Beautiful Child: The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her. Torey Hayden

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СКАЧАТЬ She could not interpret the nuances of speech, of other people’s facial expressions or their behavior, nor could she understand how to adjust her own behavior to that of those around her. As a consequence, she was unpopular with the children in her class because she often said blunt, hurtful things or barged in on games or activities.

      The social inadequacy was further hampered by her interests. Intensely pursued special interests are common in perfectly normal children of this age group and seem to be part of a healthy developmental process. Hence, the typical “collecting” stage, where acquiring trading cards or toys becomes a fascination for most school-age children, and for some, at least momentarily, a real fixation. As is typical for children with autistic tendencies, Gwennie raised these childish obsessions to a whole different level. For example, she collected pencils. While pencils themselves weren’t an unusual object of desire and a lot of the kids collected them, particularly the pretty, shiny ones or those with vivid designs or strangely shaped erasers, Gwennie was fascinated by plain old standard-issue yellow ones. She routinely carried about twenty of them around with her at any given time, and despite the fact that they all looked just alike to the rest of us, Gwennie knew each of these pencils individually. She liked to feel and examine them regularly and to lay them out on the tabletop and then line them up in ascending order from the longest to the shortest. Every time she went into a new classroom, she insisted on knowing if there were any other yellow pencils in there and couldn’t settle down until she found out if there were and if so, how many and how well used. Each time she saw one, her little eyes just lit up.

      This all paled, however, compared to Gwennie’s big obsession: foreign countries. Gwennie had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge on this subject and loved nothing better than telling you about the geography of Indonesia or the population statistics of Belgium. The problem was, this was all she really wanted to talk about. When I first found out she was due to spend time in our room, I was curious because her academic skills were so good. After half an hour of listening to her, however, I quickly came to suspect it was not so much a matter of giving Gwennie the benefits of my room as it was giving Gwennie’s teacher the benefits of a break from her. We all soon discovered just how tiring she could be.

      She came through the door Tuesday just after lunch.

      “Hello, Gwennie,” I said. “Here, I’ll show you where you’re going to sit.”

      “The total land area of Sweden is four-hundred-forty-nine-thousand, nine-hundred-sixty-four square kilometers. Its capital city is Stockholm and Stockholm is also the largest city. Sweden is bordered by Norway on the north and Finland on the east. It is one of the five Scandinavian countries. The others are Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The people are chiefly of Germanic ethnicity with a few ethnic Finns. The other major cities are Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sundsvall, Östersund.”

      “Okay, Gwennie, thank you. Would you sit here, please?”

      “Have you been to Sweden?”

      “No. Here’s your folder.”

      “Have you been to France? France has five-hundred-forty-three-thousand, nine-hundred-sixty-five square kilometers and the capital city is Paris. About thirty-four percent of French land is cultivated.”

      “Hooo,” Billy said softly under his breath, “this one’s cuckoo.”

      Jesse raised one socked foot and wiggled his toes.

      As Gwennie was going to come three afternoons a week, I decided that here would be an ideal partner for Venus. She and Gwennie could work on social skills together, which even I realized was pretty much of a long shot, as both girls were virtually at nil in this department. But I felt that having two was better than my working individually with them, as they could model for each other in a way I never could.

      The first day I sat the two girls down together, which, of course, meant maneuvering Venus into position like a doll, and corralling Gwennie, who was trying to tell Jesse about South Korea. I chose just about as basic an activity as I could. I had cut out pictures from magazines and pasted them onto index cards. Each showed a person with a very definite facial expression – smiling, laughing, crying, frowning – and I’d collected about four examples of each.

      “Can you tell me how this girl feels?” I asked Gwennie and showed her a picture of a girl beaming at a little puppy.

      Gwennie looked at the picture.

      “How does she feel? Look at her face. See what her lips are doing? What does that tell you?”

      “Do you know the capital of Belize?”

      “Gwennie, we aren’t talking about countries just now. Look at the picture, please. What is this expression? It’s a smile, isn’t it? What does a smile tell us about this little girl? What does it tell us she is feeling?”

      “Most people in Belize are Roman Catholics. Are you a Roman Catholic?”

      “Gwennie, we aren’t talking about that just now. Look at the picture, please. What does this girl’s smile tell us about the way she is feeling?”

      Gwennie leaned forward and studied the picture intently.

      “What does this picture tell you?”

      Gwennie looked up, her eyes wide. “Maybe this girl’s Finnish?”

      Of course, doing this activity with Venus was even more fun. I showed her the same picture I had showed to Gwennie. “Look. See this girl?”

      Venus stared blankly at my face.

      “Down here, Venus.” I reached over and gently tipped her head down enough to see the card with the picture on it. “Look. She has a puppy in her arms. And look at her face. See. See how her lips go up. She’s smiling. She sees that puppy and she obviously likes holding him, because look how much she is smiling at him. Can you make a smile for me?”

      Venus stared blankly at me.

      “Here. Like this.” I made an obvious smile with my own lips. “Can you do that?”

      “I can do that,” Gwennie interjected.

      “Good girl. Look at Gwennie. She can smile. How are you feeling when you smile?”

      “Ill,” Gwennie replied.

      “You’re feeling ill?” I asked with surprise.

      “How are you feeling? Ill,” Gwennie said and smiled expectantly, and I realized she was simply parroting back a response she had heard somewhere before. This was conversation as far as she was concerned. Each question had a specific, invariable answer.

      “Can you make a smile like that, Venus?”

      No response.

      “Here. Like this,” Gwennie said and made an exaggerated smile. She leaned toward Venus.

      Whether Venus was about to go into attack mode or not, I couldn’t discern, but she shifted in her seat when Gwennie had suddenly moved toward her.

      “Not too close. Venus feels nervous when someone gets unexpectedly close,” I said and put an arm out to separate the two girls.

      “Is she an Eskimo?”

      “No.”

      “Eskimos СКАЧАТЬ