ABSTRACT
Terrance got off to a bad start. In utero he was exposed to crack cocaine, alcohol, and what else his mom couldn’t remember from the fog of drug abuse. If he’d known that he would never see his dad, that his world would be all-encompassing poverty, that he’d struggle so to learn – if he’d known these things he might have resisted birth. But he came early, and his low birth weight and Apgar score of 4 concerned the doctors. Paula, his mother, had never held a job for much income or for long. But this time she was trying seriously to be clean and sober, with the help of the residential program that was to be Terrance’s first home. Now a year old, with sad eyes but an occasional flash of a smile, Terrance was not meeting the milestones of walking or talking, and the nurse’s screening pointed to developmental delay. She talked to Paula about an early intervention program.
