Sunday, March 02, 2008
Dred Scott II
There have been times in our history when the laws of our nation and politics converge to such an extent that we stand on the brink of a major change, a change so profound as to shake the very core of our society, with the potential of creating (or exacerbating) a rift to the breaking point. Our Constitution establishes an individual’s right to a speedy trial, but there were times when the outcome of a legal matter was so profound, as to influence an election, that it was suggested that the court delay their decision.
This was the situation with the Supreme Court’s delay in Dred Scott decision.
We are facing an issue of this magnitude today, although you wouldn’t know about if you only watched mainstream news.
Before I describe the events today, let me go back to another time, when the Court’s decision not only changed society, but it created a shift in attitude so profound as to bring us to war.
* * *
By 1831, the originally haphazard Underground Railroad reached organizational critical mass. By that time, it had grown beyond a few former slaves assisting other slaves escape from the South to Northern states and Canada, to one of strange bedfellows, achieving through civil disobedience a confluence that was taking its toll on those who were slave-owners. Between 1810 and 1850 it was estimated that over 100,000 slaves had escaped through these channels.
The methods for assisting slaves were similar: safe-houses were provided in 10 to 20 mile intervals where the escaping slave could sleep and hide for the day, doing his traveling under the cover of darkness. At these safe-houses, he could find food and establish the route for his next stop. The “stations” as they were called, were organized by a “conductor” who would help the slave establish the best route. The terms used by the organizations themselves is what gave rise to the label Underground Railroad.
In addition to former slaves working as conductors (including Harriet Tubman and John Fairfield), Levi Coffin, a Quaker and one of the leaders of the Abolitionist movement, raised money and provided work for escaped slaves in a store he owned in Cincinnati. While many argued that slavery was justified and sanctioned by God, Levi Coffman believed otherwise:
The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow out the teachings of that good book.
But Levi Coffin was not the only abolitionist in America and the group with which he was associated (Western Freedmen’s Aid Society) not the only one of its kind.
The Abolitionist movement was an offshoot of the American Revolution. In 1787 Congress banned slavery in the Northern Territories. Many slave owners in Maryland and Virginia voluntarily freed their slaves, but despite these early successes, the abolitionist movement lost its momentum.
Combined with fears engendered by the Haitian Slave Revolt in 1791 and other revolts, and the growth of the cotton industry, the Southern states desired to strengthen slavery, not to eliminate it. To that end, scientific racism was designed to achieve the goal of strengthening the resolve in slave states to maintain the peculiar institution through racist propaganda.
The American Colonization Society, an abolitionist group headed by Henry Clay and Francis Scott Key, proposed the gradual elimination of slavery, and alleviating white fears of discontented free Blacks, by transporting them to the newly formed nation of Liberia, established for the purpose of being colonized by emancipated slaves.
By the 1830s, other civil rights issues were gaining popularity and force. These, under the banner of Second Great Awakening included temperance, women’s suffrage, kinder treatment of the miserables of the country, and abolition. But as with all morality movements, they fractured and splintered into various sides on the issues, as well as conflicted on the solutions to these problems. But there was no doubt that the Underground Railroad was having an effect. Freed slaves were living in the North as free men, and this was angering the Southern slave-owners who had been stripped of their property, with no legal recourse.
In 1850 Congress passed a revised bill, the Fugitive Slave Laws, in response to many Northern states passing personal liberty laws, which extended the right of habeas corpus to escaped slaves living in the North.
But the Fugitive Slaves Laws were only one of a combination of Bills passed by Congress. These Bills came to be known as the The Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Laws, abolition of slavery in Washington, DC and the admission of California into the Union as a free state. The fourth Bill split the territory of California into new territories, New Mexico (later split into New Mexico and Arizona) and Utah, and they were open to slaveholders and abolitionists. Texas was also given ten million dollars to compensate them for the loss of territory, and as Texas was a slave state, this strengthened the alliance of Southern slave states.
The Compromise of 1850 had the effect of nullifying the Missouri Compromise of 1820. In that Bill, Missouri was entered into the Union, but slave-owners were prohibited from bringing slaves into Missouri, as part of an overall plan to gradually eliminate slavery… a compromise plan that had the effect of placating both sides on the issue. But the Compromise of 1850 eliminated that, and the direction of slavery in America had become all too clear.
