Thanks to the warm and loving suggestion of a dear friend, I had looked into play therapy for our eldest son and discovered a wonderful therapist in our city. Today I went to meet with her for the first time. We had planned for my husband to come as well, but as it turned out he needed to be at some crucial work-related events and was unable to attend.
The therapist suggested that I meet with her anyway to get a feel for her practice and fill out all relevant paperwork. Since I'd already arranged babysitting, I was happy to oblige.
Her office was beautiful and inviting, located only about fifteen minutes from our home. Thankfully I did not know that our car clock had been re-set to the actual time, and so drove all of the way there blissfully unaware that I was running late. Only when I'd parked the car and the radio announcer said, "It's 4:30" did I realize that I was actually just walking through her front door at the exact moment our session was set to begin. I'm grateful that I didn't know about my tardiness all along, because it saved me fourteen and a half minutes of stress.
The therapist herself was everything I had expected her to be from her website. Beautiful in an earthy way, not too much older than my husband and I, extremely intelligent and highly educated in her craft. I chose her out of all the therapists because (a) she gave me concrete and necessary advice up front; (b) she seemed to genuinely care about the long-term welfare of our son, and (c) she really looked like someone I would be 'friends' with.
As our appointment progressed she launched right into an explanation of attachment theory and the idea based on my description of the problems we have faced that our son might not have formed a secure attachment to me during his first year of life, based on the fact that I was working 80 hours a week and rarely home. She said that insecurely attached children often suffer from issues of self-esteem and inappropriate acting out, especially when they are competing with a sibling who might be viewed as "securely" attached.
This would certainly be the case with our sons, as I have been a stay-at-home mother for my second son's entire life and he feels incredibly safe with me and attached to me. My daughter too would be a securely attached child, but our eldest would be less so, given the way in which he was reared by a team of nanny/daddy/grandparents/mommy for his first 18 months.
He may actually have formed a more secure attachment to our (then) Mexican nanny who spoke no English... and in learning Spanish before English, he may also have developed a sense of frustration in his own abilities to communicate with me - his mother. I described for her the delay in his language, which had been recommended for assessment at one time. "He might not have been quite understanding you," the therapist advised, "And you were not quite understanding him. This could have placed further stress on his ability to securely attach to you."
We both agreed that this scenario largely explains why my son is so much closer to his father and so much more loving with him - my husband worked from home a great deal of the time during my son's first year and also brought him to the office. So my son had the chance to form a much stronger secure attachment to his dad.
However, when my husband returned to work full time (and even more than full time), it may have been devastating to the little guy emotionally because first his nanny was gone and then the parent to whom he had formed the strong bond was also gone... leaving him alone with the parent to whom he was insecurely attached and who he did not trust as much (me).
I worked hard during the six months between when I left my job and when his brother was born to focus all of my attention upon him and lavish him with the mothering that he had lacked from me for 18 months; which may explain why he grew even more jealous of his little brother when he realized that this new 'creature' that looked just like him was going to take away my time and full attention, which he had only just recently begun to enjoy.
I suppose had he been securely attached to me at that time, he might not have grown so jealous. However, when you add the insecure attachment to the adjustment of having a new baby, it may have overloaded his emotional circuits.
Anyway, it is all making a lot of sense now and I feel like this therapist has given me in just under one hour of actual conversation not only a totally logical framework for why our eldest is so intense and emotional with his brother, but also a lot of concrete strategies to begin helping him work his way back to balance within our family.
All well and good, right?
Here is the surprising, unexpected dilemma.
When we went on to discuss paperwork and privacy laws, the play therapist said: "In the interest of full disclosure I think it is important that I tell you that I believe we live in the same community and that our children attend the same school."
Um, what?
"Are you serious?" I asked.
She named my son's school and said, "Is that where he goes to school?"
"Yes. Wow, I can't believe it! See, my intuition was right-on when I told you that you looked like a person I would be friends with. I can't believe you are one of my neighbors!"
"I have a child there in the first grade," she said. "My child had your son's teacher last year."
"So, does this mean that we can't be friends?" I joked.
"Yes, that is exactly what it means. It would violate the code of ethics for my profession if we developed a friendship. I am just telling you this because you may see me around school and you need to know that it is illegal for me to acknowledge or say hello to you if you have not said hello to me first."
"Oh, well of course I will wave and say hello!"
"If I am going to treat your son and/or your family there needs to be a professional distance maintained between us. If ever you choose to terminate therapy, then after a certain appropriate period of time we could then be friends."
"Oh! Wow."
This gave me a lot to think about. In fact, I thought about it all along our drive home and well into the night, when I discussed it with my husband who had returned home from his appointments. He and I agreed that it is truly an unusual situation. Our new community is so small, we are bound to run into the therapist (with or without her family) at random places like the grocery store, the coffee shop, the park, school events, my son's dance studio, on sports teams, etc.
Later I also began to think about the potential effect of this proximity on our son, especially should he ever go in to see her in person and develop a relationship with her as his therapist. "What if he meets her child (boy or girl, I don't know) at school on the playground or at lunch and they happen to become friends? What if they play little league together? What happens if they want to have playdates with each other and we are obliged to maintain a professional distance? How does that work?"
Worse, I wondered how it would affect my son in school if he felt that other students might "know" about his inner turmoil. Would he avoid her children? Would he feel deeply uncomfortable around them? Even though my husband and I know that she would never confide in her family about our family's private life, our son might not understand the code of ethics that she follows - and he might develop anxiety that he was being privately discussed or even teased by his schoolmates.
So there you have it. An unexpected dilemma! We've found an incredible therapist that I truly believe can help us, but she also happens to be a neighbor who - for all I know - could live just down the street. I'm not really sure that I want that kind of messy integration of personal and professional, so I too am feeling a bit unsettled.
If she was able to become a friend of mine I would of course share all of the details and events of our personal life without reservation, and be quite open to her advice as a mother and a professional because I like and respect her a lot. However in that scenario, we would be equals - friends learning about each other at the same time.
It feels very unbalanced to think that a neighbor and fellow parent at our school would be privy to so much detail about our private life yet we would know almost nothing about hers. I envision very awkward PTA meetings where we have to co-chair activities but can't really talk personally or openly.
My husband and I are going to think this through further, and I have also posed our dilemma to her directly. As much as I would like to work with her, if our kids are going to be in school together for the next 11 years it might make more sense to terminate therapy asap and then take her out for coffee in a year. She is a lovely person. Life can be so ironic.
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