When our children arrived, they were so much fun!!! P., our first-born, was a happy, self-confident, and outgoing child. She was interested in everything. She particularly loved to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where she would stare at the fish and sea anemones intently for hours. She also loved music. One day, I was listening to the spring section of Vivaldi's Four Seasons as I prepared dinner while four-month-old P. leaped up and down enthusiastically in her jumper chair, a baby seat at the end of a spring which was attached to a door frame. To my surprise, she began singing along to the music: "Ta-DUH-da-da-da-da-DUH-da, ta-DUH-da-da-da-da-DUH-da." Her whole body was moving in time to the rhythm.
When she was just over a year old, Craig and I were returning to our car with P. after dinner at a nearby restaurant when P. surprised us by squatting down behind a car in the parking lot and enthusiastically reading off the license plate.
"Have you been teaching her?" asked Craig.
"No," I replied, feeling perplexed. "I'm guessing she must have learned them from watching Sesame Street."
By 15 months, she knew all her letters, numbers, and colors. She had almost eidetic visual memory, and by 18 months knew all her shapes. "Octanon!" she cried triumphantly, pointing to a stop sign when were out for our walk one day. She loved jigsaw puzzles and couldn't do enough of them. I got her a puzzle in which each wooden puzzle piece represented one of the states of the U.S. By the time she was two, she had memorized them all and could immediately identify any state, even when the puzzle piece was upside down. Mississippi and Alabama look pretty much the same to me once you've turned them upside down and rotated them a few times, but P. had no trouble telling them apart. I got her some magnetic fridge magnets in the shape of letters, and she loved to play with them. One day, her fellow 2-year-old, Katie, came over to play. P. ran into the kitchen and returned with the letters K and T, one in each hand. "K-T, K-T," she shouted, waving them around as she ran toward Katie and hugged her.
D. came next, a thoughtful and gentle child who spent hours building Brio train layouts all over our house. P. came to share his enthusiasm for the Thomas the Tank engine books and videos and began calling herself Thomas. Craig was Gordon, the biggest engine, and Daniel was Percy, the smallest one. I asked who I was and was dismayed to learn that I was Sir Topham Hatt!
Like most children, ours loved to play outside. We filled the backyard with climbing structures, a trampoline, a child-sized ride-on train, a sandbox, an easel with chalks and paint, and many other toys and activities, and the kids never seemed bored. As toddlers, they helped Craig build a new back deck, patiently handing him tools and screws when he needed them.
We visited the park behind our house almost daily. The children were becoming a little too interested in the gate in our back fence that led to the park, so we were sure to keep it firmly bolted with a sturdy combination lock. I wrote the four-digit combination down next to the phone so I wouldn't forget it. One day, as I was inside preparing lunch, I noticed it was suspiciously quiet and hurried outside. P. and D., then aged three and one, were gone, and the gate was slightly ajar. I rushed out to the park and saw my toddlers confidently striding toward the swings. I chased after them.
"You shouldn't be out here on your own," I scolded.
"Don't worry, Grandfather," P. assured me airily. "I'm Peter and Daniel's the wolf, and we're going out into the meadow."
They had been listening to Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. P. explained that she had learned to unlock the combination lock by watching me and memorizing the combination. Needless to say, we changed the code immediately.
They never ceased to amuse and delight me, and life got even better with the arrival of our beautiful, angelic little L., who was soon followed by spunky, loving, and energetic E.. L.was so sweet and looked so much like a porcelain doll that my friends kept "borrowing" her. They would take her out for ice cream and bake cakes for her. D. was always kind and protective toward L. Once she started to crawl, she alas started pulling down his model railroad layouts. He never became impatient with her but would instead find one of her toys and try to distract her with it. The two of them developed their own language, which sounded to us like Teletubbies (cartoon characters popular at the time who conversed in baby talk), meaning D. was able to interpret for us what L. wanted long before we could understand her speech. E., determined never to be left out even though she was the littlest, tried her best to keep up with her big brother and sisters. I will never forget her tearing after them on her tricycle, her tongue sticking out with fierce concentration and resolve.
Life was perfect!
We thought P. would love school. Her appetite for learning was insatiable and she was already reading, so we felt she'd benefit from a little extra challenge -- she would go to CUSD's Mandarin immersion program when she started kindergarten. Initially, she loved it. She soon learned to count to 100 in Mandarin, and she was quickly learning the pinyin characters. I was surprised and saddened when her teacher called me in and complained, in exasperated tones, that P. was extremely active and disruptive. Apparently, she couldn't sit still, she climbed on her desk, and she covered her ears and cried whenever anyone made a noise. P. was becoming increasingly unhappy in the classroom and eventually came to hate it. It was a great pity as she had made a few friends in the classroom, I was making friends with the other parents, and she really had made tremendous progress with Mandarin, but the situation clearly wasn't working. We decided to pull her out. After all, she was only four years old. Perhaps she just wasn't ready for the classroom experience.
