Chapter I
The Disappointing Child
Mrs. Fahy took three of my best friends ...
and skipped them to the sixth grade, but she didn't skip me. I
really didn't care that much, but as soon as my mother heard about
it, she rushed down to the schoolhouse to find out what was wrong
with little Melvin and how come he got passed over. I could have
told her if she'd asked me. I had a mind of my own and I didn't
cotton to parroting stuff back to the teacher. That was all. But
to hear my mother at that time you'd have thought she'd just gotten
the news that I had just been pronounced the village idiot.
-Melvin Belli, My Life on Trial
Despite the level of teaching and the principal's
special interest, the painter-to-be would not study. He fought
every morning against going to school; a sturdy servant, Carmen
Mendoza, was entrusted with the job and often had to resort to
force. Pablo refused to go unless he was allowed to take along
one of the pigeons his father used as models: in school the teacher
let him raise the lid of his desk and set the bird behind it,
to draw peacefully, shielded from the others. But even this was
not enough to keep him quiet; he would go over to the window and
knock on it to attract the attention of passersby.
-Pierre Cabanne, Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times
Developmental Variation and Learning Disorders
is about disappointing children, school-age persons whose life
performances fall short. They disappoint their families, their
teachers, and themselves. Performance failure can perturb their
early years in many ways. This book explores the various pathways
that lead to disappointing early-life adjustment and performance.
It examines some of the complex factors that perpetuate failure
to meet expectations as well as those that help generate resiliency
and, ultimately, life fulfillment.
In recent years considerable interest in the
field of learning disorders has developed. Affected children are
believed to have discrete central nervous system mediated problems
that compromise academic proficiency and sometimes behavior and
social interaction as well. These problems have been referred
to as the low-severity-high-prevalence dysfunctions of
childhood: high-prevalence because they affect a large
number of schoolchildren-perhaps as many as 15 to 20 percent of
students-and low-severity in comparison with more serious
handicapping conditions, such as mental retardation or multiple
handicaps. Despite the relatively low severity of these conditions,
most investigators, clinicians, teachers, and parents agree that
they have a powerful impact on the lives of affected children
and their families. Most important, however, such central nervous
system problems contribute substantially to the plight of the
disappointing child.
There is considerable disagreement about the
causes, the treatments, and even the precise nature of the dysfunctions
that impede leaming. The following chapters construct a way of
thinking about disappointing children that accounts for current
observations while providing a basis for future research and constant
refinement of our understanding. This chapter reviews some important
features in the life of the school-age child and the multiple
forces-both destructive and constructive-that influence development,
shape experience, and result either in fulfillment or disappointment.
It ponders some questions that have plagued the fields of psychology,
education, pediatrics, neurology, and child development in their
many attempts to explain childhood failure and maladaptation.
Then follows a model for understanding, diagnosing, and managing
these problems. This particular approach forms the basis for the
remaining chapters of the book.
THE LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE SCHOOLCHILD
Any understanding of the impacts of developmental variation requires
appreciation of the milieus in which we place schoolchildren and
of the expectations that steadily evolve during their lives. From
the moment school-age children emerge from the bed covers each
day until their safe return to that security, they are preoccupied
with the avoidance of humiliation at all cost. They have a constant
need to look good, sidestep embarrassment, and gain respect, especially
from their peers. School-age children must struggle to reconcile
personal standards and expectations with those of the school,
the family, and other children. These demands are by no means
static. Expectations and development evolve, and qualitative changes
occur in the child's central nervous system function, encompassing
metamorphoses of abilities, inabilities, gains, losses, and trade-offs.
The functional development of the schoolchild
is neither uniform nor linear, but is punctuated by hesitations,
false starts, trial and error, regressions, and progressions.
Many psychologists and child development specialists have postulated
various stages, which have been called into question repeatedly
because they suggest general propensities of human development
rather than uniformly applicable and predictable stages. In fact,
researchers increasingly recognize that children at times must
regress or unlearn certain beliefs and concepts before they can
master new skills or acquire more effective perspectives and strategies
(Kessen and Scott 1992). Furthermore, the precise routes of development
vary considerably from child to child, from culture to culture,
and from community to community. There may be even more variation
in development than there is in expectation. That is, children
are expected to acquire certain skills and degrees of autonomy
at particular ages or stages. In reality, they experience substantial
variety in their readiness to acquire skills and in the learning
styles and levels of enthusiasm they have available for these
acquisitions. Consequently, schoolchildren must reconcile their
personal sets of unique capabilities and shortcomings with constantly
evolving mandates from the adult world and the peer group. All
the while, they seek to avoid humiliation, to please, and to sustain
feelings of worthiness-to satisfy both self and an ever present
audience.
This book was written with this backdrop in
mind. The child with a learning disorder faces an especially daunting
challenge in the quest to feel respected among peers, admired
by parents, and reasonably satisfied with the track record achieved
by his steadily evolving mind.
VARIATION, DYSFUNCTION, DISABILITY,
AND HANDICAP
Problems of definition inevitably complicate any discussion of
the low-severity-high-prevalence dysfunctions of childhood. Issues
of normality plague the investigator, the clinician, and the philosopher.
Because brain functioning varies tremendously from person to person,
we need a way of describing that functioning along a continuum.
At what point do variations constitute dysfunctions? When should
an unusual pattern of development be construed as a dysfunction?
When is dysfunction a disability? When is a disability a handicap?
The continuum from variation to dysfunction to disability and
then to handicap is germane to the subject matter and philosophical
stance of this book and to the manner in which we conceptualize
the disappointing child (see table 1-1).
Variation becomes most significant when it impedes
development, at which point we are dealing with dysfunction,
as one or more discrete developmental functions are clearly weak
or delayed. Thus, a child with deficiencies in critical aspects
of memory might be considered to have a memory dysfunction. When
these deficiencies interfere with the performance of tasks, the
child is said to be disabled for those particular tasks. When
those tasks, in turn, are of importance, the child is handicapped,
particularly if there is no way she or he can overcome or bypass
the disability. Therefore, it is essential to recognize that a
variation in development need not be a dysfunction, a dysfunction
need not create disability, and a disability may never become
a handicap.
To illustrate these concepts, let us imagine
a boy who is unable to find precise words quickly. He is quite
proficient in other developmental functions. He reveals developmental
variation, or a profile of strengths and weaknesses that is simply
one way to be. In terms of language production, however, this
boy exhibits dysfunction. As he goes through school, he starts
to have trouble participating actively in class discussions and
expressing ideas on paper. In debates and book reports, his performance
indicates disability. However, over time he finds ways to compensate
for his language dysfunction so that it does not become a handicap.
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