“He seems so happy with me holding him.”
I looked to the supervisor for guidance, but she was smiling patiently for me to continue.
“He should be moving around and playing with other children,” I said in an instructive tone.
The teacher looked up from Thorin and responded, “My kids really hate me. My husband and I are getting a divorce.”
The supervisor shook her head sympathetically. I was speechless. Did she expect me to say, “Oh, by all means then please hold my son on your lap all day if it will make you feel better.” I realized there was no point in continuing the conversation.
As I reached to take Thorin, I said, “Okay, you can go back and play with the other children.” I carried him to the classroom and left.
A few days later, Ward called me at work, livid. “I just got a call from the physical therapist!”
“Okay.”
“She’s doing a report on Thorin. She hasn’t had time to see if he can crawl stairs so she wanted me to tell her if he can.”
“For Pete’s sake! What did you say?”
“I told her that he can climb stairs. Then I asked if there was anything else she didn’t get to.”
We were concerned Thorin would not develop there, instead becoming more helpless. One day, I showed up a few minutes early at lunchtime. There were about eight kids and four teachers sitting around a table, eating. I saw an aide sitting behind Thorin with her arm around him from the back shoveling yogurt in his mouth. I made a conscious effort to be calm and maintain my composure.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
I thought what I said was in a sort of oh-so-curious tone. But, the look on the other kids’ faces and the fact that some had stopped eating with their spoons in mid-air told me I had sounded more like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
No response from the aide, who had pushed her chair back from him.
“He can feed himself,” I told her. My disgust was clear.
Discussion of Thorin’s preschool dominated our life. Ward and I talked about the school endlessly at night. I talked to my sister. I talked to two friends at work almost on a daily basis—both were parents. After a while, they were all saying the same thing: “You don’t like this place and you don’t trust these people.”
A few days later, I forgot to notify the school that I would be coming two hours early to pick up Thorin. As I walked down the hall to his classroom, I heard screaming coming from behind one of the doors—horror film screaming. My heart started racing. Without thinking, I opened the door. It was Thorin screaming uncontrollably as he thrashed in a chair, unable to move freely because he was restrained by a belt at his chest. His hair was wet and matted against his head. Sitting next to him, as if nothing was amiss, was a woman who was several months pregnant, reading a book.
I flew to Thorin, unbuckled the belt, and lifted him into my arms.
“What are you doing?” My voice was shaking.
“Speech therapy.”
Really? Did she really think what she was doing was a therapeutic? I wanted to smash her.
“Why did you strap him in?”
“Because he tries to get away.”
That stopped me cold. I should have called the police. Instead, I turned and left with Thorin. We were done there.
I called Ward.
“How many people walked down that hall and heard him screaming?” he asked immediately after I gave the play-by-play.
I wondered how many times she had done that to him before that day. When we reported it, nothing was done. It was chalked up to inexperience on the part of the speech therapist. What I saw was not inexperience but an act of cruelty. If I hadn’t walked in on it, I would never have known because Thorin couldn’t tell me.
It had never occurred to Ward or me that this type of treatment was possible. It was not on our list of worries as new parents. We worried about covering the electrical sockets, whether his car seat should face backward or forward, and if his food was cut in small enough pieces.
I would learn later that restraint was a common occurrence for children who have disabilities. A landmark study by United States Department of Education’s Civil Rights division found 267,000 occurrences of restraint used at school in 2012. Three-quarters of the students were children with a disability.
Until we could find another preschool, I took Thorin to work with me. Most days we were alone. I was the executive director of a film festival and the only year-round staff person. It was a tough month for both of us. I put markers, books, movies, juice, and food in his backpack. They were not adequate distractions for an active two-year-old in a workplace environment. At some point, popcorn or Goldfish crackers—occasionally both—would be thrown at me. Juice spilled on the carpet or on Thorin. And then there was whining—from both of us.
I did not realize how stealthily and quickly two-year-olds could hatch escape plans. One minute Thorin would be playing quietly on the floor, and the next, boom, he would be gone. I almost always found him lying prostrate in the hallway surrounded by toys and food. Once—just once—a woman from another office found him at the end of the hall, pounding on the 100-gallon fish tank.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked as she walked in my office with him in her arms.
“It is working,” I said in a chipper tone. “Thank you!”
Could we have found a daycare? Maybe, but we were terrified to leave him with anyone except family and friends. We had already met the Boogeyman; he was a twenty-something pregnant lady who palmed herself off as a speech therapist. Anything was possible.
I tried to turn my meetings into phone conferences whenever possible. On one occasion, I hammered out the logistics of a film presentation at an elite
