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Show Her years of autism and expensive brain damage, offered little potential. A ratio of nine to one was a fairly normal percentage in any one state warehouse, the wastage is much more extensive than any concern over a single sewage plant's river pollution. Patty's teacher turned her back on it, as I would have done, unbelieving in miracles or the possibility of some new knowledge that I had not as yet been able to locate. I sat down next to Patty and removed the cotton restraint. She felt my thumbnail, and then my name sign, and then all hell broke loose. She began screaming and kicking and hitting - things she had never done with me before. I ran her outside and she tore at her hands with her teeth, making the largest wound I had ever seen, the blood gushing into my hand. She tried to bite me on the arm. I was completely shaken, and finally let her win this game. Bandages were brought and her cotton restraint went on and she returned to her sofa, grinning. The head nurse looked at me accusingly. Patty had not bitten herself for months and she had reopened old scars that had just healed thoroughly. "I thought you had been her teacher down at that other school," she said. And looking at Patty, I thought I had deserved it. Desertion is a terrible thing and unexplained desertion, unforgiveable. We went on a tour of the school. I was appalled by the hands reaching for me, trying to teach me how to communicate with them, unable to begin with even one of them. I showed the teachers Van Dyk methods, hoping they would see, and knowing inside that they would not. Patty's original teacher could see what it was I was trying to say, but I did not know then that she would be gone in another month or so. And her excitement was quickly dampened by the other teachers. It was already too late for her; it showed in her eyes. I took the young five-year-old that they felt to be their "toughest" case. Cortically blind, he did not offer up that blank stare of a truly and severely brain damaged child, but rather a look of active recognition tracking my movements from across the room. We moved co-actively together on the mat and within ten minutes he had sequenced a series of three different movements and made up three consistent signals for each one. -24- |
