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PATTERNS
FOR CHARLIE |
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At the
start, the reader will have to understand something about the setting in
which all of this took place: where I was and what I was like. But more
importantly, it is necessary to know that no matter how difficult it was
then, and no matter how many hidden scars he may currently bear, Charlie grew
up into an extraordinary, kind, understanding companion for me and others,
and, I hope, for himself. The end result for Charlie, now in his forties, is
extraordinary, just as Charlie is, but I have often wondered whether it had
to be so difficult for him and those who loved him along the way. Whether we
could have found another way. Charlie has
spent much of his adult life working with students who are very much like
himself, very bright, non-conforming, under-achieving. They have been
fortunate to have him as a teacher and mentor. He understands them in a way
that he never was able to understand himself. They give him perspective on
himself as a younger person, and he is able to give them perspective on
themselves and their lives. When
Charlie was born, I was 26 years old and Charlie was our third child in five
years. Having
children was for me like a total immersion course in Child, because I had
been an only child myself in a house of generally well-meaning, but innately
unkind, adults, had never baby-sat for any one nor had any relationship with
the young, except for my peers, had had no particular interest in child
psychology or early childhood education or anything similar while I was in
college, and had never been involved in any of the formative phases which
might have better prepared me for the tasks of Motherhood: Master
Psychologist, Social Arbiter, Educational Guidance, Child Advocate, and the
rest that parenting entails. (Sometime I'll do a piece on the many roles of
Mother, but that's for another day.) I was
accustomed to living my life among very bright, sometimes gifted, people. My
family members were mostly intellectually gifted (but not necessarily
sensitive or "smart"), I went to Nursery and Kindergarten and
elementary school for smart kids and in general I excelled, although there
were often others in my classes who I believed to be just as bright, or maybe
even brighter. Although classes in my elementary school, which was the
laboratory school for the state's teachers' college, included some students
who were not quite as intellectually endowed, in order to leaven the mix, I
never really associated with them, nor did those with whom I associated. That
was an instinctive and conforming birds-of-a-feather social pattern. Then I
attended the local High School where most of the local college-bound students
went, unless they were in private school. My friends and colleagues in High
School were all very bright, all doing well in school, all expecting and
expected to go to college. And I went to college at one of what was then
called the Seven Sisters, where bright "girls" whose parents could
afford to send them went to prepare themselves for finding a spouse, living a
mostly sheltered life, and expanding their knowledge base. Everyone was very
clever. It was a
time when female children of families of some means were not expecting or
expected to work after college, but rather to have and raise children, and
then do "good works," just like their mothers. Growing up, I never
earned a penny; in my retrospective opinion that was true deprivation, since
I was never forced to test myself in the harsh environment of work, never
knew what the demands of "earning a living" were all about, never
understood what constraints the demands of working placed on people's time,
energy, and ambitions. Further, I never learned about the motivations of
"bosses," since I was never forced to brush up against them. And, I
was not a very analytical or self-analytical person, probably to a fault. It
didn't come naturally and no one ever told me that analysis or self-analysis
was a virtue. For that matter, we never, in our home, talked much about much
and certainly not about virtues other than cleanliness, good scholarship, and
a kind of surficial courtesy. And I always knew what was expected, and how
unpleasant it would be if I didn't live up to that structured norm. I was
mostly acted upon and not the actor. I never
knew who I was or what I was, except in the socio-economic and educational
context in which I moved. I read a lot but I was rarely stretched. I had a
nursemaid who was something of a mentor. Without her I would never have
learned about The Princess and The Goblin and the Back of the North Wind. I
would have been unlikely to discover my own flair for the written word, and
probably not my taste for science fictions, fairy tales, and the land of Oz.
But she never tried, and probably was not equipped, to teach me much about
humans, just, delightfully, about extraterrestrials of various origins. All of
which is to inform the reader that I was ill prepared for being a parent.
