Fabulous Black Woman's Newsletter
April Edition
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How it all began

I must say that my son's birth was not horrific or unusual in any way. The first indication that
something was not quite right was when my son was 9 months old and still wasn't talking. After all, I
had been told that I began talking at 10 months! Certainly, "Karen 2.0" would be an improved
version! What gives? Of course, our pediatrician chuckled and said not to worry. Other than having a
little body (in the 25th percentile) and a Charlie Brown head (in the 90th percentile), everything was
perfect! Our pediatrician told us that normally, children will begin talking around 12 months.
Normally!? Hmmmph. I resented that my child should be called "normal". Certainly, he would be
extraordinary!

When my son was an infant, he would sit in his swing or carrier or crib and just stare off into space.
He rarely looked into our eyes or faces-even when we were speaking to him. He rarely
acknowledged us. But he was a very good baby. He slept through the night at 5 months old. He
rarely fussed or cried. He was content to just sit and stare at the wall. I guess that pretty much sums
him up-he always seemed content.

At 12 months, and still no words from Dominic, I again voiced my concern to our pediatrician. He
again reassured us that there was no cause for concern. Frustrated, I left and hit the books again.
Still waters run deep. Maybe my little prodigy was quietly working on some profound theorem and
was awaiting just the right moment to spring it on us?


Sometime between 12 and 18 months Dominic's personality became more profound. and I knew in
my heart something was wrong. I had a scheduled c-section with my second son, so I had time to
make arrangements for babysitters while I was in the hospital. When I reviewed the list of
"instructions" that I had come up with for taking care of my young son, it hit me that this was not
simply the work of a worrisome overprotective first-time mom, nor the anal-retentive ranting of a
micromanager. No, it was something more.

As I ran down the list of things that my son required, I worried that the person scheduled to care for
him would have a difficult time following the instructions and/or remembering everything on the list.

For example:

Feeding: Dom will only eat baby food and milk. The baby food must be stage 1, as he cannot
negotiate any "chunky" foods, he spits them out or gags on it. Keep a towel handy, as Dom vomits
every time he gets done eating.

When going outside, he must wear a hat, as he seems to hate the sun in his eyes. If he picks up
something in one hand and starts crying or screaming, it's because he needs to have something in
his other hand, too. His favorite spot is near the tree closest to the house, he likes to pull a piece of
bark off it and hold a piece in each hand. If he drops one piece, he will get very upset.

That was just the beginning. The list of instructions for Dominic went on for four pages. He was very
rigid in his schedule and the way he behaved, as well as how he expected us to behave. Over time,
we had worked our entire schedule, household configuration, and so on around Dominic and his
little "quirks" as we liked to call them.

As I sat down with my aunt, who was the first to care for Dom while I was in the hospital delivering
my second son, and ran down the entire list of instructions, my heart beat fast. She nodded politely
and stopped me frequently to ask questions-she didn't want to get anything wrong. In my mind I was
sure she thought I was crazy! She took notes and when we were through the "Dominic Instruction
Manual" she said, "Wow, Karen. You are so in-tune with your child!" She was impressed. I was
nervous. Is this normal? I had done some babysitting in my younger days and if I had been handed
such a rigid instruction manual, I'd have run for the hills! Perhaps my aunt chalked it up to me being
a worried first-time mom who'd never left her child with anyone before? I hoped. In any case, she
was too sensitive and polite to say otherwise.

At this point, I had to focus on the delivery of my second son, but in the back of my mind I couldn't
help but worry about Dominic. Our second son was born on July 3, 2003 and he was healthy! Now
that I had time off work for maternity leave, I could really start researching our concerns with
Dominic, then 18 months old. He still would not/could not eat solid foods, would vomit after every
meal and bottle, was not responding to our voices or his name (even though I was sure he knew
his name), and had developed odd little "quirks". Well, we affectionately referred to them as quirks. It
was more like baby-obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Here, I've listed some of Dominic's quirks at 18 months old:
•        Walking and running on tiptoes
•        Flapping hands
•        Fascination with tags on stuffed animals, rather than the toy itself (almost obsessive)
•        Must be holding something in each hand, or gets very upset (almost obsessive)
•        Stares off into space often, appears to be in his own world
•        Will not/cannot eat any foods with lumps, chunks or textures. All food must be pureed.
•        When going outside, doesn't seem to like the sun or wind in his face.
•        "Ignores" us. Doesn't respond to his name 80% of the time. Almost as if he doesn't hear us.
•        Will not/cannot eat any foods with lumps, chunks or textures. All food must be pureed.
•        Doesn't look into our eyes when we talk to him. Looks "beyond" us. Does he hear/see okay?
•        Drools constantly and constantly has something in his mouth--fingers, shirt, toys--even when
      he's not teething.
•        Not talking yet, at 18 months.
As the eldest child (if you buy into anything about birth
order, you understand where I'm coming from), I was
never satisfied with what I did in life. I strove for
perfection and aimed to please my parents. So, when I
gave birth to my first child, I vowed to be the perfect
parent. Of course, nothing less than perfection would do
from MY child. My husband and I have very high IQs and
before my maternity leave was over, I already had his
529 Plan set up and a short list of the only universities
he should consider for college!

