the wide front door announced its metamorphosis from home to business.
“It’s small,” Dr. Oldenburg’s secretary repeated, opening a door to a room, off a small waiting room on the front side of the building. “And there’s no bath – but Dr. Oldenburg would probably let you use ours.”
“It’s perfect,” I said.
I scrounged up the security deposit and first month’s rent. I furnished the office with a windfall of slightly inappropriate office furniture from a friend who was closing his BMW dealership. Not the small, welcoming round table and chairs and white wicker I’d visualized – instead a six-foot-long, black-walnut-topped desk with black swivel chairs behind and green leather chairs in front. I bought a secondhand file cabinet and had a phone installed, and I had a place of my own.
The children loved my office almost as much as I did – especially Michael. Eight years old, not yet reading, painfully shy – until he reached the desk. Once there he leaned back in the huge swivel chair, propped his feet on the desk, lit an imaginary cigarette, blew smoke rings, and proclaimed himself ready to begin. I sat beside him in a smaller chair – and Michael was right. He was ready and he began to learn to read. Michael was the first of a number of children referred to me by the psychologists and psychiatrists on the second floor. Maggie, Bobby, Fred, and two or three others whom I had been seeing at the church moved with me to my new office. Gradually, my practice grew.
I had been seeing twenty-year-old Tony at the church, and he too preferred my new office space and furniture. His father had bought Tony’s way through private high school by paying tutors to write Tony’s reports and by making donations to the school building fund in amounts large enough to bring him passing grades. Tony had been referred to me by a psychiatrist with the comment, “He wants to learn to read; he will also benefit from healthy mother figures in his life.” Tony himself told me he was coming to me because he wanted to be able to read the “f ——— menus” when he went out on dates.
Then there was eight-year-old Adam – sandy-haired, freckle-faced, with the nicest parents in the world. “He’s just like I was,” his father said. “I had a terrible time learning to read. I still can’t spell. Just help him as much as you can, make it as easy as possible for him. I know he’s going to be all right. It just takes a while.”
Next came Robin, six years old, referred to me by Dr. Oldenburg. “I don’t think there’s that much wrong,” Rea said, “but she got a poor report at school – doesn’t follow directions, reverses her letters. A lot of it is developmental, but she’s an only child of older, well-to-do parents and she’s under a lot of pressure. Be a buffer for her between school and parents. Give her some academic help. I think it will pay off.” Robin looked just like my old Shirley Temple doll – the same blond curly hair, round brown eyes, and rosy cheeks. It was hard to believe I should be paid to work with Robin. But Dr. Oldenburg was right, and within six months she was in the middle reading group and blooming like an amaryllis.
I was beginning. Sometimes I feel as though I still am. I grew under the tutelage of Rea Oldenburg and the other professionals on the second floor, but it is really the children who have taught me. Sometimes with joy, sometimes with sorrow, I learn a little more about how to help children from each child who enters my life.
There are many ways to write about children with learning disabilities. I have chosen to tell the stories of five children because this is the truest way I know to show what these children are really like. They are not all cut from one bolt of cloth – they have different disabilities and different degrees of disabilities. It is an injustice to lump them all under one broad term and assume they are all alike. Instead, it is necessary to know each child in detail, adding one tiny specific after another. Nothing ignored – everything important – until all of a sudden the child becomes clear to me and I can see what needs to be done. The label is the least important part, and I have finally stopped fussing over which term is best. It is the child who matters.
We all have our own protective devices, but these children have more than most. Because they are convinced that they are stupid and therefore unlovable, they cover themselves as much as they can. Of course, if they weren’t intelligent, they wouldn’t worry about it because they wouldn’t be so painfully aware. But as it is they play the fool, act the clown, disrupt the class, figuring it’s better to get in trouble than to look dumb. They slop their handwriting across the page – sometimes they can’t help it, but often they do it so no one can prove they can’t spell. They say they hate stupid games like Trivia because they can’t remember non-meaningful facts. They have temper tantrums to show that they don’t deserve to be loved. But all the time there is a silent cry for help from these children who, given the opportunity, will startle you with their insights, sensitivity, intelligence, humor, and ingenuity.
Out of the hundreds of children I have known, the five I write about here are the ones who cried out the loudest – demanding to be heard, to have their stories told. They are unique, as every child is, but they are also universal in that I see dozens of Joeys, Bens, Alices, and Charlies every week of my life – and, every so often, another Eric. Their hair may be a different colour, and they may be taller or shorter, thinner or fatter, younger or older, from varying economic backgrounds and with different degrees of impairment – but I recognize them immediately and am continuously excited and challenged by how much they can learn.
Children with learning disabilities are just as bright as other children, but they will probably have to work harder than most to be successful in school. They need support and encouragement. I have seen that with love, remedial help, and a safe place somewhere in their lives, they will learn and grow.
“Zap! Wham! Zappo!” A water pistol pointed at me through the branches of a rhododendron bush. “That did it. I gotcha now.” A thatch of red hair and a small freckled face emerged momentarily between the leaves.
“Joey,” a voice called. “Stop that! Come out. Come say hello to Mrs. MacCracken.”
A dark-haired, pink-cheeked woman emerged from the bushes. “You are Mrs. MacCracken, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I’m Mrs. Stone, and I’m sorry,” she said, shaking my hand and then pointing toward the rhododendron bush. “He’s not always this bad. I just can’t get him out of those bushes.”
I smiled. “I know what you mean. New experiences can be very exciting.”
“Thank you for understanding and for seeing Joey,” Mrs. Stone said. “We’re at our wits’ end. It’s like somebody wound him up too tight before he was born. I’ve been waiting seven years for him to run down but …”
Mrs. Stone screamed as Joey sped down the driveway toward the street. “Stop! You know you’re not allowed!”
The small boy paused in the breakneck run, swerved gracefully toward the azaleas, performed a perfect pratfall on the lawn, picked himself up, and dashed down the driveway again.
“I’ll get him,” I said. Words obviously meant little to Joey.
A delivery truck lumbered down the street, and Joey braked at the end of the driveway to watch it pass. I took advantage of this brief pause in activity and crouched beside him, capturing his small dirty hand in mine. “Hi, Joey,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Startled, he turned to face me, his blue eyes wide, head tipped to one side, sunlight ricocheting off his bright red hair, highlighting