When it was time, I read a lot of Doctor Spock and Doctors Gates and Gesell,
who were, as I remember, Yale psychologists of the time who wrote wonderfully
and decisively about norms for infants and children. Since I had no personal
pool of knowledge about kids and no adult source that I trusted on that
subject, and since my husband was as new at it as I was, and coming at it
from very different perspectives, I was very reliant on what I could get from
books. It helped but it certainly wasn't enough. (I am still, however, an
unrelenting advocate of reading all about it, whatever it is, to provide a
platform on which to stand, while we prepare to learn to swim.) And, of
course, I simply expected our children turn out to be bright and successful.
I had a view of myself as very bright, which was mostly true, and I moved among
other people just like me. I was prepared to be shocked, really shocked, if
any of our children was anything other than bright, reasonably
"well-adjusted" and conforming, and a good student. I never really
thought about it; though; it was a given. Anything else would have been
incompatible and unthinkable. And our
first two children fit the mold. Most of the time they did what we expected.
They were very bright, quite beautiful, quite charming. They were a joy to
their teachers and a pain in the neck to the competitive parents of their
peers. They were mostly a joy to us as parents, too, while we learned what to
do with infants, toddlers, young learners, and the terrible teens. That's not
to say that they, and we, didn't have at least our fair share of problems,
some caused by us and some not. And that's certainly not to say that we
didn't learn from the kids and the problems, and in spite of them, accepting
new assumptions, and casting away some old ones. Unfortunately,
when you're in the middle of it, your perspective is skewed. And that is
particularly true if there is no calm observer who communicates the
observations, so that you know how your kids stack up against their peers
(other than academically), what you're doing that's healthy, and how you
could perhaps be more constructive and supportive in the on-going combat of
the maturation battle, parents' and children's. I probably didn't learn as
much as I should have. Charlie
didn't really seem any different when he entered our world. Were we
different? Was I different than the person who welcomed his older brother and
sister? Probably some: older, of course, but still in my twenties; more
experienced (I hesitate to say wiser); still ignorant about my own cerebral
and emotional workings; still never employed other than as a Mom; still acted
upon, for the most part. I was reasonably pleased with the growing up
patterns of both brother and sister, and had no particular reason to expect
anything else of Charlie. I would
like to be able to say that he seemed different almost immediately, but he
didn't. He was like the others. Reasonably sunny, following Spock's and
Gesell's patterns, needing a little less sleep than I wished, needing a
little more attention than I wished. But after all, he was the baby. He had
two bossy siblings who mostly didn't give him the time of day. He had two
rather stressed parents who had never used the word "stress." But Charlie
did what was expected of him: played with blocks; looked at picture books and
read them when it was time to do that; fitted the patterns to which I had
grown accustomed. But, when
he went to Nursery School and Kindergarten, he refused to "color
in." Was it that he couldn't or that he wouldn't? Was it general
rebellion or specific to the task or the teacher or the surroundings? Was it
that he simply didn't like coloring books or the task of coloring? And was it
important? Charlie had
a huge speaking vocabulary, but so had his siblings. He read on schedule, but
not all that much ahead of time, but so had his siblings. He could have worn
a jersey that said "Does Not Play Well with Peers," but I was not
really worried about that. Or perhaps I was, and I didn't know what to do
about it, so I put it aside. I had no personal memories of being delighted
with school chums, so if I consciously worried about Charlie's "lack of
friends," I would nevertheless not have found his behavior patterns to
be out of context with what I already knew. For that
matter, Charlie's brother and sister were not all that friendly with their
school chums, either. They were invited to their share of birthday parties,
but so was Charlie. But the
important thing is that he refused to, or could not, "color in."
Even if we had recognized that single act as a symptom, we would not have
known what to do with it, where to go. The child psychologists of the time
would, I believe, have found that small behavioural aberration, to be of
little or no significance. But it was
the first real deviation of which we were aware. And, of course, when he
moved on to First Grade, he continued to refuse to color in, although there
seemed to be no doubt in his teachers' minds that he could have if he wanted
to. What made
Charlie refuse to do what he was asked to do, when it is so simple to conform
in this small matter and gain admiration and applause? Aye, there's the rub.
