In Asperger's Disorder, affected individuals are characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior... There are impairments in two-sided social interaction and non-verbal communication. Though grammatical, their speech may sound peculiar due to abnormalities of inflection and a repetitive pattern. Clumsiness may be prominent both in their articulation and gross motor behavior. They usually have a circumscribed area of interest which usually leaves no space for more age appropriate, common interests.
1969, January
Doris Maud. Doris Maud. Doris couldn't stop saying her name over and over in her head. Her baby. Doris was Mother. In all her life, she couldn't think of anything she had wanted more.
Order. Maudie sat in her baby seat as Doris arranged her spices in the spice rack. If she kept them alphabetically, it made cooking so much easier. Everything had its place, the cardamom to the left of the cumin, not the other way around. Doris had to have order in her world.
Maudie had been exactly the baby Doris had envisioned. Her baby. Maudie never cried, not ever. She would take her bottle and her food at the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hallway; Doris carefully mashing her peas and squash. From the first night, Maudie slept all night, and went to bed without a peep. Doris could take her to they orchestra shows over at VPI and no matter the sidewards glances that were thrown her direction, she knew Maud would behave. Doris never noticed that Maudie wouldn't return her gaze the way her neighbor Barbra's baby Jennifer did. It wasn't important, anyway. Doris had the order that she had to have.
Cacophony
One thing that is very important is the degree of trauma that a child suffers. This can alter their ability to relate to anyone, but especially parent figures. It’s like trying to tame a feral cat. If the child has never learned to trust adults or has been abused by them, how can we expect them to trust anyone? If they have been kept in tentative care situations where they cannot form emotional bonds in the first three years of life, or if they have bonded and then been removed from those they are bonded to, they still suffer serious trauma. This alters the development of their emotions. They are anxious, expect rejection, fear abandonment, and live in a survival mode. This delays their other areas of development so that they are often behind others their age socially or in academics. (Click here for the post and comments.)
Cautiously, Doris shivered in the frigid Virginia November as she plodded down the brick sidewalk from her fastidious home to her stately, elevated mailbox. Maybe there will be news today, she wondered. Holding her breath for a moment at every jangle of the black rotary telephone in the hall, she also waited with cautious optimism for the mailman.
She longed to hold her baby, a girl, whom she wanted, really really wanted to have her husband, Leonard's, dark hair and both of their translucent, cerulean eyes. In her mind's eye, she saw herself wheeling her baby girl in her pram down Willard Drive, stopping at the corner of Hemlock and Willard for her first encounter of the Highty Tighties' in the parade at VPI homecoming. Doris loved the Highty Tighties, and the scoreboard behind her home that let out its cackle when the Fighting Gobblers scored a touchdown. She didn't care for games themselves, though. The cacophony of touchdowns, whistles and the crowd irritated her ears. Leonard's job involved coordinating student activities and booking bands for Squires Student Center at VPI, a job that suited him well.
Her reverie was shattered by Sharon, her next-door neighbor, also checking her mail. "News?" smiled Sharon cordially. Her brother sister-in-law had adopted last year and she knew how eager Doris was to fill the empty nursery that stared mockingly at Doris every time she passed it.
"I don't know why it is taking so long," complained Doris to Sharon. "Everywhere we're been they tell us there's babies. When Virginia (meaning Montgomery County, Virginia Department of Social Services) got our home-study from Alabama, they said it was the most thorough home-study they'd ever seen." To Sharon, Doris' thorough sounded like thurl, but then, Doris over-enunciated her words anyway. Doris and her husband both, albeit nice enough, were a little on the strange side, for reasons Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on. Sharon knew that Leonard and Doris had been trying to adopt, and their efforts had followed them to at least a couple of places. "I don't know what the hold-up is."
Cautiously, Doris shivered in the frigid Virginia November as she plodded down the brick sidewalk from her fastidious home to her stately, elevated mailbox. Maybe there will be news today, she wondered. Holding her breath for a moment at every jangle of the black rotary telephone in the hall, she also waited with cautious optimism for the mailman.
She longed to hold her baby, a girl, whom she wanted, really really wanted to have her husband, Leonard's, dark hair and both of their translucent, cerulean eyes. In her mind's eye, she saw herself wheeling her baby girl in her pram down Willard Drive, stopping at the corner of Hemlock and Willard for her first encounter of the Highty Tighties' in the parade at VPI homecoming. Doris loved the Highty Tighties, and the scoreboard behind her home that let out its cackle when the Fighting Gobblers scored a touchdown. She didn't care for games themselves, though. The cacophony of touchdowns, whistles and the crowd irritated her ears. Leonard's job involved coordinating student activities and booking bands for Squires Student Center at VPI, a job that suited him well.
Her reverie was shattered by Sharon, her next-door neighbor, also checking her mail. "News?" smiled Sharon cordially. Her brother sister-in-law had adopted last year and she knew how eager Doris was to fill the empty nursery that stared mockingly at Doris every time she passed it.
"I don't know why it is taking so long," complained Doris to Sharon. "Everywhere we're been they tell us there's babies. When Virginia (meaning Montgomery County, Virginia Department of Social Services) got our home-study from Alabama, they said it was the most thorough home-study they'd ever seen." To Sharon, Doris' thorough sounded like thurl, but then, Doris over-enunciated her words anyway. Doris and her husband both, albeit nice enough, were a little on the strange side, for reasons Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on. Sharon knew that Leonard and Doris had been trying to adopt, and their efforts had followed them to at least a couple of places. "I don't know what the hold-up is."
