Imagine

I guess it is obvious that we each have a different view of the world. It is certainly clear to me that no two human beings have exactly the same experiences, and as a result we each have our own unique viewpoint. Even so, it has taken me a long, long time to realize how powerful that viewpoint may be in changing the world for better or for worse.

For example, it has taken me quite a while to recognize that not everyone looks at a brain-injured child and sees the same child I see.

I was literally raised with brain-injured children from the time I was five years old. I simply do not remember a time in my life when I was not surrounded by hurt kids. I can not remember what I thought when I first saw a profoundly brain-injured child, because I was a child myself.

The first inkling I had that not everyone saw hurt kids as I did was when the mother of modern nutrition, Adelle Davis, first arrived at The Institutes to help establish the very first nutritional program for our children.

As it happened, Adelle sat in with me as I met with a family and their brain-injured child. After several minutes she excused herself and left the room. When I finished I found her very shaken and tearful. Since Adelle was a very bright and very tough lady, I was astonished and taken aback. She told me she had never seen a severely brain-injured child in her life. She had no idea that a child could be so hurt, and she had found herself overwhelmed by the experience. It took her some time to be able to get past this initial shock and begin to see our kids with new eyes.

That experience made me wonder, when others look at brain-injured children what do they see?

After thinking about this for the last few decades, I have come to the conclusion that it is a very important question.

I realized that when I look at a brain-injured child I see a child who got hurt, that is to say I see a well child who happened to get brain-injured. I strongly suspect that when our parents look at their brain-injured child they, too, see a well child who happened to get hurt.

I have an equally strong suspicion that when many people look at a brain-injured child they see a brain-injured child, period.

This is a very, very, very different viewpoint.

For every parent who fights his or her way into the Valentine Auditorium and attends the What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child Course, there are twelve people who inquire but do not make it. I suspect that the most important reason that they do not is their viewpoint. I suspect that when they look at their brain-injured child they see a brain-injured child.

When parents first come to The Institutes they are very excited to return home and tell their friends and relatives who have hurt kids that there is hope and help for their children. They are sometimes very frustrated because those same friends and relatives don't show much interest. These families (whom we never see) appear to love their children as much as our families do.

What is the difference?

I believe that when these parents look at their children they see brain-injured children. They define their children by their brain injury. Perhaps they wonder why our parents don't love their children enough to "accept them as they are."

We all have such relatives and friends, and we realize that our viewpoint and their viewpoint are so different that we cannot imagine what they must be thinking, and to be fair they can't imagine what we must be thinking. We all see with different eyes, and those eyes make all the difference.

Many years ago Dr. Raymond Dart - physician, anatomist, physical anthropologist extraordinaire, and discoverer of the "missing link" Australopithecus africanus dartii - was finishing off a press conference in honor of his seventy-fifth birthday. The last question was a philosophical one. He was asked, after a lifetime spent studying man and his origins, what was the most important thing he had learned. Clearly he liked the question. After a brief pause he said, "I guess the most important thing I have learned in my life is whatever man can imagine he can do."

He might also have added "and what man can not imagine he can not do."

I look at brain-injured children with the eyes of a five-year-old. I see a well child that we need to get to work on and fix up. Our wonderful parents see that same well child, and they are willing to fight every day so that he can have his chance to shed his injury and be well.

If parents have a child who has been hurt from birth they must imagine their child as he could be, since factually they have never seen their child well. This picture of the well child that parents carry with them is very strong. It is essential, and it separates them from all other parents who cannot imagine a well child emerging from a hurt one.

When a child is well and gets brain-injured, one would think that the fact that he was well would provide everyone around him with a clear, strong image of his wellness and that this image would keep everyone fighting for his right to return to this state.

Surprisingly this is not the case.

Instead there is a kind of well-meaning conspiracy to convince parents of a traumatically injured child to change their viewpoint, to accept the death of their well child and welcome into their home a new child who is brain-injured and going to stay that way.

Not long ago we saw a very beautiful young lady who had been injured in a car accident. She was paralyzed and speechless but she still had the same beautiful face that she had always had. We mentioned to her mother that we had no pictures of her before the accident and that we would like to have one for her chart.

After a brief attempt at controlling herself, mother broke down and cried. She said that she had had a house full of photographs of her beautiful daughter but that after the accident she was told that she must find every photograph of her child before the accident and destroy them all. She said it was the hardest thing she ever did in her life.

When she had collected all the photographs she put them in a box, but try as she might she could not bring herself to destroy them. "Those photographs were who my daughter really is!" she said. So she hid the box where no one would find it.

We proposed that the very first thing she should do when she arrived home was to find that box, take out the photographs, and put them back where they belong.

How dare she imagine that her daughter might one day return to her former happy, well state when she should have been enjoying a good long bout of false despair?

Dart got it right-"Anything man can imagine he can do."

The first step is to imagine.