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Case study of a boy who blinked too much ! By Dr. Alvin Ng- 19-Oct-2017
Another example of a case I have seen is this 11-year-old boy referred with adjustment problems and grief issues over the death of his father.
Case 2: The Boy Who Blinked Too Much
Another example of a case I have seen is this 11-year-old boy referred with adjustment problems and grief issues over the death of his father.
He was the youngest of three children, with a brother, aged 17, and a sister, aged 16. His mother was very strict and overbearing stemming from pressure from herself to bring up three children properly. The boy was also declining in his school academic performance. So his mother was worried, and also highly critical of him, picking on behaviours such as blinking more than usual.
She came into the clinic with an angry tone, “You see him?! You see his face and tell me what’s wrong with him!”
When I spoke with the boy, he claimed that he tends to blink when he’s scared and that he’s scared of his mother, so he tends to blink more when his mother is around and it did not help that she keeps nagging him about his blinking and looking sill when he blinks too much. So it was obvious that his mother has been harping on his inappropriate behaviours more than the appropriate ones.
I worked with the boy and taught him to seek out preferred behaviours from his mother and reinforce them by praising or by offering a pleasant consequence such as helping his mother when she is in a good mood or not scolding him.
I also did the same with his mother, telling her to notice good behaviours from her son and to reward them. The relationship between mother and son eventually improved due to son taking the effort to ‘change’ his mother, and mother was actually looking out for more positive behaviours from the son, which she saw more of and was able to reward.
Although the mother was still strict and critical, the son finally melted her heart by making her a certificate that said, “World’s Best Mother” during the final session.
At the point his mother realised how overly critical she was and realised the importance of focusing also on positive and appropriate behaviours so as to encourage them more. She learnt that it was unnecessary to keep focusing on what her son lacked but to encourage what he had, if not teach him what is more appropriate, while accepting him unconditionally plus helping him feel so.
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