Wrong about Helen Keller...

An email from a reader tells me "Your facts about Helen Keller are wrong. She did have speech! So why bring her up?"

Helen Keller was born a normal baby. By the time she was 19 months old, she was very ill and not expected to survive. Some today think that she may have had scarlet fever or meningitis. It was soon discovered that she was deaf, blind, and she did not have speech.

The family sought help for Helen when she was about 6 years old, and Annie Sullivan came into her life. Before Ms. Sullivan could teach Helen, she had to tame Helen's wild ways. Speech was not an early part of her training; Ms. Sullivan used her fingers to spell out words into Helen's hands.

When Helen was 9 or 10 years old, she and Annie Sullivan went to live at the Perkins Institution, where Annie Sullivan had had her training. Mary Swift Lamson attempted to teach Helen to speak, but Helen never attained normal speech. The following link says "This was something that Helen desperately wanted and although she learned to understand what somebody else was saying by touching their lips and throat, her efforts to speak herself proved at this stage to be unsuccessful. This was later attributed to the fact that Helen’s vocal chords were not properly trained prior to her being taught to speak."

article: The Life of Helen Keller

Now what I wonder is, why does it matter if Helen spoke or not in later life? The fact remains, Helen was wild, spoiled, and undisciplined. She had to first be civilized before she could be taught anything. The same with many kids today. Many teachers write that they can't teach because they first have to first teach manners, teach kids to sit quietly and listen, to take direction from an adult. They have to teach them to enter a room quietly.

If Helen Keller, with three handicaps, can be civilized, why can't today's children be civilized? I remember sitting in a park some years ago listening to a mother go on and on about how gifted her kid was, how he was a champ in everything he did. As she spoke, His Giftedness was bullying the younger kids on the playground and letting air out of bike tires. He may have been gifted. But he was an ill-mannered brat.

"No" at the mall

Circumstances almost beyond my control had me in two places that, on normal days, would be no problem. But this wasn't a normal day...it was Christmas Eve. And the places were a mall and a grocery store. Perfect places and time to observe human nature, however, and I had plenty to observe. First, the mall.

I never eat at food courts. Over-priced artery clogging fare is not my idea of food. But I was being treated by the person whom I had given a ride to the mall. Fortunately, I was able to find something that wouldn't trigger an intestinal upset.

As I'm eating with the person who had needed a ride to the mall to do some last-minute shopping, a little boy of about 6 had been running around several tables and grabbing food from the trays of those with whom he was sitting (when he sat). He then runs by our table and attempts to grab food from my tray. Knowing what he had been doing, I lifted my tray in time and told him "No, this is my food." Hearing no, he reacted violently by kicking my table and then threw himself to the floor and screamed.

His mother comes over and talks to him soothingly about the "bad person" who told him no, to come back to the table and she'd give him some cookies. She then looks at me and tells me "He's an Aspie." I asked her what that meant. "You should educate yourself! And you should learn that they have rights!" I asked if Aspie's had the right to snatch food off of the tables of total strangers.

Here's a clue for the Mom of Aspie: We all have rights. And we all have responsibilities. And we all have obligations. I didn't say that to Mom of Aspie, though. I asked her a question:

Are you familiar with the story of Helen Keller?

She said yes, she'd read the book as a child and had seen the movie.

So I asked her about Helen's early life before Annie Sullivan arrived. Did she remember what Helen was like?

Mom of Aspie's face drained of color but she didn't say anything. I reminded her that Helen had been described by family and friends as "wild, like an animal." She grabbed food from the plates of those she dined with. She ran around and knocked things to the floor. She'd hit and scratch if she didn't get her way, so she always got her way. And her father began to recognize that this could not go on, and so he looked for someone to help Helen.

Annie Sullivan is often called The Miracle Worker, and is believed by some to have used behavior modification before anyone else. Those who know the story know that Helen went on to do great things for the rest of her life, accomplishing more than many people who were not Deaf, mute, and blind.

If a child who had that many handicaps can overcome them and become world-famous, responsible, and a help to others, why cannot the children of today who are labeled Bipolar, ADD/ADHD, ODD, Aspie, and so on be trained and worked with so that they, too, can accomplish great things? Will drugging them and letting them get away with mistreating other people truly help them? Will it help society?

I would advise that parents get and read a copy of any of the books on Helen Keller's life and apply the methods she used to civilize a Deaf, mute and blind child.