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It sounds like your eight-year-old has a tendency towards anxiety,
which is far from unusual in eight-year-olds. And her anxiety comes
out in situations of separation.
WHAT DOES SEPARATION MEAN TO HER?
I would start trying to figure out the meaning
of separation for her. This has two parts. The first has to do with
her present situation. What are the emotional stresses that press
on her soul right now? Are her parents and grandparents all well?
(No illnesses or what she may take as threats of death?) And are
they getting along reasonably well? (No separations or tensions
that she may take as threats of separation?) Is she herself well?
Any there any new siblings? Any parents of friends divorcing? Are
any parents or grandparents of friends very ill? Anything in the
news that may have frightened her personally? Any lost pets?
Sometimes you can identify something that
an eight-year-old may need help putting in perspective, putting
into words, or just putting up with.
The second part has to do with extra meanings
which she may be bringing along from past separations or emotional
strains and attributing to some seemingly minor current problem.
(For example, she may have experienced a sudden separation from
you because of family illness when she was four and shown no signs
of distress at the time. But inwardly, she may have attributed your
absence to her own feelings of anger toward you.)
This will be hard to find out directly from
her, since she may be unaware of it. But you and your husband can
try to ask yourselves if, in addition to her cautious temperament,
there was a time when you may have noticed that something changed
in your daughter; a time when she became less robust, seemed more
cautious or low-keyed. You could try to imagine her concrete life
at such a time.
MEANINGS FROM THE PAST
You may find you can pinpoint a time when
she took an outside problem into her inner set of meanings and fixed
it there. Sometimes this involves sibling births, her own or a sibling's
illness, or loss of a security toy. Take your memories seriously
and you may find something worth talking with her about. Such a
talk would involve reminding her of the time, telling the story
yourselves, playfully but respectfully suggesting the kinds of interpretations
a younger child might have given, and how she might expand that
interpretation now.
These two parts do not exclude one another.
It is common to find an anxious child suffering from a combination
of extra past baggage added onto a current situation.
There is a third point, which also coexists
with the first two: her constitution. You could picture her as having
a tendency with a threshold. When something inside or outside pushes
her stress level over her threshold, she expresses her tendency
to anxiety. This tendency is something that she may feel is bigger
than her. You can help her recognize this tendency and have her
be sure it is only a part of her, smaller than the whole of her
personality. She may now feel that she lives in her (larger-than-herself)
anxiety. We would want to help her to be confident that really her
(smaller-than-herself) anxiety lives inside her.
You can also help her to notice what it is
that pushes her over her threshold. If she is sensitive to separation,
then understanding this sensitivity will help her put herself back
under her threshold. And so will planning and anticipating what
may make her anxious so she can gradually prepare for it.
She can alleviate some of the sensitivity
by taking family photos, or an audio or videotape that she has made
with you, to school. Often, having something like this available
is even more important than using it. All this is in the interest
of giving her more mastery over her fears.
If you find that you are stymied, you could
turn for professional help. In that case, the results of your efforts
will guide the professional to choose one or another of the three
approaches for starters.
For you, it would be important to be confident
that the problems you describe can be resolved, and your daughter
deserves to become freer of fears and surer she's in the driver's
seat of her emotions before she becomes an adolescent.
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