Two Kids Who Scare Me

During the fifty years on this campus we have seen thousands of brain-injured children. These children have covered the entire spectrum of brain injury from the most profoundly brain-injured children to children who are so mildly brain-injured as to appear well but who are not well.

It's extremely helpful to understand the completeness of this spectrum. Let's look at 300 brain-injured children, each exactly eight years old and all brain-injured.

Let's begin with an eight-year-old child who is just now dead of a brain injury and therefore just outside the spectrum.

Next to him we could easily line up 50 eight-year-old children who are so profoundly brain-injured as to be comatose, starting with one who is so profoundly comatose that we need a machine to tell us whether he is alive or dead. Now we can line up 49 more children, each so profoundly brain-injured as to be comatose, but each of them is a hair more conscious than the child to his right, until we reach the fiftieth of these children who is comatose but so lightly comatose that he occasionally slips into consciousness.

Now we have lined up 51 children ranging from an eight-year-old who is actually dead to one who is profoundly brain-injured but in a coma so light as to border on consciousness.

Now we can add 50 more profoundly brain-injured children who are paralyzed and speechless but totally conscious. As we progress, in very small degrees, from the most profound and speechless of these children to each slightly less immobile and speechless child, we would find the fiftieth child able to see and hear and to occasionally to make some sounds and to move a few inches with great difficulty.

Now we have lined up 101 children, each of whom is eight years old, and ranging in very small degrees from the dead child on the right to the conscious child on the left. He is profoundly brain-injured but is totally conscious and is also able to make sounds and move.

Next to these profoundly brain-injured children we could place another 50 children ranging from the most severely brain injured child on the right to the least severely brain-injured one on the left. All of these children are severely, rather than profoundly, brain-injured. However, the most severely hurt child on the right would be almost indistinguishable from the least profoundly hurt child on his right. He would be by a hair better than that child, but by a hair not as functional as the child on his left.

We would now have lined up 151 brain-injured children, each of whom is eight years old, ranging from one child who is dead, to one who is severely brain-injured but who is capable of enough mobility to crawl and can make a wide variety of sounds.

Now beside the best of these severely brain-injured children we could place another 50 brain-injured children, each of whom is moderately rather than severely brain-injured. The most hurt one of these 50 moderately brain-injured children, whom we would place to the left of the least severely brain-injured child, would be almost identical to but a small degree less hurt than that child, but by a tiny degree he would be more hurt than the child on his own left. The last of these moderately brain-injured children would be clearly mobile and could crawl perfectly functionally and maybe even creep. He would also have at least limited speech.

This child might be able to crawl and creep fairly functionally and to take a few steps, but to do so poorly. He may be able to say sentences, but with poor pronunciation. He may have a severe strabismus.

Beside this best of the moderately brain-injured children we could place another eight-year-old brain-injured child who is not moderately brain-injured but who is a shade better. The new child, actually almost identical to the last of the moderately brain-injured children, would be the most hurt of the mildly brain-injured children.

Now we could line up 50 mildly brain-injured children, ranging from this first one, who is only a hair better than the best of the moderately brain-injured children, with each of them only a tiny fraction better than the one on his right, until we reach the fiftieth of the mildly brain-injured children.

Now we shall have lined up 251 children, ranging from the dead one to the most mildly brain-injured one who appears to be well.

Now we can line up 50 more children who appear to be well but who are not. They are in fact also brain-injured. These children are widely believed to be the result of psychological or emotional problems, and they are called by such names as Mentally Retarded, Dyslexic (which means he cannot read), Specific Dyslexic (which means he specifically can't read), Learning Disabled, Hyperactive, Attention Deficit Disorder, Specific Learning Disorder, Mentally Deficient, and a host more of such names.

Between each of these "special" children there would also be only a hair of difference, ranging from the most hurt of the ones who have learning problems to the one who is truly average.

If we now lined up these 300 brain-injured children with an extra one who is dead on the extreme right and an extra one who is average on the extreme left, we could pick any child of the 300 and find him to be virtually identical to the child on his left, but by a hair not as well as and virtually identical to the child on his right, but by a hair better.

Yet this minute change from child to child would take us from one who was so like death that we require a machine to tell us whether he is alive or dead to a child so average as to be in the middle of his average third-grade class.

What we are looking at is degrees of brain injury from the most profound to the child who is considered average.

Two of these kids scare me.

The first one who scares me is the kid in a coma.

It is obvious why the kid in a coma scares me. He is the most profoundly injured of the profoundly brain-injured children. His problem is taking his next breath, and sometimes he doesn't. Our job is to make him totally well and to move him up through that spectrum of three hundred children to become the average child. Sometimes, astonishingly, we do this, and he becomes in turn each of the children to his left. But it's easy to see why he scares me.

The second kid who scares me is the kid who looks like the well kids and who acts virtually like the well kids, but who isn't. He is in the top 50 of the 300.

The reason he scares me is less obvious but is equally dangerous, because he is seen as being normal. Although "special," he almost always goes without treatment because he is not thought to be brain-injured. Instead, he is thought be an educational problem or just a little stupid, but it is believed that he will "grow out of it."

This mildly brain-injured child scares me because almost nobody know that he is one.

The tragic result is that he, the most mildly hurt of the brain-injured children, goes through the rest of his life on the outside looking in.

Never quite like the other little kids, never quite like the other teenagers, never quite like the other young adults.

Never quite like the others.

Outside looking in.

Maybe it is obvious why this easiest to fix of the brain-injured kids so often goes unfixed.

And that's why the most brain-injured kids of all and the least brain-injured kids of all both scare the devil out of me.

Perhaps in the near future we will do an article that questions whether the top one of those three hundred kids, the one in the middle of the average third-grade class, is average in the sense of being normal or whether he is only average in the mathematical sense.

What makes us ask that question is the hundreds of profoundly brain-injured kids and severely brain-injured kids and moderately brain-injured kids and mildly brain-injured kids who ended up being physically, intellectually, and socially much better than that average kid in the middle of the average third grade.

What the devil do you suppose that means?

by Glenn Doman, Founder
The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential