It was my first time talking to David and part of that is doing a little 'get to know you' questionnaire; it's 20 questions for the child to answer.
The first one is:
"I _________ like myself."
Like all the questions, the blank is for them to fill in with one of six choices: always, mostly, usually, sometimes, rarely, or never.
David chose 'never' - 'I never like myself.'
"Okay, that's interesting," I said casually, "What makes you choose 'never'?"
David explained that about a year before, in Grade(Year) 5, another boy in his class, who had been a friend, had been killed in a traffic accident. His name had been David too. The next day another boy in their class had said to him, 'The wrong David died - you should have died.'
I decided that before going on we could make time for a chat about the kind of things people say when they are upset and the ways they can sometimes show their grief. But most of all we would have a chat about the difference between hearing what someone says and believing what someone says; the difference between leaving it as their thinking and making it ours.
"Anyway," I said after a while. "We ought to get back to these questions. But before we do, are you happy with the first one, or do you want to have another go at it?"
He said he did. He changed his answer to 'mostly'.
