accom- panied by his mother. I had conversed wirh her previously on die telephone and knew that she viewed her son's problem as being "his poor attitude about school." Matt had become "unhappy and with-

THE ARTISTIC METAPHOR 187 drawn," and communicating with him had become incteasingly difficult since the family had moved from Washington to California a year ago. In this initial session, I decided not to let the mothet teiteiate her concerns about Matt's behavior but instead sought to enlist his help nonverbally. I knew he did not want to be in my office, and I was even more certain that he did not want to hear about his problems again. I therefore attempted to establish an unconscious alliance with him by entering his world of fantasy and focusing on his strengths.

"Matt, I don't want you to tell me, but just temember a pleasant or happy time in your life, or something you enjoy doing a lot." His eyes went to an upper left position (visual) as he smiled and nodded his head affirmatively.

"Great!" I acknowledged. "Is it easy for you to bold onto that

pleasant experience?"

Matt nodded yes.

"That's nice to know. Now I'd like you to remember a time when you weren't so happy—or something you didn't like to do much."

Again Matt went on an internal search (as his eyes darted in an upper left movement) and quickly nodded his head, but there was no smile this time.

"That's quite a creative ability you have ro see those experiences, and I imagine you're in control of holding onto that pleasant one and letting go of rhat other one, aren't you-1"

Again a smile and a bigger nod appeared.

"Now, I'm really curious, Matt, as to what that pleasant memory was." Matt eagerly told me that he loved to draw, especially battleships, planes, and tanks.

" O h , all those things are very powerful," I said. "I imagine if we were both inside one of those powerful tanks on the beach now we would really be protected, huh?"

Mart agreed. I proceeded to make noises like a tank and he joined in. As we continued acting out this fantasy together, Matt commented that battleships were even more powerful than tanks. I asked him to show me just how powerful they were by drawing one. He readily agreed to do so and his mother interjected that "he's always drawing battleships." At the end of our meeting, Matt said that he would bring in some of his battleship models for the next session.

In a subsequent session, the father accompanied Matt. The father described his own problem of communicating with his son regarding

188 THERAPEUTIC METAPHORS FOR CHILDREN school activities and chotes at home, especially emptying the trash container in the kitchen "that piles up so high it falls all over the floor."

I looked at Matt and said, "It's time to inspect the battleship. We wane to be prepared and protected at all times in case of enemy attack. Oh! Look over here. There are a lot of empty shells piled up and scattered over the deck in front of our battle stations. Something needs to be done or there could be a problem later on. I'd like you, Matt, to get some of the sailors on deck to clean up that mess and remind them how important it is to keep the decks clean of all that used-up stuff."

Matt agreed and gave the commands to the men. "Just in time," I exclaimed, looking toward the sky. "Matt, it's enemy fighter planes!" We continued making noises and fighting off the enemy together.

The following week the father returned with Matt and reported that he had used rhe battleship metaphor to deal successfully with the issue of emptying the trash. By reframing the trash into empty shells, Matt was more than eager to protect the battleship!

Remembering the father's second concern regarding communicating with Matt about what occurs in school each day, I handed Matt some drawing paper and implements, asking die simple and direct question, "Can you show me something that happened at school today on diis paper?" Without hesirating, Matt went into his world of drawing and produced a picture filled with multicolored communications. I pointed out to die father that Matt is creative visually and that he finds it easier to communicate using his strong visual system. Later, I suggested, Matt could be encouraged to communicate verbally about the content of his pictures.

I gave both father and son an assignment to be carried our first in the office and then whenever the father was having difficulty com- municating with Matt. A large piece of drawing paper was presented, with Matt sitting on one side and his father on rhe other. They were to select a theme to draw, and each one was to contribute in the creation of an entire picture, an entire story. Needless to say, the theme diey drew together for the first time was battleships. As they jointly drew their interacting sketches, I noticed fout-digit numbers on each battleship and asked Matt to total them. After simply glancing at the numbers 2 6 9 1 , Matt immediately calculated the correct total. Since math had become one of Matt's "bad attitudinal problems" in