Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note

Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note:

Looking Back (Part 6)

by JOHN MERROW on 22. SEP, 2014 in 2014 BLOGS, LOOKING BACK

The news that ‘only’ 14,700,000 American children are now living in poverty [1] prompted this look back at my reporting for NPR about the emotional development of children, an important but often unrecognized aspect of life for some children growing up in poverty.  Food, healthcare, shelter and education matter, but love and affection are vital if a child is to have a decent chance of becoming a functioning adult [2].

Here, briefly, are the stories of Lisa, Roy and Mary, three young people who, for a host of reasons, were growing up without the emotional supports they needed.

Merrow: “OK, let me give you a spelling test. How do you spell ‘cereal’?
Lisa: S-E-I-A-L-A.

She told me that she had lived in ‘13 or 16’ foster homes.  Lisa was 9 years old when, at the end of a long conversation, I gave her an impromptu spelling test..

Merrow: How do you spell ‘sugar’?
Lisa: Sugar. S-H-U-G-E-R.

At the time, Lisa was living in a Texas mental institution for children.

Merrow: How do you spell ‘couch’?
Lisa: Ooo! Couch. C-  No.  K-A-O-W-C-H.
Merrow: How do you spell ‘soda’?
Lisa: S-O-A-D.

Lisa was a charmer.  At one point she asked me what I was going to do with the recording.  When I told her it was for a radio program, she exclaimed, “Oh, yuk.” She  paused and then added, “Don’t put it on AM. Put it on FM.”

I took the bait. “Why,” I asked?

You can hear the laughter in her voice. “Because we usually don’t even listen to FM. We only listen to AM [3].”

Her doctor said that Lisa had been abandoned at age two by her natural parents. They left her with some relatives, who in turn gave her to other friends, who then left her on someone’s doorstep; those people eventually brought her to the Department of Human Resources.

At the end of the conversation, Lisa asked me if I liked her. I said yes, of course.  Then she asked me if I reallyliked her…and pulled her dress up over her head, an incident I wrote about recently.

Sexual behavior like that was also part of her sad history, a ‘survival’ tactic she had apparently learned Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note: