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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talk to strangers.”
“Have you been told that?” I asked. “Yes, that’s a sensible rule, isn’t it? But I’m not a stranger. I’m Venus’s teacher. I’ve been to your house. Remember? I came and saw you the other day after school.”
Wanda was carrying the baby doll wrapped in the receiving blanket again. She held it close to her chest.
“I’d like to talk to you about Venus. Won’t you come in and sit down?”
“No go stranger house.”
“Here. Would you like some M&Ms?” I asked. It was dirty of me, because I was probably undoing all the efforts to keep Wanda safe from strangers, but it did the trick. Wanda ambled into the room happily as I poured the candies on the tabletop.
“Is that your dolly?” I asked as Wanda sat down.
“Beautiful child,” she said and caressed the molded plastic hair.
“Yes. You like to take care of your doll, don’t you?”
“Beautiful child. Her no go to school.”
“No, your dolly doesn’t go to school, does she? But what about Venus? Venus goes to school, doesn’t she?”
“Beautiful child.” Wanda caressed the doll again.
“Can you talk to me about Venus? What does Venus do when she isn’t at school?”
“Beautiful child.”
“Here, have some more M&Ms.”
Unlike her sister, Wanda had no inhibitions about eating. She stuffed the candy into her mouth by the handful and chomped messily.
“When I came to your place the other day, where was Venus then? I didn’t see her. Remember, you tried to find her. Where was Venus?”
“Her no go to school.”
“No, I know that. But what does she do at home? Can you tell me?”
“Eat.”
“Venus eats?”
“Eat!” Wanda said more insistently, and I realized she meant she wanted more candy. The package was almost empty. I poured what was left onto the table. Wanda scrabbled it up with both hands. I looked beyond her to Venus, who stood beside the doorway. She wasn’t watching us. She was just staring into space.
“Go home now,” Wanda said when the candy was gone.
“Wait,” I said.
“Go home now.” She got up. “Beautiful child. Go home, beautiful child,” she called to Venus. Before I could stop her, she was to the door and out with Venus in front of her.
It was only after she’d left that I discovered the doll in its receiving blanket, forgotten on the floor.
I had one activity I’d always done with all my classes. Indeed, I’d used it occasionally in therapy with individual children as well. I’m sure it has some proper, formal name and probably proper, formal rules, but my version grew out of desperation one rained-in recess many years back when I was a student teacher. The children couldn’t go outside to play and were wild with pent-up energy, so I decided to take them on an imaginary journey. We all sat down in a circle on the floor and closed our eyes. Then I told them to look inward, to envisage a deep-sea diving bell, because I was going to take them on an adventure trip under the sea.
This worked fantastically. I had the children first imagine their diving bell – what it looked like, what was in it, how it felt and smelled – then they imagined the descent down deep into the water. Then we started looking for things and I asked different ones to describe what they saw. If their descriptions were sparse, I queried gently to make a more complete picture. No one had to contribute but everyone did.
We stayed in the circle, our eyes closed, and wandered around under the sea for about fifteen minutes. When we finally emerged back into the classroom, the children were delighted. We made pictures of it to put on the wall in the hallway and talked about our trip for a long time afterward. Indeed, for many it became the single best memory they had of my student teaching.
From then on, I made imaginary journeys regularly. As I became more experienced, I knew more about what I could do on the journeys. If the children needed to relax and calm down, we visited quiet places and spent a lot of our time listening and feeling the atmosphere. If the children needed a change of scenery, as during that rainy recess, we went somewhere exotic. If the children needed cheering up, we visited a circus or a zoo or a carnival. Once we had an imaginary birthday party. At Christmastime we went to the North Pole. I found it a particularly useful activity with attention-deficit children, who often had a hard time calming themselves down. The act of sitting together on the floor with our eyes closed seemed to help them block out enough other stimuli so they could focus well.
Thus, this seemed like it would be a useful technique for my Chipmunks. I felt Jesse, in particular, would benefit. Because he suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, he was often jerking and twitching involuntarily. It also caused him to make sudden noises. He didn’t shout out obscenities, the Tourette’s tic popularized in the media, which is actually rather rare; however, he did make a sharp yelping sound, rather like a startled bark, and he did this quite a lot. He also had a noisy, stylized sniff that went along with his facial tic, and this produced a piggy kind of noise. All considered, the others were tolerant about these tics, or at least they didn’t single out the tics as a reason to fight with him. Nonetheless, the tics were disruptive and occasionally alarming, if you didn’t expect them.
So I felt the guided journeys might be of benefit to Jesse, because his tics always became worse under stress. I was hoping that the journeys might provide a relaxing alternative in his day that would calm the noise and motion a little bit.
I also hoped they would help Billy. My goal for him was that he develop awareness of his thoughts before he did something, so that he had a better chance of intervening. At the moment, Billy just did and then coped with the aftermath. I was sure he wasn’t even conscious there were any “before” thoughts affecting his actions, so constructive use of imaginary journeys seemed like a good place to start helping him develop an understanding of thoughts as something you produced yourself and could control.
Thus, Monday after morning recess, I said, “Okay, gang, we’re going to do something different. Once you have your shoes off and in the box, I want you to come over here and sit down in a circle on the floor.”
This elicited excitement. Though somewhat uncontrolled and chaotic, this group was also enthusiastic, which made them fun to work with when they weren’t killing one another.
“Okay, I want you sitting, but get comfortable. Shane, keep your hands to yourself, please. Venus, sit down.” I had to rise up again and direct Venus into place. “Zane? Sit. No, sit.
“Everybody ready? Now, we’re going to take a journey. Right here. Right now. And since we’re Chipmunks, I think we should visit the woods. Ready?”
All the boys nodded.
“Close your eyes then. Not tight. Just gently, so you’re comfortable. Keep them closed. Get yourself comfy.” I closed my eyes too at the beginning and leaned forward, forearms on my knees. “Now, we’re off. We’re walking toward the woods. Can you see? Look ahead.” I opened my eyes and checked on everyone. “No, Zane, keep your eyes shut. Look ahead inside your mind. There’s the woods. See the trees? Everybody look in their minds. See if you can see the woods ahead. Can you?”
“Yeah!” Billy said enthusiastically.
“See if you can tell what kind of trees they are. What kind of trees are in your woods? Does anybody know?”
“Yeah,”