The Fugitive Slave Laws and the nullification of the Missouri Compromise were huge defeats for abolitionists. In 1854 they were dealt another blow, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill brought those states into the union, but allowed each of those states to decide if they wanted to be free or slave states. This Bill was so controversial that it split the Democratic Party. The abolitionist faction of the Democrats joined with the Whigs to form the Republican Party by July of 1854.
The final blow was the Court’s decision on Dred Scott, in December 1856, in which they stated:
- A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
- When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its ‘people or citizens.’ Consequently, the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply to them. And not being ‘citizens’ within the meaning of the Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction in such a suit.
- Since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, no State can by any subsequent law make a foreigner or any other description of persons citizens of the United States, nor entitle them to the rights and privileges secured to citizens by that instrument.
- A State, by its laws passed since the adoption of the Constitution, may put a foreigner or any other description of persons upon a footing with its own citizens, as to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by them within its dominion and by its laws. But that will not make him a citizen of the United States, nor entitle him to sue in its courts, nor to any of the privileges and immunities of a citizen in another State.
In effect, the Court ruled that slaves had no claim to freedom; they were property and not citizens; they could not bring suit in federal court; and because slaves were private property, the federal government could not revoke a white slave owner’s right to own a slave based on where he lived, thus nullifying the essence of the Missouri Compromise. Taney, speaking for the majority, also ruled that since Scott was an object of private property, he was subject to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits taking property from its owner “without due process”.
In 1858, the Republicans in Illinois met at a Republican State convention where they selected their candidate for U.S. Senate to run against the Democratic candidate, Stephen Douglas. At that convention, their Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, delivered a speech, which began:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination—piece of machinery so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidence of design and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
But, so far, Congress only, had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition.
Four days later, commenced the struggle, which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition.
Lincoln goes on to detail the setbacks and defeats for the anti-slavery moment, making the case that so many defeats and usurpations cannot have been achieved by accident. He makes that case that the slave states never intended to eliminate slavery by gradualism; just the opposite. That there was a concerted effort to spread slavery to free states, forbidding any state from asserting their free state status.
That radical speech has come to be known as the “House Divided” speech, delivered to the splintered parties and alliances, coming together for the sole purpose of abolishing slavery. In that speech, Lincoln articulated the delay in the Supreme Court’s decision on Dred Scot, and spoke with passion and shame that our Court withheld their decision for political purposes, and to influence an election.
In that speech the Republicans achieved two things: One, they framed the argument and (as Lincoln had hoped) with figures of speech to rouse the antislavery populace. Two, the Republican Party found their Standard Bearer, bringing victory to the Party of Abolition in 1860.
The decision that slavery was to be allowed in any state or territory, regardless of a state constitution’s prohibition of the practice, confirmed both by Congress and the Court, was a coffin nail in states’ rights. Amazingly, those who chose to make war, but only when the leading Abolitionist in the land became President, managed to twist the matter to one of states rights themselves. Ironic doesn’t begin to describe the hypocrisy of their propaganda, nor the vile and evil goals of their actions.
The rest, as we say, is history.
* * *
The Supreme Court has on its docket a case that could decide the future direction of the nation, just as important and significant as the Dred Scott decision:
After a hiatus of 68 years, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to rule on the meaning of the Second Amendment — the hotly contested part of the Constitution that guarantees “a right to keep and bear arms.” Not since 1939 has the Court heard a case directly testing the Amendment’s scope — and there is a debate about whether it actually decided anything in that earlier ruling. In a sense, the Court may well be writing on a clean slate if, in the end, it decides the ultimate question: does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such as a state National Guard unit?
In addition to the profoundness of the Second Amendment decision, the implications of the decision as precedent, for an interpretation of all our rights could be the unintended outcome of this decision. As other cases have established precedent beyond the scope of Original Intent (such as the specious right to privacy necessary for the majority decision on Roe v Wade), this case could be establishing a new precedent in the interpretation of rights. There have been a number of high-profile cases recently that have challenged the individual rights view, those testing the soliciting aspect of the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold), and others which have stretched the limits and intent of property ownership from one of public use to indirect public benefit through projected increases in tax revenue by development in the private sector.
