Not Getting the Help You need in Childhood: Medical Neglect part 2
By Linda E-F and Renee Brush, Ph.D.
My story is almost the polar opposite of Renee's (from last week), right down to the chemistry class. Where she found solace and safety in the classroom, I experienced fear, pain, and humiliation. However, I found my refuge in sports, any sport. I was exceptionally good, and I earned approval from my parents and even a little respect and slack from teachers.
People assumed I was so active because I was athletic, and it was simply in my nature. No one wondered how I could be doing so poorly in school because I was one of those super athletes and, well, you know, in the 80s, it was all about the dumb jock, and I fit the bill perfectly!
Besides PE, I have very few memories of anything academic in elementary school. I remember getting caught in second grade for trying to cheat on a spelling test. The teacher walked up, snatched my cheat sheet away, and forced my head down on the desk. No matter how much I studied for those damn spelling tests, I never did well. No one helped me, so I tried another route. Cheating was truly against my nature; I was rightly humiliated, and I never… ever… tried cheating again. I mostly remember being lost in the sauce in school. Oh, and the parent/teacher conferences, ugh. Both classroom experiences and parent/teacher conferences were humiliating.
I rarely put my hand up. For one thing, I rarely had the answer. Many times, when I asked questions, I remember the teachers looking at me in exasperation. Their looks said, “ok… well, we are on Earth studying spelling, and you are on… no, in… I am not sure what solar system you are in….” There would be snickers in the background. Sometimes, a teacher would give me a sad look, and other times, they would be angry and tell me to pay attention. Sometimes, I would swear I knew the answer and put my hand in the air like Hermione Granger, dying to be called on. I would be on the edge of my seat, but they would try looking past me, not making eye contact, and not calling on me. A few times, I would be the only person with a hand up, so they would call on someone they knew would answer well, or the teacher would answer the question independently. Many of those times, I did have the answer correct. I must admit those moments stung a little and were embarrassing, too. What I learned… what became crystal clear… was that I was stupid and that it was safer to be quietly lost in my safe little place inside my head. That is how and when I learned to mimic everyone around me, including the teacher. If you knew what the teacher would do next, you could predict the appropriate behavior.
A fallen tree on Lake Smith, Virginia Beach, VA
Remember reading aloud in class? Those days brought straight-up terror in my heart and mind. I prayed the teacher would follow the seating chart, up one aisle to the end and then back to the first chair in the next aisle. I never heard a word of what was being read because I had counted ahead and figured out which paragraphs I would most likely have to read and started practicing knowing each word in every sentence before it was my turn. Usually, I was working so hard to memorize what I was going to have to read that the teacher would have to say my name. I played it off like I was so intent and interested that I had to go back to where the class was. Yes! Win/win! I look like I am totally with it, and I get teacher-pet points!
Parent/teacher conferences were similar. They would always start out with the same f’ing statement, “Oh! Linda is such a good citizen, she gets along with everyone, she is a big helper around the class, she volunteers, and she is sooooo creative. I remember they would try to extend the compliments as long as they could before finally getting to the important stuff. You know! The part about grades for the important subjects: reading, writing, math, etc. Next came that look. That painful look the teacher would cast my way. It was always so sad saying, “Oh, I’m sooo sorry, but I have to tell them…” “…Linda seems to have difficulties with other subjects, though…” I remember nothing after those words. Ironically, I do not think I got in trouble for my poor grades. After a while, I think my parents just thought I was slow, and as long as I passed, I would someday make a great wife and mother.
Ironically, I did get an 'A' in middle school chemistry because I had two exceptional science teachers. They made it exciting, and I loved it! I made a fantastic huge volcano with fissures and rock types, a diagram of the internal parts of a volcano wedged into the massive clay model; at the time, I wanted to be a Volcanologist. Years later, I stood on the side of Kilauea on a Hawaiian vacation and felt the intensity of the heat from football fields away, and I remember thinking to myself, “Yeah! No way! That is way too dangerous!” I am still fascinated with volcanoes, though. My A in science and my PE grades (always an easy A) probably kept me from being one of the last five of my class!
Middle school and high school were all about sports. By middle school, I was a master at mimicry, and that’s when I figured out the key to the textbooks, too. Tests were based on the questions at the end of every chapter. They were taken from sentences in the chapters. Typically, questions were made by taking a date, proper noun, or exact groupings of words from a sentence. All I had to do was match the words from the question to a sentence in the chapter. Because the questions always went in order from the beginning of a chapter to the end, and I could usually see those words in my head, matching was pretty easy. I started getting better grades. However, midterms and finals were difficult because those tests are where one shows mastery of concepts, but I was playing fill-in-the-blank.
In high school, my biology class really should have been called jock biology. The most popular teacher in our high school taught biology. He was the track coach and one of the football coaches as well. One of his biology periods was specifically for varsity and JV athletes... the "dumb jocks." We got passing grades in his class so our teams could have their strongest athletes academically qualified to play. But several days a week, every week, this teacher told a "soccer girl" joke. Guess who was the only "girl" soccer player in his class? "Class! I have a great one for you today! What is the difference between a bag of trash and a girl soccer player?" Thankfully, most of the guys (football players and baseball players) protested that he had gone too far, but he continued. "A bag of trash..." He said, walking behind my chair, putting his hands on my shoulders, and squeezing as he said, "...even a bag of trash gets taken out once a week!" And then he started robustly laughing out loud. I just sat there and smiled and chuckled along with several other students. What else could I do? I wanted to pass, and I wanted to play. Playing was my survival.
