status could be that of a guest, not a pupil. And as a further dividend, I could watch the work of teachers who were such subtle masters of their calling that no one could say, in this school, where teaching ended and therapy began.
For we were not the only waifs welcomed here. Elly was not even the most severely handicapped child in the school; she functioned far more ably than the overgrown, affectionate Mongoloid who moved clumsily about among the toys. I learned later that parents who wanted a place for their normal children in this fine school enrolled them at birth. Not that it was a school for misfits; normal children formed the great majority. But for children whose need was severe enough this principal would somehow find room. Whether their trouble was physical or emotional in origin, caused by deprivation or by family upheaval, they became contributing members of the school, even if like the little Mongoloid all they could contribute was their helplessness. More fortunate children, imaginatively treated, could learn much from that. Here imagination and competence bound waifs and healthy children into one thriving community, where by a miracle daily renewed fifty small people ranging in age from near babyhood (the youngest two and a half) to almost five were not only taught and fostered, but given their main meal of the day. The staff consisted of the principal and two teachers, helped by a student trainee and a pleasant woman who ran the kitchen. The school kept a seven-hour day, although Elly, as a guest, came only for an hour and a quarter twice weekly. American administrators, I suspect, would think this impossible. I wish they could, as I did, see it done.
My hours there were lessons in resourcefulness. Nothing seemed to escape these people. They observed Elly as closely as if they had nothing else to do. The analyst and I had been occupied for some time with Elly’s tub and basin obsession, which had lasted now for some months. The principal had needed no more than the bare mention that Elly liked to play with water; the first time Elly came to play, tub, cups, kettles, and waterproof apron were set out for her. No better introduction could have been chosen. Elly was delighted; she made loud, cheerful birdlike noises, she sang. Soon, however, a little boy came up. He wanted to play too. Elly, of course, had never in her life played except by terms she herself had set, and never with a child her own age. Rarely, indeed, had she appeared even to see another small child, although she now often focused on her siblings and on adults. She saw this child well enough, however. She warned him off with edged, anxious noises. Other children gathered. She did not mind them; they were not using the water. The little boy took the kettle and poured. Elly squealed, shrieked, jumped up and down, made the rhythmic intonation that I knew mimicked our ‘that’s enough!’ Calmly the principal kept on with the game. While another teacher suggested new activities for the watching children, Miss J. found a new washing activity that Elly and the little boy could share. Elly calmed down a bit and the little boy drifted away. Everything was fine then, naturally, but when another child came and she began to shriek, Miss J. gently explained that Elly had not learned to share yet, and let her have the tub alone. The rest of the session was dominated by water. Elly tired of the tub and, leaving the playroom, found a faucet she remembered from her first interview at the school, with a large bucket beneath it. It was no toy — children did not ordinarily play in this room, which combined the functions of clean-up room and toilet,equipped with large washtubs, four tiny toilets separated from the room by half-open curtains, and four tiny basins. Here Elly was allowed to play apart from the other children, who came and went on their own errands. Elly filled the bucket and emptied the heavy, awkward burden (weak Elly!) into one of the little toilets. She filled it too full and spilled some on the floor and on her tights. She wept furiously — a sound quite different from her former anxious shrieks — but when the water was mopped up she returned to the bucket. The next time, and all subsequent ones, the water level was exquisitely adjusted to avoid further spills. Except for an excursion into the playroom to get a doll to perch on the bucket and another to watch the assistant run water into the washtub she played in hermetic isolation until her time was up. She left with reluctance; her last act was to return to the bucket and empty it in the toilet. Miss J. said, ‘Bye-bye, Elly.’ No response. She leans down, puts her face close in front of Elly’s. Elly doesn’t see her. She kisses her. Elly’s face is expressionless. We go.
An unpromising beginning, but two days later we are back. Elly is reluctant to enter the school gate. I carry her to it, set her down, and wait. She goes in under her own power. This time the watchful overseers have provided two basins, and dolls to go with them; Elly is able to play uneventfully with her basin beside another child. But difficulties arise that Miss J. could not have anticipated; she does not know that Elly’s doll must sit in its bath and must have jointed legs in consequence. By chance, the other child’s doll is jointed, but Elly of course cannot be allowed to grab it. I look for another but can’t find one. Elly shrieks. Calmly, the tubs and water are taken away, while Elly is introduced to less sensitive playthings.