We never found the solution to this conundrum, or the ones that followed. If
we had been able to respond satisfactorily to this one opening gambit, I
believe that we might well have won the game. As it was,
looking at it from my perspective of that time, it was not really so odd. I
couldn't color in very well either, although I think I had done so in my
early years when some one required it of me. And I know that if we had raised
the "coloring-in" issue as a "symptom" of something more
foreboding, we would have received the same blank stares we later got from
psychologists and psychiatrists alike, as Charlie grew older. No one ever
thought there was anything "wrong" with Charlie, just with us, for
thinking so. No one ever thought that the fact that he always appeared to be
the principal obstacle to his own success was anything other than ordinary.
No one ever believed that it was odd that a youngster like Charlie, so smart,
so knowledgeable, so perceptive, with so much "potential," could
spend so much of his time doing himself in. In nursery
school and kindergarten, and almost until he entered college, Charlie was
small for his age. He had eyes that required a lot of correction, and so he
wore heavy lenses. He spoke in complex syntax with a mature vocabulary, and
he was, as are so many gifted children, very literal in his use of and
response to language. Sometimes that was a problem for others, although it
was always beyond Charlie's understanding as to why the world didn't
understand the literal underpinnings of the words that they were using. Around the
house, none of that seemed very odd at all. In the world of his peers, and
many of his teachers, he was an oddity. He had a lot of trouble "making
friends" among his peers, although he desperately wanted to. He was the
last to be chosen for a team at recess or in sports, although he loved
sports, and knew all the relevant data. He was clumsy. He was stereotypical.
It was very frustrating to him. It was also very frustrating to me, because I
loved him dearly and wanted very much for him to have the relationships he
sought. As advanced
as Charlie was intellectually, he was not, I see retrospectively, in any way
advanced in his understanding of human relationships and the social
circumstance. Why was
that? Did we fail to convey to him through the usual osmosis the behavior
patterns that make life simpler, or did he silently and secretly,
instinctively or purposefully refuse to accept those concepts, as he appeared
to refuse so many others that would have made his life pattern so much
simpler when he was child, adolescent, young adult. At that
time, the concept of self-esteem was not so pervasive as it is now. Had it
been, I somehow feel that I might have focused more intensely on what all of
this was probably doing to his psyche. He never talked about it. I was never
able to elicit from him why he took so many actions that made trouble for
him. It was a mystery, which itself created an additional bone of contention
between us. "If
you are having trouble with your homework, why don't you ask for help?"
"If you don't understand something at school, why don't you ask for
help?" If you can't finish your homework, why don't you ask me for
help?" If the kids at school are making things difficult for you, please
ask for help." "Why don't you ask for help?" Still, many of
Charlie's tears, and many of mine, later, a mystery. Was I so
difficult to get along with? I don't think so and he doesn't say that I was.
Was I so distant and hard to reach? I don't think so and he doesn't say that
I was. I did not work until Charlie was in kindergarten, so I was around
while all of these patterns were forming, but I was unable to change the
direction in which he was going, or the direction in which our relationship
was going. When I went to work, it didn't get better, but it didn't get
worse. I was always at home in the evening, always checking on homework.
Always the recipient of the multiple ways that he could find in order to
dodge answering me. Of course, I knew they were dodges, but I did not have
the inclination to fight it out every night, nor the energy. And it always
felt faintly unhealthy to engage in a shouting match every night after dinner
on the subject of whether or not there was homework to do and, if he admitted
that there was (a rarity), then whether or not he had finished it. In fact, as
Charlie grew older, and I became more sensitive to his depths of anguish and
anger, he brought me to tears often, although rarely in his presence. Why?
Because I knew he wanted to excel; I knew (and I told him so over and over
again in totally pointless harangue), that he was standing in his own way in
a manner that he would not have accepted if it had been another person
obstructing his passage. In school,
early on and continuing, Charlie refused to recapitulate for his teachers
that information and those skills that he had already acquired. He refused to
do it orally and in writing, whether in homework form or in classroom tests.
