Feelings that present as sickness or pains

Some siblings can have what are called somatic complaints i.e. feelings of pain or sickness that don’t seem to have an obvious physical cause. 
 
Body mapping

Body mapping is an activity that can help your child talk to you about worry, sadness or anger that may present itself in the form of a sick tummy, a headache, or pains that come and go on a regular basis – maybe just before school or after youj take your other child to the hospital.

NB It is always important to rule out any illness due to an infection or injury or other physical cause as a first step

• Get some plain lining wallpaper, some felt tips and other decorating materials
• Ask your child to lie down on the paper and draw around his or her body making an outline with a felt tip
• Use the outline to talk about feelings that people have and how it affects our bodies and get your child to draw or write them on. e.g. worried –wrinkles on the forehead where you frown; nervous – butterflies in tummy; anxious – sweating under arms; proud – hold your head up high; happy – smiling.
• Then get your child to write or draw what they are feeling or experiencing in the sore or sick part of their body.
• Then get them to colour in this part of the body depending on what feelings they think it might be e.g. red for angry, blue for sad, pink for happy, green for jealous, black for fearful etc, or they can stick on materials to give texture and shape to the feelings.
• Then you can acknowledge the feeling your child has. ‘So you feel a bit sad today’  'Do you think you are sad about something at home or something at school?’  ‘At what other times do you get this feeling?’ They may be able to tell you a bit more about the feeling and when it comes. You can encourage them to come and tell you when they next start to have this feeling. Say that sometimes pains and aches are a way of telling us that we need to talk about a feeling and that often the sick feeling goes away or gets easier when we are able to talk about it.