"Grandma, give him the eye!"
By Dr. William Steele
My wife has spent a lot of time with our grandchildren, now 7 and 5 years old. Wow, the energy they have is endless, so too is the joy they bring. Their innocence, curiosity, creativity and hug-ability are beyond wonderful. However, every now and then they need to settle down. One day they weren’t listening well and Grandma said, “Look at me. See this look? I am giving you the eye and it means, settle down.”
A few months had passed since Grandma had given them the “eye.” Then, later one evening we were at my son’s house to visit with him, his wife and the grandkids. Now they had a Jack Russell dog that was hyper beyond belief. Jack Russell’s are small and skinny with short hair, but really fast on their feet. They named him Harley. He was like a motorcycle at high speed. This evening he was particularly active, barking at anyone who moved. He’d run from one end of the house to the other, jumping over or going through anything in his way. The grandkids were playing with their Legos. They built a pretty good wall when, you guessed it, Harley crashed through it like Evil Knievel. At that point our granddaughter ran up to Grandma, grabbed her hand, pulled her towards Harley and yelled out, “Grandma, give him the eye!”
This was the first my son and his wife heard anything about Grandma’s eye. Grandma was trying to hold back her laughter while she got on the floor and looked right at Harley, when amazingly to her surprise as well as ours, Harley stopped and went belly up on the floor. Grandma rubbed him for a while and Harley settled down.
This story reminded me of two other stories about “eyes” that I’ll share with you later in this article. The point is our granddaughter didn’t yell, “Grandma, tell Harley to settle down,” but rather she said, “give him the eye,”. This points out that the visual, the sensory memory was far more effective with the kids than words. Interestingly, even our language pays respect to the “eye” with statements like, “Keep a watchful eye out for the kids,” and, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” And there is the well known metaphor, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
What is fascinating is that neuroscience tells us that we respond to what we see faster than what we hear. Directly behind our eyes are spindle neurons that are the switchboards of our social brain. They are also the fastest neural circuits that we have and track our interpersonal interactions while also guiding our snap social decisions (“Deep Brain Learning,” 2009 click here for more information.)
Children are constantly looking at us for signs of approval or disapproval. The fact is, eye contact that is approving, friendly and caring releases oxytocin in those “seeing” that approval in our eyes. Oxytocin is the bonding, trust building hormone we talked about in the December issue of the Trauma Practitioner. (Click here to access that issue.)
Over the years, I listen to what others say, but I really trust what I actually see. “Seeing is believing” is something I learned early. Words meant little in my family growing up. In fact, what I heard most often after trying to speak up was, “You really don’t mean that,” or “That is silly.”
The only time I was taken seriously was when my parents saw what I had done. Perhaps that is how I arrived at the concept of our being a witness rather than a therapist in our initial efforts to help traumatized children. Being a witness means giving children the opportunity for us to see what they really see when they look at themselves, others and the world around them as a result of their traumatic experiences. It just makes sense to me that seeing what they see better defines the reality they are living with, running from, or fighting to survive. Words just fall short.
Now, Grandma has an “eye” she sends my way as well. Actually there are several looks I’ve come to recognize pretty quickly over the years, looks that tell me exactly what I need to do - frustration, surprise, disappointment, sadness, excitement, pride. My spindle neurons see anyone of these looks and trigger my response. Children actually learn these different looks as well.
Many of you probably have a feeling faces poster or a magnetic version of “feeling faces” that kids, even adults, can point to, to let those around them know how they feel. The magnet version lets you put a magnetized marker around the face that reflects your mood at the time. Kids love this because it helps them express what they feel when words fail them. It also helps them to learn to recognize what different looks reflect which feelings.
Grandma’s “give him the eye story” actually reminded me of another “eye story” that happened when I was in the fourth or fifth grade. My mother bought me a yellow Easter suit that I absolutely hated. It was “sissy-fiable” but I was forced to wear it. Nothing I said mattered. A while later, a picture of me in that yellow sissy suit sat in the living room in a stand up cardboard-like linen frame similar to how photo studios frame school pictures. I was horrified at how I looked. Later that night I came downstairs, took the photo and punched out my eyes with a pencil.
The next morning my mother was beyond mad but strangely I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I was delighted to tell her I punched out my eyes. I took my beating with a shoe that day, but it didn’t hurt because I didn’t have to look at that picture and no one else would see me looking like that either. I won that battle. The picture never showed up again.
What makes sense to me is that kids who look at themselves and can’t stand what they see often have to find a way to fix it or change it. What makes sense to me is that being able to alter the way we look, if we don’t like what we see about ourselves, is extremely empowering even when that change is made in a picture. My mother wouldn’t listen to my verbal protest but when she saw what I had done to my own picture she got the message.
I have one last story related to eyes. In some respects it is a bit surreal but a true story. Those of you who have taken TLC’s Certification training have heard me tell this story and have seen the drawings so I will shorten it considerably. This woman’s husband was brutally tortured and murdered. When I asked her to draw a picture of what happened, one of her drawings had an open eye in the corner of the picture. She explained she had no idea what it meant but months after identifying her husband’s body she would find herself just “doodling eyes,” especially when talking with others on the phone.
She was unable initially to draw a picture of her brutalized husband with his eyes open. Her first drawing was of his face with his eyes closed. This drawing was a fairly accurate depiction of the actual photograph taken of his tortured face. She did several other drawings related to his traumatic death that helped to bring some relief and tapped into her grief over his loss as well. The next morning we completed our session. When I asked her if she could now draw a picture of her husband with his eyes open she was able to do so. Afterwards I told her to take as much time as she needed to quietly look into his eyes and say all the things she couldn’t say to him before he was abruptly taken from their home and brutalized. She sat quietly for a moment and then turned to me and the others in the group we were working with and said, “I need to talk to him aloud.” In other words, she wanted all of us to be a witness to the loving relationship they shared before his traumatic death.
Her ability to change the eyes in his brutalized tortured face, to the eyes in the face he had prior to his death, lead to the amelioration of the trauma-related symptoms she was experiencing.
An eye on a piece of paper, eyes in a photograph, and Grandma’s eye, are unrelated stories and yet connected by a common theme – what we see matters. What we see when we look at ourselves matters, what we see when we look in the eyes of others matters.
What makes sense from a trauma intervention perspective then is to have children draw a picture of the way they looked before the trauma and after, at the initiation of intervention and at the end of intervention, what they see when they look at themselves, what they remember seeing, what they remember others looking like at the time of the trauma, giving them permission to change anything they see when they look at their drawings. These are ways that help them reorder their experiences and their view of self in ways they can now manage.
If we cannot see what traumatized children see when they look at themselves and others in their environment how can we really know what will be helpful for them. We cannot. Being able to witness what they now see matters tremendously.
What Makes Sense To You?
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