Is the Bill of Rights an articulation of individual rights and a limitation on what government may do, or is it a series of collective rights that the various states may, therefore, ignore at their discretion if they can show any indirect benefit, regardless of the magnitude of intrusion on the majority of persons’ personal liberties?
The Court is expected to hear arguments on District of Columbia v. Heller this month. Given the nature of these things, their release of their decision on the matter could closely coincide during the fervor of the general election in November.
It will be interesting to see if the Court announces their decision, or holds it until after the election. Will the Court be courageous in this matter to decide the matter once and for all, or will it (as it did in the Presser case), take a narrow view of the case, with no precedent established?
I wouldn’t take any wagers on the matter.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the second century, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to disarming the citizenry.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half disarmed and half armed.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of gun rights, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
We live in interesting times.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
What is a Conservative?
Post contents to be reposted.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Retrofitting
Post contents to be reposted.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Womanly Arts Follow Up
Post contents to be reposted.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Special Needs
There was an interesting and spirited discussion on Kim’s site, launched by a post about whole language vs phonics instruction.
As many who read me regularly know, education is an important issue for me, for a variety of reasons:
- I make my living in the field of education, as an instructional designer. Although the majority of my work is in corporate training (not K-12), I do know a little about the subject.
- I have three children (2 mine, 1 Kim’s) and their education was a primary importance to me. Our decision to homeschool them was not made cavalierly.
- My son, David, is a “special needs” child.
I want to focus on the third aspect of this… having a special needs child.
First let me say outright that having a child who is different changes you. It changes you in ways you cannot begin to predict before having the child, and in ways after that are so complicated and detailed, it is difficult to know where to begin. But because I’m on the downside of the educational slope with David, I want to talk about those experiences and exactly how it changes you.
Before I get into that, however, I want to mention that David’s special needs were not nearly as severe or life altering as the conditions and problems other parents deal with on a daily basis. I was incredibly fortunate that David’s prognosis was good, but the full extent of his prognosis is an unfolding story. Having David did a lot for me. It changed my life for the better. The primary betterment was just in knowing him. The second benefit was meeting parents who have children with special needs, and seeing how amazing most of them are.
As a qualifier, there are all sorts of children categorized as “special needs.” Some fall under the umbrella because of bad parenting or trauma, ie, environmental factors that are (for the most part) recoverable and temporary. The other category of special needs include children who have something wrong with them. I won’t be PC and say they are simply “different.” That, in my opinion, is wrong-headed and can lead to a life of continual disappointments (for the parents and the child).
When we hear words like “different” we tend to think that it means that someone is quirky or unusual, and although that would be part of the characteristics of a special needs child, it isn’t the full story. With special needs children, something about the way their body functions (most often their brain) doesn’t work the way it should, or what would be considered “normal.”
There are some special needs that we all understand. We understand things like deafness or blindness. We can recognize those abnormalities because they are, well, visible. We can see that someone cannot see. We can understand that someone can’t hear. Similarly, we can see if someone is born without limbs or with deformed limbs. Because we can see it we understand that the child will need to learn to adapt, and learn to do things differently from how other children are able to live their lives.
Where it becomes more complicated, and gets into gray areas (pun intended) is when we cannot see the problem so clearly… when it involves abnormal brain function.
We can begin to understand it when we think of something like partial deafness or severe near-sightedness. In those examples, we recognize that there is some functioning there, but it isn’t as good as it should be, or normal (ie, common). In those situations, the approach is not the same as someone who is without the ability completely. The approach is mixed—a little bit of the training for someone without the condition, and a little bit of the training for those with less than optimal functioning.
That is similar to how it works with children who have some sort of brain abnormality. The conditions run the full gamut of non-functioning (similar to blindness) to partial functioning (similar to severe near-sightedness). In the case of the latter, often glasses or surgery can resolve the problem, at least partially—moving the child from handicapped to closer to the normal range. If, however, the condition is not because of any malfunctioning of the eyes, and is something to do with how the brain is processing sight, the chances of “closer to normal” begin to degrade, and the options available are more limited.
