The Feral Child
Children rarely enter therapy voluntarily. They are referred by worried parents, teachers, and often, by social services. These can be the most heartbreaking cases. Alexis and her two year old sister had been removed from the filthy, feces strewn apartment they shared with their mother, four dogs and two cats and placed in foster care. After several weeks in foster home, it became apparent that Alexis was developmentally delayed and her behavioral problems — sexual acting out, tantrums and nightmares — were more than her foster parents could manage. Social Services asked me to evaluate the child to determine what kind of placement was best for her.
At five years old, the little girl was still in diapers. I later learned that her mother had told her a monster lived in their toilet and she was terrified of bathrooms. Poor diet and profound neglect were evident: Alexis had a mouthful of rotting baby teeth which had to be extracted. She had never been seen by a doctor, played with anyone other than her baby sister or climbed a flight of stairs. Of greater concern to me was that she had almost no expressive speech and the few words she did utter were gibberish. Developmentally, there is a window of time for children to acquire language, and I worried that it was perhaps too late for this little girl. A consultation with a speech pathologist reassured me somewhat; the pathologist noted that Alexis had invented her own words for common objects, which suggested that she knew things had names, but didn’t know what those names were so she made up her own. Was this a sign of innate intelligence? I hoped so.
Our first few sessions were conducted mostly in silence, and it was difficult to ascertain how much she understood of what I said to her or even who I was. I wondered how Alexis could begin to make sense of what happened to her. Strangers had taken her away from her mother and everything familiar. She’d been placed in a foster home with strangers. Another stranger pulled her teeth and hurt her. It was hardly surprising that she avoided eye contact, didn’t smile, laugh or ask questions of me. She would play in the sand tray in a haphazard, disorganized way, burying figures in the sand and digging them up again. She invariably removed the father doll from the doll house, usually tossing him to the floor, but when I commented on this, she did not reply. Her drawings were primitive scribbles, and she didn’t seem to grasp colors or numbers.
Several months into the therapy, I was frustrated that I had been unable to form much of a relationship with this little girl. She didn’t seem to mind coming to see me, but neither was she particularly excited about it. The inability to communicate with each other in a meaningful way-
in session, I did all the talking — seemed an insurmountable hurdle. Then things changed.
Her social worker had dropped Alexis off, one afternoon as usual, leaving her in the waiting room, but when I went out and greeted her, she refused to follow me into the office. She was weeping silently and curled up in a fetal position on the couch, the very picture of misery. I joined her on the couch and tried to persuade her to come into the office, but she didn’t respond. I picked up a story book and began to read to her, and gradually the tears stopped and she huddled against me, which is when I noticed that she was burning up with fever. The poor child was sick, felt awful and had no words to express it or understand what was happening. I settled Alexis onto my lap, explained to her that she was sick, but would get better, and continued to read stories to her until her social worker came back for her.
After that afternoon, Alexis began to form a tentative attachment to me — even learning my name — which was encouraging. Abused and neglected children often stop forming attachments to adults, or conversely, they attach to any adult indiscriminately. The prognosis was brighter now. She was enrolled in a preschool for children with developmental and emotional issues, and made a friend for the first time. She also began to speak a few words and progressed to simple two or three word sentences. As we were drawing one day, Alexis suddenly stated, “My mama bad.”
“What does mama do that’s bad?”
Turning to me, she raked her fingernails up and down my arm, saying, intently,
“She do this. She do this. She do this.”
This disclosure of physical abuse was key to determining a placement for Alexis and her little sister. As her vocabulary increased, along with her trust, she told me more, for the first time using language to communicate her experience and feelings. It was deeply gratifying to me, and also informed what my recommendations to Social Services would be. The shocking neglect and mistreatment she’d experienced in her first five years convinced me that reunification with her mother, a meth addict, would be a tragic mistake. Social Services agreed, and began taking legal steps to end her mother’s parental rights.
Happy ending: eight months after being removed from her mother, Alexis and her sister were adopted by a caring couple who were both experienced in dealing with traumatized children. She still acted out at times with tantrums, but her nightmares had all but disappeared. It was likely that she would need ongoing play therapy, but now that she had demonstrated the ability to form attachments, acquire basic living skills and develop an age appropriate vocabulary, I felt hopeful that she could overcome the first awful years and even thrive. She was no longer the feral child who had walked silently into my office. In her place, was a winsome little girl who smiled, sang nursery songs and played with dolls.