Giving Up the Ghost
(The mother's) provision of total care, her entire absorption into her baby's needs and gestures, is crucial to both his physical and psychic well being. The baby does not only require feeding but also the bonding and attachment that feeding allows. The mother must emotionally bond with her child during the feeding; otherwise the whole process is deadened, apathetic, and cold.
The blue and green floral wallpaper in the kitchen was beginning to peel in its corner. The humming icebox door made its usual clunkety-clunk as its contents were retrieved. In 1968, and that white icebox with the rounded doors had been in use constantly since the 1940s. One day, it would probably give up the ghost.
Mr. Blue shook the bottle of Pet Milk and Karo syrup. He took care of three, his wife took care of three. This baby girl had finally gotten the hang of her schedule after seven long weeks. For hours on end, she would scream, then eat, then scream some more until she collapsed, exhausted, into the blackened comfort that sleep offered her. He didn't have the inclination nor the energy to hold her, rock her, or offer her any of the niceties that most people offered babies.
This one, like the other five that might be in his house at any given time, were wards of the state of Virginia, usually infants of teenage girls who would soon find their futures with mothers and fathers who would adopt them. Mr. Blue attributed this one's, and most of their, really, endless caterwaul to "bad blood," bastards that they were, offspring of wayward girls.
Setting the baby in the baby seat, he glanced sidewards at the patina it had developed from years of use. Propping it slightly supine, he rolled a kitchen towel and propped the glass bottle, the first of five the baby would get that day. Each day for Mr. and Mrs. Blue was the same, feed the babies, put them down, feed them, give the bigger ones playpen time, feed them, take them out in the yard in the buggy if he felt like it. Feed them. Put them down. Get them on a schedule. It was a check from the state.
...an addict in pursuit of a drug is in a state of desperate need. He looks like a craving, dependent child in pursuit of the rejecting mother. Simultaneously, he is the "I don't need anyone" individual who ignores his wife's pleas, spends his children's inheritance, and completely avoids all intimate contact. In sum, the addict may operate on both sides of the attachment continuum, all in pursuit of the security he never had.
She was a frail, tiny thing, prone to illness. Hong Kong flu. Croup. Diarrhea. Neither the decrepit doctor nor Nancy, the young caseworker, freshly graduated from the local college, knew why the baby, whom Nancy named Nancy Carol, after herself, stubbornly defied all their efforts to force her to gain weight. At her two month checkup, the doctor told the Blues added cereal to her bottle. Over the next few weeks, the baby moved to full meals of strained peas, squashed pears, and the plethora of sustenance proffered by Gerber.
At six months old, she weighed ten pounds. Refusing to return the gaze of the doctor, and of Nancy, the baby had been declined by several families looking to adopt baby girls. She was sickly. She wouldn't smile. She wouldn't interact. They had to do something.
The blue and green floral wallpaper in the kitchen was beginning to peel in its corner. The humming icebox door made its usual clunkety-clunk as its contents were retrieved. In 1968, and that white icebox with the rounded doors had been in use constantly since the 1940s. One day, it would probably give up the ghost.
Mr. Blue shook the bottle of Pet Milk and Karo syrup. He took care of three, his wife took care of three. This baby girl had finally gotten the hang of her schedule after seven long weeks. For hours on end, she would scream, then eat, then scream some more until she collapsed, exhausted, into the blackened comfort that sleep offered her. He didn't have the inclination nor the energy to hold her, rock her, or offer her any of the niceties that most people offered babies.
This one, like the other five that might be in his house at any given time, were wards of the state of Virginia, usually infants of teenage girls who would soon find their futures with mothers and fathers who would adopt them. Mr. Blue attributed this one's, and most of their, really, endless caterwaul to "bad blood," bastards that they were, offspring of wayward girls.
Setting the baby in the baby seat, he glanced sidewards at the patina it had developed from years of use. Propping it slightly supine, he rolled a kitchen towel and propped the glass bottle, the first of five the baby would get that day. Each day for Mr. and Mrs. Blue was the same, feed the babies, put them down, feed them, give the bigger ones playpen time, feed them, take them out in the yard in the buggy if he felt like it. Feed them. Put them down. Get them on a schedule. It was a check from the state.
...an addict in pursuit of a drug is in a state of desperate need. He looks like a craving, dependent child in pursuit of the rejecting mother. Simultaneously, he is the "I don't need anyone" individual who ignores his wife's pleas, spends his children's inheritance, and completely avoids all intimate contact. In sum, the addict may operate on both sides of the attachment continuum, all in pursuit of the security he never had.
She was a frail, tiny thing, prone to illness. Hong Kong flu. Croup. Diarrhea. Neither the decrepit doctor nor Nancy, the young caseworker, freshly graduated from the local college, knew why the baby, whom Nancy named Nancy Carol, after herself, stubbornly defied all their efforts to force her to gain weight. At her two month checkup, the doctor told the Blues added cereal to her bottle. Over the next few weeks, the baby moved to full meals of strained peas, squashed pears, and the plethora of sustenance proffered by Gerber.
At six months old, she weighed ten pounds. Refusing to return the gaze of the doctor, and of Nancy, the baby had been declined by several families looking to adopt baby girls. She was sickly. She wouldn't smile. She wouldn't interact. They had to do something.
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