With a variety of conditions, physical therapy can be a tremendous help. If one set of muscles is weakened, another set can be strengthened to compensate. Or, in some cases, the weakened muscles can be exercised and used and recover. In the cases of astigmatism (or “lazy eye"), often covering the strong eye for a period of weeks or months, forcing the brain to use the weak one, will resolve the problem permanently… if identified and caught soon enough (generally by the age of three).
Some problems occur in the womb (congenital) or may occur later (by genetics, illness, trauma, etc.). Some problems are identifiable immediately, such as children born without limbs or with deformations. Some deformations can occur later.
For example, when a parent takes a baby to a doctor for well-baby visits, one of the things the doctor checks (that often the parents have no clue as to what they are checking or why) is the symmetry of the muscle and bone development of the child. They take all sorts of measurements as well as looking at the child’s face for signs of asymmetry. One of the things that can happen are the quadrants of the skull can fuse too soon, resulting in an area of the baby’s face growing too slowly, out of step with the rest of the skull. The result (if not caught) can be disastrous. The remedy for this is to unfuse the skull so that the skull can grow normally. Depending on when it is caught (and when it occurs), some asymmetry may be permanent, but the severity (or the resulting side effects) are limited, the sooner it is identified and treated.
I knew a woman who had such a condition. The unfortunate thing is that she was born in Mexico, where the doctors didn’t check for this sort of thing. The result was that she grew into adulthood with the fusing, leaving the upper right quadrant of her face the size of a 2 year olds, with the rest of her face growing normally. This meant her eye socket never grew to proper proportions or position, her jaw didn’t fit together properly (making eating very difficult because opening her mouth was painful/impossible), as well as a major disfiguration. To put this in perspective, she looked like a character from a horror movie, with all the underlying truths of her being one of the most beautiful people on the planet, on the inside.
A simple procedure, almost routine, would have occurred had she been born in the U.S. Since she wasn’t, she faced a lifetime of disfiguration, difficulties with eating and sight, as well as numerous reconstructive surgeries to address the most critical aspects of the condition. If she had been born in the U.S., to parents who never checked for this or received well-baby care, the results could have been the same.
As I think I’ve illustrated, there are a myriad of things that can go wrong, and a myriad of treatment options, depending on what the problem is, when it occurs, and how soon it is identified.
Since most parents don’t have any experience with these things (you learn to be a parent while being a parent), simple things that are clues to larger problems, are not as obvious to parents, and problems can go undetected or never detected (within the timeframe of treatment options).
That’s been my personal experience. I’ve come across a number of children who have the same condition David has, and it seems as if their parents are completely clueless. That is a problem, as there are things that need to be addressed early, so they can be resolved, as much as possible. Sometimes, it is simply too late to do anything about it… and that, in my definition, is a tragedy.
I think it is important to mention at this point, that although millions and millions of normal, healthy children have been born, and medical treatment and nutrition helps to improve that all the time, children who are born or become abnormal is common, and it used to be a lot more common. Child mortality rates in The West are incredibly low, as are the defects and conditions caught and treated that were once permanently disfiguring or disabling. Medicine and science are responsible for the improvements. Doctors are the saving grace.
But medicine and science hasn’t cured and will probably never be able to cure/repair everything.
One of the things that cannot be cured is brain function that is abnormal, for no apparent reason (no underlying cause). There are other aspects of brain function that might not be considered abnormal, but for which there is no treatment available. One of these is low IQ, either caused by something or preexisting. People are born with low IQs and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change that. There has been some success in raising IQs 6 or 7 points, but the improvements don’t last (they deteriorate within a few years). IQ is a lot like any other physical characteristic, such as height, eye color, hair color, and skin tone, something that just is. It cannot be altered. It is what and who the person is.
It is important to understand that IQ is physical. It isn’t an emotional thing. People don’t have lower (or higher) IQs because their mothers were more nurturing or kind. Obviously, the healthier a child is (better medical treatment and nutrition) will allow a child to grow to her full IQ potential, but the ceiling for that potential is still fixed (set) for her.
If you think of IQ the way you think of height, it becomes easier to understand. A child may have a serious illness or trauma that will result in them not reaching their full height potential, but if the child is healthy, they will reach their potential. There is a limit to how tall a child will be. Feeding them more won’t increase whatever natural ceiling they were born with. It is genetic. All of these same things can affect IQ, but the same rules apply: every child has an IQ potential that is genetic.
