ABSTRACT
‘Whenever I fell,’ recalls a physically disabled girl who liked roller-skating, 1 ‘out swarmed the women in droves, clucking and fretting like a bunch of bereft mother hens. It was kind of them, and in retrospect, I appreciate their solicitude, but at the time I resented and was greatly embarrassed by their interference. For they assumed that no routine hazard … – no stick or stone – [tripped me]. It was a foregone conclusion – I fell because I was a poor helpless cripple.’ Case Study
Daisy, 6, had scars from serious burn injuries. She had spent a lot of time in hospital and was very subdued in school. Everyone who saw or met Daisy was predominantly aware of her burn scars. Her teachers struggled with her apparently unwarranted dependence on adults. ‘The problem we have is she thinks she’s so special. She expects special treatment. She won’t take the initiative – ever. She just waits for someone else to do it.’
The children in Daisy’s class were doing (fairly large) ‘cut-out-people’ from stiff coloured paper for a display. Folded up, only the front of the first paper person showed. Opened out, all the paper people showed. The children were writing and drawing on the paper people – their name on the first one, and all kinds of other things about themselves on the other cut-out people. Daisy was very stuck. She knew her name, and she’d been in a fire. She wore pressure garments to help her scars heal flat. She had another operation coming up in a few weeks’ time. The other children, meanwhile, had loads of different things for both sides of each of their paper people. With help, Daisy was able to realize that there were more things she could add – things she could do and things she enjoyed – but it took a long time (see Figure 8.2). When all the paper people were threaded up and displayed in the classroom, Daisy noticed that some of the children had written and drawn things similar to her own. The other children were able to discover new things about Daisy, including things that they had in common with her. Daisy's ‘cut-out people'. Daisy needed a clearer sense of her inner qualities to balance her noticeable appearance (see case study) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203464724/214dd423-2042-48bf-ae51-e1c15d68c95f/content/fig08_02_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
When the display came down, Daisy kept her paper Daisy in her tray. She added more paper people on the end, to write and draw about the new things she’d done and the things the teacher had noticed about her.
She talked and listened more. Sometimes she was seen holding her paper Daisy, folded flat, in a tight hug against her body. She became more willing to ‘have a go’.
An early years centre with a number of children who had disabilities including disfigurement created a ‘passport’ for each child. In photographs and words, the passport recorded and communicated a range of child-centred information – the things the child wanted to say about themselves such as ‘What I enjoy’, ‘My family and home’, information another professional might need to know, answers to the kinds of questions often asked by other children or their parents … A girl with mobility issues used her passport to say that she used a wheelchair but that she could crawl and pull herself up to the table or onto a chair. If I need your help I will ask you. 2