In the Arms of Grief: Working with Developmentally Delayed Children and Their Caregivers

摘要

The article presents some factors, risks and challenges associated with dance movement therapy (DMT), from the perspective of a dance/movement therapist on a therapeutic team. Empirical observations are drawn from work in a state-subsidized day-care programme for infants and children in Australia; these DMT sessions are comprised of developmentally delayed children and their daily caregivers, often mothers with post-natal depression or psychosis. Sessions are directed at both populations simultaneously, compounding issues of treatment as well as the physical, psychological and emotional responses of clients (child and adult). Problematizing the difficulties of somatic work with children, the therapist critiques the theory of the “good enough mother” in a disability context, acknowledging the effect of caregivers’ own pathologies of grief.