IQ really is physical. Higher IQs exist because the person’s brain functions faster and is able to do multiple things at the same time (complexity). The speed at which the brain functions and the connections to other areas of the brain allowing multiple function processing, are physical (and chemical, as a result of physical processes).
If you think of the brain as a miniaturized version of a telephone grid system, it helps to illustrate how the brain works (with respect to IQ). If you have optical fiber lines, as opposed to old-fashioned copper wire, the signals will travel faster, and will be able to carry more information. If you have switching stations, allowing the various lines to connect to each other, you can go to more areas with the full strength of the signal (multiple callers sharing the same lines). If your switching stations and junctions use better technology, the information will travel through those switching stations and junctions faster, with more information, and more reliably.
Applying that to IQ then, if your brain is full of copper wire, with few or random single switches, you will not be able to process as much information as someone who has bigger and more reliable connections. Someone “applying themselves” will not be able to process as much information on a copper wire as someone who has the equivalent of a fiber optic network in their brain, no matter how hard they try. If someone has few junction boxes or faulty junctions (shorts in the wires) they may only be able to process a few things at a time, compared with people who have millions of reliably functioning, high speed junctions. If the junctions that are small in number or are unreliable lead to and from physical storage (long term memory) the person’s abilities will be severely crippled.
High IQs (above 130) are abnormal. They are desirable, but abnormal. Similarly, low IQs are abnormal, but in that case, they are undesirable. The vast majority of people are in the middle, with IQs averaging 100 (making up about 50% of the population).
Now the brain does all sorts of different things, as does the body do all sorts of different things. Those things that make up intelligence are just one of the things the body/brain does.
For example, if someone is blind, no matter how hard they try and no matter how smart they are, they will not be able to read a printed book. They can be taught to read brail, but not the traditional printed word. Their ability to read brail will be made easier, the higher their IQ, conversely, the lower their IQ, the more difficult it will be.
If a person has a low IQ (below, say, 60) combined with blindness, they will probably not be able to be taught to read brail, and we already know that reading the printed word is out of the question.
Thousands of other combinations can occur.
There are parts of the brain that deal with language processing, that affect speech physically as well as comprehension. There are parts of the brain that process sight, as we know that some people (mostly men) can be color-blind. Color blindness is an abnormality of the processing of sight, combined with the physical aspects of the eye itself.
There are other aspects of sight and processing sight, as well as issues in the area of language, that can work better or worse, or normally or abnormally, for different people.
Sometimes we will say things, such as, “I have no sense of direction.” That may be because someone is truly not capable of sensing direction, or they have never learned the skill of doing it. It can also be a combination of both. If someone has difficulty with the concept of direction, then learning the skills will be more difficult for that person. If they are also disadvantaged because of a lower IQ, it will be harder still.
Measuring ability in many of these other arenas is, therefore, complicated. Someone’s ability to do something, learn something, or apply something can be complicated by their IQ, other physical abilities or disabilities, their education, and other related physical processes necessary to be able to learn successfully. If someone is lacking in a sense of direction, their ability to learn it will be made more difficult if they are blind, hard of hearing, physically limited in their ability to sit still, or other problems which may complicate their ability to understand and process language.
Which brings me to David.
David has what is labeled, “Autism.” Most people, fortunately, don’t have to really understand what that word means… and as parents who have experienced the diagnosis applied to their child have learned, it has a shifting and fluid meaning, depending on which half of the country you reside.
When people hear the word, they often think of the stereotype, which is a person who is generally unable to speak or communicate, has ritual and habitual behaviors (such as hand flapping), and is generally incapable of functioning in society in any normal way.
That would be wrong, as it applies to David, and how it applies to many others who share the diagnosis. What that stereotype does illustrate, however, is that Autism is a set of conditions, not one specific thing. Autism involves three sets of conditions or processes:
1. Language disabilities/handicaps
2. Communication/perception abnormalities/disabilities
3. Habitual/ritual behaviors
When those three things exist in one person, they receive the diagnosis of “Autistic.” What is not part of the diagnosis, but which is common to exist in addition to those, is some level of other brain dysfunction, resulting in lower IQ. Meaning, all people who are Autistic are not mentally retarded, but some are also mentally retarded. Autism has what is called a “spectrum” that plots the three attributes above (in severity) contrasted against the mental retardation that may also exist.