Now, some things may seem odd. But remember, this is
my first child, so I have nothing to compare to. No point of
reference. Only those charming baby books-of which I
had tons-"How to teach your baby math", "How to teach
your baby to read", etc. MY son would be speaking four
languages before he started kindergarten!
A Mother's Story...

Just before noon on July 13, 2005, a Plant City police car pulled up outside that shattered window.
Two officers went into the house — and one stumbled back out. Clutching his stomach, the rookie
and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse
investigation. Someone had finally called the police.

They found a car parked outside. The driver's door was open and a woman was slumped over in
her seat, sobbing. She was an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families."
Unbelievable," she told Holste. "The worst I've ever seen."The police officers walked through the
front door, into a cramped living room. "I've been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it
never stunk that bad," Holste said later. "There's just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog,
cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and
rotting." Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard
and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the
sticky counters. The floor, walls, even the ceiling seemed to sway beneath legions of scuttling
roaches."It sounded like you were walking on eggshells. You couldn't take a step without crunching
German cockroaches," the detective said. "They were in the lights, in the furniture. Even inside the
freezer. The freezer!"

While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was
going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well,
yes, she had a daughter . . .The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle
on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark. At his
feet, something stirred.

• • •
First he saw the girl's eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn't looking at him so
much as through him. She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side,
long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was
slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores
pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a
swollen diaper.

"The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high," the detective said. "The glass in
the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement
and bugs." When he bent to lift her, she yelped like a lamb. "It felt like I was picking up a baby,"
Holste said. "I put her over my shoulder, and that diaper started leaking down my leg." The girl
didn't struggle. Holste asked, What's your name, honey? The girl didn't seem to hear. He searched
for clothes to dress her, but found only balled-up laundry, flecked with feces. He looked for a toy, a
doll, a stuffed animal. "But the only ones I found were covered in maggots and roaches." Choking
back rage, he approached the mother. How could you let this happen?"The mother's statement
was: 'I'm doing the best I can,' " the detective said. "I told her, 'The best you can sucks!' "

He wanted to arrest the woman right then, but when he called his boss he was told to let DCF do
its own investigation. So the detective carried the girl down the dim hall, past her brothers, past her
mother in the doorway, who was shrieking, "Don't take my baby!" He buckled the child into the state
investigator's car. The investigator agreed: They had to get the girl out of there. "Radio ahead to
Tampa General," the detective remembers telling his partner. "If this child doesn't get to a hospital,
she's not going to make it."

• • •
Her name, her mother had said, was Danielle. She was almost 7 years old. She weighed 46
pounds. She was malnourished and anemic. In the pediatric intensive care unit they tried to feed
the girl, but she couldn't chew or swallow solid food. So they put her on an IV and let her drink from
a bottle. Aides bathed her, scrubbed the sores on her face, trimmed her torn fingernails. They had
to cut her tangled hair before they could comb out the lice.

Her caseworker determined that she had never been to school, never seen a doctor. She didn't
know how to hold a doll, didn't understand peek-a-boo. "Due to the severe neglect," a doctor would
write, "the child will be disabled for the rest of her life." Hunched in an oversized crib, Danielle
curled in on herself like a potato bug, then writhed angrily, kicking and thrashing. To calm herself,
she batted at her toes and sucked her fists. "Like an infant," one doctor wrote.

She wouldn't make eye contact. She didn't react to heat or cold — or pain. The insertion of an IV
needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and
walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn't talk, didn't know how to nod yes or no. Once in
a while she grunted. She couldn't tell anyone what had happened, what was wrong, what hurt.

Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical
school, was the first psychologist to examine Danielle. She said medical tests, brain scans, and
vision, hearing and genetics checks found nothing wrong with the child. She wasn't deaf, wasn't
autistic, had no physical ailments such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy.

The doctors and social workers had no way of knowing all that had happened to Danielle. But the
scene at the house, along with Danielle's almost comatose condition, led them to believe she had
never been cared for beyond basic sustenance. Hard as it was to imagine, they doubted she had
ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful,
but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing. Armstrong called the girl's
condition "environmental autism." Danielle had been deprived of interaction for so long, the doctor
believed, that she had withdrawn into herself.

The most extraordinary thing about Danielle, Armstrong said, was her lack of engagement with
people, with anything. "There was no light in her eye, no response or recognition. . . . We saw a little
girl who didn't even respond to hugs or affection. Even a child with the most severe autism
responds to those." Danielle's was "the most outrageous case of neglect I've ever seen."
Continue...
April Is National Child Abuse Awareness Month!
PLANT CITY — The family had lived in the rundown
rental house for almost three years when someone first
saw a child's face in the window.

A little girl, pale, with dark eyes, lifted a dirty blanket
above the broken glass and peered out, one neighbor
remembered.  Everyone knew a woman lived in the
house with her boyfriend and two adult sons. But they
had never seen a child there, had never noticed anyone
playing in the overgrown yard. The girl looked young, 5 or
6, and thin. Too thin. Her cheeks seemed sunken; her
eyes were lost. The child stared into the square of
sunlight, then slipped away. Months went by. The face
never reappeared.