In fact, he virtually never passed in a piece of homework, and the longer it
was, the less likely it was to be handed in. And it wasn't until many years
later that I discovered that he had actually absorbed not only what was being
taught in school, but also every piece of information that was discussed at
home (when he appeared to be engaged in activities of his own), and what was
in the newspapers and on the television, and in the many books in our house. The
teachers all could tell that he was very bright, and they had known his older
brother and sister, and they tore their hair out at their inability to make
him conform. They complained to me a lot. I think now
that he may have been grossly insulted that we didn't all understand that he
knew it all, and that he did not forgive us for that behavior. He says
that because it was all so easy when he was young, he never learned study
skills. So when he needed them in high school, he didn't have them, and he
could not then, as he could not when he was younger, seek my aid or, in fact,
aid from his teachers or any one else. Why not? He doesn't really know yet,
nor do I. And I am not even really sure that this fairly simple explanation
(no learned study skills) has anything to do with what was going on. A few
anecdotes to provide the flavor of the moments and years. When Charlie was in
grammar school, he was at one time the leader of the line in which the
children were supposed to walk when they left school for home. One day at the
end of the school day, a substitute teacher came into the classroom where
Charlie and the others were waiting to be dismissed and sent home. They were
not being very quiet. The teacher said, "This is the noisiest classroom
in this whole school." "Oh, no," said Charlie, "Mrs.
Smith's class is the noisiest classroom in the school." The substitute
thought he was being "fresh" and "insubordinate" and
dragged him by the arm to the principal's office to complain. But was he
being fresh and insubordinate? No, he was being literal. When
Charlie was ready for high school, we considered sending him to boarding
school, hoping that they would stimulate him into "behaving," and
that he would actually learn a lot. We applied to a number of very good
boarding schools, although his elementary and junior high record was not the
kind that normally opens the door to We applied
to I was
appalled! Not make sure that homework was done? Revolutionary. But we felt
that the rector was so knowledgeable that it was probably good advice for us
to take. It was very hard for us to do, because it was our habit, and because
it seemed counter-indicated. We worked at it. We actually bit our tongues. A
lot. That didn't
make Charlie study or do his homework, but it reduced the level of daily
rancor. And
eventually, Charlie went off to By the time
Charlie had spent a year not going to class or doing his work, he was on
probation at When he
applied to college, the only college of any value that was interested was
Worcester Polytech. They saw him as extraordinary and told me so. But they
relied on the student to do the work, although they provided plenty of
opportunity for the student to make up lost classes and missing tests.
Charlie couldn't do it and he didn't. I do not know to this day what he did
for two years at WPI. Unfathomable. And he doesn't want to talk about it, not
even now. By then
Charlie has seen a number of psychologists and psychiatrists. Some he liked,
and some he didn't. But so far as I knew then or know now, he was unwilling
to open up to any of them, and no matter how bright and experienced they
were, he managed to pull the proverbial wool over their eyes. There was
the chief psychiatrist at Harvard. A very bright man. He saw Charlie a lot.
He said that there was nothing wrong with Charlie, that he (Charlie) was very
much like him (the psychiatrist), and that he would no doubt become a
psychiatrist. He said further that the problems, such as they were, were with
Charlie's parents, us. His answer: leave him alone; he will perform. We had
already tried that. And ignoring Charlie's patterns did not help him to succeed
at school. Then, there
was the chief psychiatrist at another excellent university in the Then, there
was another psychologist whom Charlie appeared to really like. He saw a lot
of Charlie, too. It is possible that he had some impact on Charlie that
benefited Charlie, but of course he would not discuss anything with us, nor
would Charlie. Whatever, that relationship came to an end, too, with Charlie
still floundering in college. And at the end of two years, he was no longer
welcome at WPI. He was out
in the world and ill-prepared for it. We were no better prepared to deal with
him as an adult. But that is another other story. This story
has a happy ending. As I said when this began, Charlie has been successful at
rebuilding himself into an admirable human being whose company I enjoy, whose
intelligence and wisdom I rely on, and who has a broad network of friends,
acquaintances, students, and colleagues who recognize his great capabilities
and nurturing qualities. |