David has no mental retardation. He has, in fact, a very high IQ. But, similar to how some people are color blind, David is “blind” to unspoken communication, such as facial clues. He can see them, obviously, but they do not translate to meaning. He has learned that a great big smile is a good thing, and generally means acceptance, but he has no innate ability to do that. He has to learn (has to be taught), through memorization, what every single gesture, facial expression, or nuance in tone means.
Similarly, he does not have an innate ability to read a person’s body language (that is the informal and non-spoken aspect of communication, which makes up a considerable percentage of communication and language processing) and often says things that might be considered inappropriate, because he has no innate sense of appropriate or inappropriate. Because most people are born with these abilities, they do not realize how much of language and communication is non verbal. David neither sees nor hears those things in a way that allows him to process them.
But just like blind people can be taught to read brail, so can autistic children be taught to read non-verbal communication in a different way. Their ability to learn to do it a different way doesn’t mean they are doing it the same way as others (or as easily or fluidly), only that there are workarounds and techniques to help them appear more normal to others.
Most people meeting David (who are not clued in to Autism) would have no idea… now. That was not the case when he was two.
David, like Wendy, was in preschool when he was two years old. Wendy was a rambunctious and spirited child, and very noisy. She talked a blue streak, using words when she was five months old. I referred to her as “my pepper pot.” Where Wendy was spirited and lively, David was calm and serene. He was a happy boy, who slept easily (and long) and seemed to be at peace with the world, where Wendy seemed to be in a battle with the world and a constant state of I AM HERE!, David was giggly, happy, and peaceful. He was also my sweet baby boy, and we had a romance that only a mother and son can experience. We were in tune with each other and David did not need to cry or fuss to let me know what he wanted or needed. To him, I was the living embodiment of all that was wonderful in the world, and I would catch him sometimes, staring at me, delighting in my presence.
What I did not realize, because I had no communication issues with David (nor did Wendy or his nanny) was that David wasn’t talking. He wasn’t using words. When his peers (age 30 months) were forming simple sentences, David wasn’t using single words. He used gestures and some sounds, but no words.
It is not uncommon for highly intelligent children to be late talkers (it is actually a symptom of high intelligence in many children), so late talking isn’t always a bad thing, but it is not something that should be ignored, because it isn’t always that.
Why wasn’t David talking?
David was tested first by a speech therapist, who needed more information to know how to help David, and even if she should/could.
That, after a series of weeks and months, led to the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, after David had been given a clean bill of health by his regular doctor. There, over a period of weeks, good natured David went through a series of tests, modified in such a way that they could be meaningful when they were administered to a now (almost) three year old.
The short version was the diagnosis of Autism… which came as a complete shock. That also meant we had to rule out other potential complications, such as hearing difficulties/loss, vision impairments, and other possible brain abnormalities (such as seizures) which often accompany the diagnosis. David, fortunately, had none of those other complications (and was also not in the Asberger’s spectrum of Autism).
All of that took time. It took time to get all the tests and some we had to wait several months to get, because hearing tests on a three year old are difficult and specialized (to be both meaningful and accurate).
David had a series of ear infections (not unusual for many children) which had complicated the problem, so the first step was to get rid of the ear infections.
After David was perfectly healthy then, his education and interventions began.
What I did not mention (yet) was what happened the day I got the diagnosis of Autism. That wasn’t like going to a doctor and finding out your child has a cold or the flu, and you’re off to Walgreen’s to get a prescription to fix it. For this, there was no fix. There is/was no cure. There was only adaptation.
What the doctors could not tell me, because it would always be an unknown, was David’s prognosis for life. What we did not know yet, and would not know for many years, is if David did have any mental retardation or other abnormalities and disabilities that are common to Autistic children.
“What CAN you tell me?” I pleaded from the doctors. “Well…” one of the doctors began, “if you can get him to talk and make up for the language delays before he is five years old, the prognosis is better.”