We noticed P. was hyperactive and impulsive, and it was becoming difficult to take the kids out to restaurants and parks as she quickly became overwhelmed. She also liked sameness. When she was five, we went to a restaurant we had visited once before. P. wanted to sit at the table we'd sat at the previous time, but it was occupied. She immediately threw a spectacular tantrum and screamed so much we had to leave.
Something was out of kilter. I talked to her pediatrician about ADHD, and he told me that that the way to test for it was to administer a stimulant medication. If it worked, she almost certainly had it; if it didn't, she probably didn't. We decided to give it a try.
P.'s first day on a small dose of Ritalin was nothing short of a miracle. I took the children to the mall, and they were all calm and perfectly behaved. In the past, she had usually become hyperactive and discombobulated when we went out, and unfortunately this would inspire the younger children to behave similarly. I have many memories of chaotic trips to the supermarket, the library, and the pediatrician's office with all four children in rare form. This time, however, her behavior was perfect, and my younger kids followed suit. Two old ladies came up to me and congratulated me on my delightful, courteous children. Having been quite worried about P., I was in seventh heaven. She was going to be fine.
Life continued peacefully and happily, and I began to think about sending P. back to school. Would she be up to speed after a couple of years of homeschooling, or, more correctly, unschooling. "Unschooling" was a play-based mode of learning, introduced to me by my friend Holly, in which children choose their own activities and direct their own education. For P., with her intense curiosity, it seemed to work better than traditional schooling. However, I didn't know whether she would be ready to jump into second grade after missing most of kindergarten and all of first grade and doing little formal education at home.
I decided to have her tested on the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Test, which would indicate where she was academically. I thought perhaps she might be best placed in first grade. However, to my surprise, she scored well above the 99th percentile in every category for a second grader. She charmed the tester, who assured me she was mature, cooperative, and clearly ready for school again. We signed her up at a small private school down the road. D. and L. were already there, one in junior kindergarten and the other in preschool. How wonderful it would be to have the three of them in the same school! E. would be able to join them in preschool in a couple of years.
P. trotted off happily to class on her first day at her new school. For several months, since starting the ADHD medication, she had been easygoing and cheerful. She spent most of her time busily drawing and painting, playing with clay, playing outside, reading, and playing with her siblings. She also loved to cook and was quite competent at preparing several dishes. I felt quite sure she would do well. I popped in over the lunchtime recess to check on her. To my dismay, her teacher asked me to take her home.
"She's been giggling all morning," she told me in front of P. "It's not a normal giggle -- it's high-pitched and weird. She distracted the other children, and it made them uncomfortable. They didn't like it at all. We couldn't get any work done all morning. The public schools might be able to work with her. They have classes for children with special needs."
Special needs? Was she telling me there was something wrong with my child? As we drove home, P. was devastated.
"Am I defective?" she asked sadly. She had been reading E. B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan, and had agonized over poor Louis feeling "defective" because he lacked a voice.
"No, you are perfect, and I love you just as you are," I asserted emphatically, but she was not convinced. I was also puzzled. Why did she behave so differently at school than she did at home? I guessed she felt anxious in unfamiliar social situations and that caused her to become dysregulated.
After being rejected from two schools, P. became sad and withdrawn, and her behavior deteriorated. It was time to get some serious help. I put her down on the long waiting list at the children's outpatient clinic at Stanford. After many months, we got a call -- she had an appointment. What followed was a bewildering round of meetings with a constantly rotating band of child psychiatric and psychology residents, each of whom saw P. differently. They were wonderful people and anxious to help, but they had little experience in communicating with young children. Eventually, P. would be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (now called high-functioning autism) and ADHD, but there were some diversions along the way.
On one occasion, the resident we were working with (we got a new one every six months) called me in.
"P. is hearing voices," he informed me in lachrymose tones. "She needs to be on a new medication."
I was horrified. Was he telling me my child was psychotic? I talked to P. as soon as I got home.
"What's all this about you hearing voices?" I asked.
"Oh, Mom!" she responded in exasperation. "Don't you start asking that."
"Why? Who else has asked you?"
"Oh, Dr. G. kept bugging me about it. 'Do you hear voices? Do you hear voices?' It was such a dumb question and I don't like him, so I didn't answer for the longest time."
"Well, what did you eventually tell him?"
"I told him that, yes, I hear voices. I mean, duh-oh, does he think I'm deaf or something? I hear people speaking, just as you and I are speaking now. And then I sometimes replay conversations in my mind. I guess that's sort of 'hearing voices' in a way.' Mostly I just wanted to get him off my back."
I was as amused as I was relieved. Years later, I shared that anecdote with a more experienced psychiatrist. He immediately turned to P., who was with us.
"Who tells the voices what to say?" he asked.
"I do, of course," P. answered promptly. "We're talking about my daydreams and my recollections. And that's without considering my sense of hearing when people around me are in fact talking."
The doctor turned to me, and smiled broadly.
"I think we're good," he told us.
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