Power of Precarious

"Precarious" found here

I didn't know if I was doing this whole play therapy thing right. Sal, who was caught in the middle of his parent's ugly divorce, had been brought in for counseling. He had been acting out at school. His parents had locked horns on every major and minor issue surrounding their divorce. I still couldn't figure out why they were getting a divorce. Both told me they desperately loved one another, but things had gone from bad to worse with them. They were unwilling to come in for therapy themselves and instead, wanted me to "fix" their son.

Sal was six years old. He didn't have words to describe what was happening to his little world. He had no way to explain how disruptive everything felt to him, so he became disruptive himself. That way, people would know what he felt like. It was my job to help him think aloud about his situation and to help him put words to his experience so he could discharge the raw intensity of it and go back to the business of just being a little boy.

So here we sat, playing a game in which we hammered blocks of "ice" out of a grid until finally the entire platform collapsed onto the floor. The one able to knock out the most blocks without making it all fall apart won. I wasn't sure what was so therapeutic about it, as I was still trying to figure out how to do this therapy business. Sal energetically hammered out block after block, stacking the pieces on a low table next to our game. While we tapped out the pieces he told me what it was like to be a kid with ADHD in school and how people thought he was bad. I kept hammering and we fell silent, intent on our game.

Sal kept collecting his hammered out ice blocks and absentmindedly placed his last one up on the table. It hung halfway on and off the table, ready to fall to the floor.
"Wow, Sal!" I exclaimed. "That block is pretty precarious!"
He screwed up his face and squinted up at me.
"What's precarious, Barbara?"
"It means ready to fall and not very steady." I couldn't help but notice the deep blue of his eyes and in that moment I loved his little soul.
"Oh. I never heard that word before."
"It's a very big one" I heard myself say as we went back to hammering out ice blocks.

Sal worked quietly for several minutes. I wasn't sure how to get him back onto the topic of his ADHD or his parents' divorce. I knew he had an older sister and she was furious about her parent's choice to divorce. She had sided with her mother and wanted nothing to do with her father. This must have had some impression on Sal. Surely, he intuitively knew about the impact of her rage on the family. But you can't just come out and ask little kids things like this, so we kept playing our game in silence.

Suddenly Sal scrunched down on one knee and put down his hammer. "Barbara, I think my parents have a precarious love." His eyebrows furrowed and he looked deep in thought before looking up at me for a response. "Do you think they have a precarious love?"
"Maybe they do."
"I think so." And he sat for a brief moment looking at the ice blocks on the floor.

"Ok. I'm done with that. Let's play something else."

It is strange, but the next week I could see that he truly was done with that. He was more attentive and seemed to have gained some sense of control over the situation with his parents. He couldn't change them nor could he change the impact of his sister on the family dynamic. But now he had a word for what was happening: His parents had a precarious love. And he could move on to something else.

There are many times in life when we need to understand what is happening to us in order to calm ourselves. Even if it's not a good or pleasant thing, we need to be able to articulate what is happening so we can put it away. Sal did. His parent's precarious love did not change, but he did.