Triumph Over Adversity 3-in-1 Collection. Casey Watson

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      ‘D’you mean me, Miss?’ asked Molly eventually. ‘You haven’t had my word yet. My word’s upset. I’d already thinked it.’

      ‘No, sweetie,’ I said, pretending to go over the lines of the words already up there. I felt sure they were all bewildered by my refusal to turn around. ‘That’s a great word, and we’ll definitely use it, but Imogen was next on my list. Imogen, have you thought of one?’

      Again, the silence was deafening. And I came within a whisker of turning round and moving on, when, in the tiniest voice imaginable – a voice that was nothing like the one I’d heard through the front door of her grandparents’ house – I clearly heard the word ‘sad’.

      ‘What was that, Imogen?’ I said quickly, hoping against hope that it had been her, and not just one of the lads, mucking around. But the silence told me it was her who’d spoken.

      ‘Sad,’ she said again, ever so slightly more loudly. ‘Sad,’ I repeated. ‘Excellent word, Imogen. Well done.’

      I quickly added it and now I did turn around finally. Imogen looked fraught – I could think of no other word to describe it – and as if she might at any time burst into tears. Molly, sitting next to her, was staring at her, open-mouthed, and the other children were looking at each other, all obviously astonished. I would now have to quickly get them back on track before the attention on Imogen became completely unbearable.

      ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Molly. Remind me what your word was again?’

      ‘Upset, Miss,’ she said, turning to Imogen. ‘Which is a bit like your word, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Miss?’

      I agreed that indeed it was. Similar but slightly different. ‘Now, Gavin,’ I said. ‘My little whizz-kid – what’s your word?’

      If the tension hadn’t quite diffused, I knew it soon would. Gavin would, I was sure, come up with something kooky. And he obliged. ‘Badalicious!’ he said, adding a fist-pump for good measure, and having the rest of them collapse into giggles.

      ‘I’ll take the first bit of that, Gavin,’ I said, adding a smile of my own. ‘As I’m not quite sure “badalicious” has yet made it into the dictionary. No doubt it will eventually, but for now bad will do perfectly. Which means that, now, we can move on to our apples. Though in this case,’ I added, feeling very jaunty about my little breakthrough, ‘I hope there won’t be any “bad” apples.’

      Of course, I then had to explain what a ‘bad apple’ was, but, all in all, a good half-morning’s work.

      ‘It was just incredible!’ I enthused to Kelly and Gary that lunchtime. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I know the whole point of getting an expert in and devising strategies and so on is because they do work, but, still. It went like clockwork. I couldn’t believe it,’ I said again. ‘And then she did it again – when we were doing the apples – she came out with “love”.’

      Kelly was nodding vigorously, clearly as excited as I was, though Gary – longer in the tooth and less inclined to hyperbole – merely grinned. ‘Well, that was definitely one of the items on the to-do list,’ he agreed. ‘One you can now tick off. Good work, Casey. Let’s hope it now continues. I’ll let the other key staff know as well, as this probably needs to be a concerted effort. Do you think it’s worth calling the grandparents, too – let them know we’ve made some progress?’

      I shook my head, and mentally reined myself in. It was exciting, yes, but in the big scheme of things not that exciting. Two words did not a conversation make, after all.

      ‘No,’ I said, finally. ‘I’d rather we hung on a little longer. I’m sure there’s more to come, and when it does we’ll have a chance of getting to the bottom of it, won’t we? And if we say anything now, and they bring it up, it just might put her back, mightn’t it? Might make her feel she’s being hounded into speaking. No, if you don’t mind, I’d like to press on a bit more first. Try some of the other fiendishly clever tricks I have up my sleeve …’

      Which, of course, I did, the following one being stimulus withdrawal, which I was keen to put into practice the following week. This, I explained to Gary and Kelly, was designed to give the child a second safe alternative, the idea being that once they’d got used to speaking to a certain person, in a certain environment, you introduced another person into that successful situation – not with a view to forcing the child to speak to them, but rather as a constant unthreatening presence. You then had to engineer a situation where it was almost impossible for the child to avoid speaking, even though the other person was there.

      ‘Isn’t that what happened this morning?’ Kelly wanted to know. ‘I mean, the rest of the class were there, weren’t they?’

      ‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘Yes, they were there, but speaking in front of them really stressed Imogen. The idea of this is that she can speak to me when they’re there, and without being stressed, which is where making it more of a “two-on-one” scenario comes in.’

      Kelly’s brows knitted. ‘Sounds very technical.’

      ‘I know, ‘I said, ‘but it’s all in my notes, so don’t worry. The important thing is that now that we’ve finally got the ball rolling, we strike while the iron’s hot.’

      Now Gary did look a bit animated, at last. In fact, he burst out laughing.

      ‘Just be sure you don’t forget to mix your metaphors while you’re at it,’ he quipped.

      It took a good second or two before the penny dropped. But I didn’t care. I was at last making some progress.

Chapter 11

      The progress continued into the following week. Which was incredibly satisfying; there was nothing quite like learning something, putting it into practice and actually seeing it working before your eyes, and that was exactly what was happening with Imogen. I continued putting her on the spot, just as I’d been doing the previous week, and, as if by magic, it invariably produced speech. It was as if she was locked in a battle between being the object of scrutiny and getting words out of her mouth and, in the controlled setting we’d chosen, at least, fear of being on the spot was winning out every time.

      Better still, Kelly had rearranged much of her timetable so that I could start working on the stimulus withdrawal theory, and this was also working a treat. You could see the anxiety on Imogen’s face when asked to speak when Kelly was present also, but I stuck to my guns.

      We’d started with small steps: first a question that required only a yes or no response, and at the start of the week I’d allowed her just to nod or shake her head. And as the week progressed, we progressed too. So much so that, by Thursday, I had a plan to take a further step, and try and coax more than one-word answers out of her.

      We were doing art, as part of our ongoing quest to encourage self-expression, and today’s task was to paint pictures, using only one paint colour, with the colour representing a certain mood. The key thing was for the children, having painted their pictures, to discuss the colour they’d used, what emotion it represented and why they’d chosen it.

      I started with Molly, who’d chosen ‘sad’. She’d painted a picture using blue paint of a little boy crying. I then moved on to Henry, who’d chosen to do a pirate ship, using black, which СКАЧАТЬ