My first attempt at college
The first time I went to college I was terrible at it and terrified. For example, math, I still had not memorized my multiplication scales. If algebra is so freaking logical, why is the first variable an ‘x’? The alphabet, something they GRIND into our heads as being logical and orderly, starts with an ‘a’. Why is this important variable ‘x’ from the end of the alphabet, and what about all the other letters? I almost failed Algebra 1 because I got stuck on that question. That is an accurate description of math from beginning to end for me! LOL
The biggest issue for me has always been reading. How many times can a person read and re-read the same freaking sentence and not understand it? How is it that I just actually read three pages, and I couldn’t tell you what the last word I read was? Coming to the end of a sentence stressed me out because, about 75% of the time, I could not find the beginning of the next sentence. Then there were the really silly words (such as “the,” “a,” “whom,” “where,” and so on) - these words stumped me and made me lose my place or cause other words to totally not make sense at all. Big words stressed me out because I couldn’t read small words, so how could I read big words? When I did read big words easily, people would get so angry at me for missing the small, simple words. After a very short amount of time trying to read, words would just start jumping around the page, disappearing, or popping randomly into a sentence they didn’t belong in. The more stressed I became, the bigger the word circus became.
I remember a midterm in college that I failed miserably. I was so stressed. There were five essay questions. I would read the first word, define it in my head, and then read the second word and define that word, then add the two together. Then, I read the third word, defined it in my head, and added it to the first two and so on with each additional work in the sentence. Can you say misery?! In the end, I quickly looked at words I knew in the last three questions and answered them marginally better. As it turned out, I did not interpret the first two questions correctly and, therefore, answered them wrong.
After that test was handed back, my professor said he needed to talk to me in his office. He told me he did not understand what was going on with me. I failed the test, but I often said fairly intelligent things in class. I told him I did not understand the test. I will never forget his response, “What do you mean you do not understand the test?” I said I didn’t understand the words… Incredulous, he said, “What do you mean you don’t understand the words and my test? You’ve been in the class from the start, and everyone else understood the test.” He was not angry; he wanted to find out what was going on, and he really wanted to understand. I remember sitting there thinking to myself, “If I tell him, my stupid will be outed, he’s going to know I am an illiterate idiot, and they will kick me out… then again, they are about to kick me out, you have nothing to lose. You will have to go home a total failure. Might as well get it over with...” So, I told him how I used “reading-addition.” He looked at me with an odd smirk and said, “Oh! You are damned dyslexic!” From then on, he had his grad assistant read me my tests. I think I actually passed that class.
Unfortunately, if you have trouble reading, the rest of school is going to be difficult. Grammar was like the reading equivalent of math and made absolutely no sense to me at all. It seriously could have been ancient Greek, and it could not have been less clear. So… I sucked miserably at grammar! Writing also requires good reading skills… Spelling - HA! When words fly around a page or disappear, it’s difficult to master that either.
In high school, biology had been easy, lots of pictures (yay), a jock class… passed. However, in college, I was on the struggle bus the whole way through, and my prof was an unmitigated asshole who was anything but helpful. I have never been so happy to get a D+; it could have been a C-! All I knew was that it was enough to get me through.
Because I struggled so much during that first attempt at college, I didn’t last long. I was placed on academic probation and booted for below-standard grades I could not improve. If I am being perfectly honest, it was such a relief! No more faking it. No more pretending to be something I wasn't; the cat was out of the bag, and I felt that I could finally just go about my life as an idiot and stop the charade.
Another fallen tree on Lake Smith, Virginia Beach, VA
Neglect or not neglect… that is the question
In the '70s and '80s, not much was known about ADHD, dyslexia, or reading processing deficits, all of which I have. All of which I was diagnosed with when I was around 57 when I decided I needed to address my reading issues and finally complete my degree. This spring will be the final term of my master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and every day has been an internal struggle, this deep-seated fear (fear is putting it lightly. It has been horrifying) that someone will discover that I do not belong in the "smart kid's" school. Those deep, dark, ugly, internalized false beliefs are ever so slowly peeling off, and those layers feel like they leave exposed raw flesh. Graduation is not far off, and I will have to accept that those old survival instincts are outdated and that I actually belong where I am. It has taken me 60 years to get here, and I am still working on it!
I do not blame my parents for not getting me the help I needed. I know my mother and father did not know anything about such things. Even the school systems were uneducated in these affairs when I was in primary, middle, and high school. Had a doctor, teacher, or coach told my parents I needed assessment or help, I honestly think my parents would have found a tutor. Culturally, they would never have gone to a mental health professional. In my Hispanic culture, especially during the 70s and 80s (or before), going outside the family with personal issues was an absolute non-starter. It simply was not done. PERIOD.
One note: this blog is all about complex trauma and other forms of trauma. The addition of trauma, especially complex trauma, to this picture, sadly enhances the adverse effects and symptoms of medical neglect. It is hard, painful work getting past the internalized feelings developed from not receiving the help needed early in life. It is possible and rewarding to overcome these internalized beliefs. What has been learned can be unlearned. It is hard and painful at first, and it doesn't happen overnight. However, it is FAR BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE! We all have the innate desire to be well of body and mind, and sometimes, we really have to dig to get there.
One final note from Renee: While Linda has a point that schools and parents did not know much about learning disorders when we were young, as a psychologist, I don’t want to give any school the pass to allow a child to go through school with such bad grades and not try to do something. Even the stereotype about the “dumb jock” is hurtful to children. All stereotypes are hurtful! I have always been frustrated for Linda hearing her story. I understand her family would not go outside to get the help. But I think that means that we need more counselors and psychologists who are people of color - people of the global majority - so they can help these children. So the families can feel safe getting the help they need and the children do not have to grow up feeling like they are “idiots.” That just hurts my heart.