That is all they could really tell me. There were too many unknowns at that point, many more tests and interventions to try, and many possible conditions or complications that generally take years to manifest and diagnose.
Would David be able to learn to talk?
To say that I was shocked by the diagnosis dramatically understates and simplifies my reaction. I was devastated, for myself, and for my sweet (and to me), perfect baby boy.
A better way of describing the reaction would be to say: It changed me. It changed me completely. It changed the way I thought about every single thing in the world, in orders of magnitude of Biblical proportions. Nothing that I thought I knew or understood about the world would remain the same.
I had to change. I had to adjust, because if I couldn’t do that, I would be no good to that boy… and he wasn’t someone else’s son, or someone else’s problem, or some cast-off. He was MY child and for whatever reason or blessing, that sweet boy had been placed in my care.
The first step in the process is similar to mourning. You have to let go of the part of yourself that was innocent, as well as all the expectations and pictures you have of what your child’s life will be like, and what your life is going to be like. You change your expectations, not to limit your child’s options, but because they don’t matter anymore. You no longer think about your child becoming President of the United States, or a magnificent doctor who cures the world of cancer, or the jock who will sweet talk all the girls at the prom. None of that is important anymore… and you have to let all of that go, cherishing it, loving it, and then setting it aside… forever. It is no longer relevant to your life.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a lot of time between the original diagnosis and getting other information that helps you (and the specialists) come up with a strategy for addressing your child’s needs. That gives you time to process all the emotions you need to process, to let go of all the silly fantasies you had about your child’s future, and it allows you to get to the point where you live in the here and now.
He has to use words. One word. David has to use one word.
That’s what life became. No matter what it took, no matter how frustrated or angry David might get, no matter how off-kilter this sweet boy would become, he had to learn to say a word.
No longer would the informal communication with his Mommy be acceptable. David had to speak, if he wanted to get something, anything, even a glass of water or his diapers changed.
David had to learn (what he had never learned and was not innate) was that language was powerful. It was the way to get anything and everything, and without it, he’d get nothing.
It nearly killed me. I had to watch him cry, have tantrums, sit frustrated and hungry (I KNEW he was hungry), and I had to do all of that, for his own good. I had to learn to be cross or insistent, when all I wanted to do was giggle and smile with my sweet baby boy. And it was HARD.
I had to work with the specialists to learn how to help David. I had to learn gestures and techniques to help him learn to speak, to form sentences, to test his abilities, to get him to stop the ticks and gestures, to follow instructions, to make eye contact, and how to initiate conversations with others, so he might be able to play with another child some day. He had appointments, doctors to visit regularly, tests, and evaluations. I had a case file three feet thick of David’s evaluations, goals, and progress.
Through all of it, I did not know if he would be able to do any of it, part of it, or all of it. There was always in the distance, always an unknown, the possibility that David would hit a wall—that he would reach the ceiling of his potential, and wherever that might be, whatever might be the limit, I had to be prepared for it, and accept and love David for exactly what he was and deal with it.
What I went through was not unusual. Millions of parents go through similar events and emotions when they get their specific diagnosis for their specific child.
They, too, adjust (most of them), and face a life of raising a child in a way they never expected, or were not prepared to face. But they do it. They do it for the love of one child. You can’t look at the world and the amount of love in the world in the same way, ever again. These parents don’t see a damaged child. They see their perfect baby boy or girl.
One child, who changes you in ways you could not begin to describe, who allows you to see and live in the world in the here and now, and in a way that allows you to relish in the delight of hearing your child say “milk” for the very first time, with champagne cork, happy dance, ecstatic delight. And with that first word, there is hope and possibilities, and the goal of a second word, and your outlook and life is eternally changed, for the better. With that, nothing is impossible, and you become an optimist in every conceivable way. The world is full of nothing but possibilities and you see love and wonder, in every direction.
I consider myself the luckiest mother on the face of the earth.
David starts college on August 27, while balancing his part time job at a movie theatre, where he speaks to customers and greets them and takes their orders… with a great big smile on his face. When he finishes college, he plans to move to Japan where he will be an English language instructor.
No wall in sight.
Peter Pan: Second to the right and then straight on until morning...
Category: EDUCATION | Beyond the Basics
