View report page

All mentally abnormal children, other than those who have been notified to the Local Mental
Deficiency Authority, are re-examined frequently and in any case not less than once in twelve
months.
The question of dealing adequately, not only with mentally defective children, but with the
psychologically abnormal child, is one of the most unsatisfactory things one has to deal with.
Repeatedly examining these children when nothing can be done for them by reason of the
policy enunciated from head-quarters is practically hopeless. There are no vacancies and the nett
result is an accumulation of notes which have not benefited the child one whit. At least, in this
district, we do try and keep a watch on them and examine every one at least annually, but what
happens in some districts passes my comprehension, as we get children coming from other districts
who have never been examined at all and who on entering this district have been found to be as
much as seven years retarded, some of them well on in years as far as school age is concerned.
I make an invariable practice of writing to the school authorities of every child who comes
in and in the vast majority of cases I get the information, and there is no evidence from some of
these that the child has ever been mentally assessed. How they escape is past my comprehension.
One knows that sympathetic teachers are apt to magnify the abilities of some of these
children much out of kind-heartedness or a knowledge of the parents. Some of them are possibly
kept away from Medical Inspection, but I am still at a loss to know how it is we get the number of
cases of this kind that we do, unless it is like the Local Authority who when questioned because
their Reports showed no Mentally Defectives, replied that so long as there was no possibility of
accommodation there was no possible use in " ascertaining."
The psychological cases which one deals with by therapeutic interviews keep dropping in,
and it is really one of the happy things to see how much can be done for these cases by an understanding
of their psychology.
As I have said before, how one longs to change some of their parents for them. To know
that these poor little characters are doomed to spend their early life in the environment of their
unstable parents is little short of tragic.
As an example of the sort of case which comes under no other heading, the following is an
instance. A boy aged 12, in more or less comfortable circumstances, was sent down because he
wept when he went to school. This used to occur daily and commenced a year-and-a-half before
he was first seen by me. Up to then he had been more or less an ordinary child except somewhat
nervous. He got nervous attacks which caused diarrhoea, four or five evacuations taking place
repeatedly. There was a marked habit spasm of the neck and shoulder. The psychological
background was most unsatisfactory. Seven years previously his little sister was killed by a
motor-cycle in his presence. That produced a very severe upset at the time. A year-and-a-half
previous to the examination, a favourite uncle died which seems to have been the beginning of the
present trouble.
There was no physical basis for his trouble whatever. At the time of examination he was
lachrymose, weeping at the slightest thing and it had been found impossible to get him back to
school at the beginning of the term a few days previously.
He was found to be worried by Mathematics and French and also the fact that he had no
pals at school. Apparently the same trouble had arisen at the commencement of every term in his
new school. After an interview I took him down in my car to the school and handed him over
to the Head Master, having arranged that he should get extra tuition in Mathematics and French.
There was no more trouble that term.
I arranged however that he was to report to me every Saturday morning simply so that he
could feel that there was somebody to whom he could turn out his mental rag-bag in case of
difficulty. Everything appeared to be going all right although it was obvious that the Saturday
morning visit was the sheet anchor which kept him steady.
At the beginning of the next term however he could not face up to school and was brought
down later in the day and by a parent. Again one was able to smooth things out and he went off
to school by himself without any trouble and reported satisfactorily on the following Saturday.
He came down regularly until I felt that stability had been reached. His Head Master
reports satisfactory progress and he is fitting into school life in a way he did not before.
There was another psychological difficulty due to a relationship which had undoubtedly
some slight bearing on the trouble, but that one was able to straighten out. Certainly the outlook
for the boy is very materially better than when one saw him first. This is merely an instance, but
the trouble one has with so many of the parents of these difficult children drives one to distraction.
As I said before, one wishes to goodness one could change them. If some of these boys were
placed with a placid cowlike mother, who at the same time has a will of her own which compels
obedience, it would be the salvation of some of these products of the unstable and neurotic mother.
26