Next time Elly was able to transfer her water fixation to the small hand-basins. This was a less isolated activity; she watched the children wash their hands in fascination, especially since the pipes led into an open drain into which water whished visibly every time a child removed a plug. As one child finished washing, Elly, who had been watching from a distance, went up to her and touched her arm. I interpreted: Elly was asking her togo through the process again. The little girl was reluctant, but did so when I explained that Elly might feel braver if she could see her do it. The second child that Elly asked refused. I offered to fill the basin myself, but Elly did not want that. She returned to touch the child, at which point a third little girl, who had been watching, did it unasked. And then Elly did in fact feel brave enough to put in the plug and turn on the water herself, retreating eight feet away to watch the water gush into the drain when the plug was removed.
The staff did not take part in this compulsive activity, but they were aware of it. Elly began each session at the basins. At first they let her play there go on as long as she liked, but after a few sessions they decided that she was ready to have it curtailed in favour of freer activity. The school was simply but well equipped with toys — books, puzzles, play-dough (made by the busy staff), wagons, slides, paints. Half-heartedly, Elly began to explore these, encouraged by the teachers. There was a high rocking-horse, splendidly painted and accoutred by a grateful father; there Elly, and other children in need of a temporary retreat, could retire and in rhythmic motion survey the life of the school without taking part in it. After a time a teacher would come over, to reinvolve the child who had been alone too long, to facilitate taking turns, to sing the pretty rocking-horse song that became Elly’s leitmotif for school. When her turn was over, Elly would come down and be led into play. She was no longer interested in puzzles, though she did them without difficulty. She gravitated straight to the doll-house bathtub, but with skill it was possible to divert her to a toy telephone or even a wagon. She tried out the paints, filling a sheet of paper with neat parallels. We had paints at home, but for months, whatever my strategies, she had only mixed and poured colours from vessel to vessel. Here, seeing other children use the easels, she made a picture almost daily — abstract figures in pure colours, never puddled or mixed. Once she made a little girl; Miss J. gave it to her to take home, a departure from the rule, since to save paper all sheets were normally used on both sides.
She began to respond to the teachers as people; after two weeks had passed, in her fourth session, with a brilliant smile she showed one of them a toy horse. Although she paid less attention to the children, by the sixth session she was actually sharing water in the tub. By the eighth she no longer required the full attention of a teacher. After four weeks Miss J. asked me to retire into the office; I could watch through the window, but Elly was able to function on her own.
Elly liked school. She might not herself be able to vary the monotony of her activities, but she welcomed variation when it came from outside. The analyst had told me to watch for signs of tension at home and to be ready with extra indulgence. None however, appeared. Yet I could see the ambivalence in Elly’s attitude towards this demanding new experience. At first she had tensed with pleased excitement as we approached the building, but on the sixth day — the third week — as we passed in the car a turnoff which though ten minutes away she recognized as leading to the school, she sang a bar of the rocking-horse song and began to cry bitterly. She kept on crying until we arrived. I parked the car across the street as usual and wondered what to do. She had seemed to like school — and besides, tolerant as the teachers were, I hesitated to introduce a crying child into the peaceful building. It would be better if she could go of her own free will. So we sat still in the car. I made no move to open the door, but waited. Crying, she put her own hand on the door handle. I opened it. Crying, she moved forward to be lifted down from the high Microbus. I put her on the pavement. Crying, she made the move to cross the street, to open the gate, to run up the path, to enter the school. She stopped crying as soon as she was inside and she did not cry again. The next time she merely whimpered. Then the approaches to school were no longer marked by tension. She was learning to take it for granted.
Elly was able to go to that school for five months. Then we had to leave. We would have had to leave anyway, for in a month she would have been five and too old for the school. It’s idle to speculate about what progress she could have made there. Miss J. had shown me a boy Elly’s age, playing, talking,kissing the teacher, apparently normal except for an odd mincing walk. Two years before, she told me, he had been admitted, silent, withdrawn, diagnosed as deaf-mute. The staff noticed first that he winced when objects were dropped; gradually — I had seen a little of how — they had drawn him into activity and speech. Miss J. said that Elly was very like what
