Report: You Are Not Forgotten - Summer 2002

Practitioner: Kourosh Kashani
Happy Home and School for the Blind

Date: August 7, 2002

Holistic Assessment of Children in Montessori and Transitional Sections

General Considerations and Recommendations

Although my focus during my term of service at the school has not been on the specific details of each child’s educational progress, the underlying nature of each child’s struggle(s) as it relates to their well-being and functioning, it is directly relevant to assessing the state of health of each child and the healing possibilities.

If a child is in distress, the burden is on the adults to listen and understand what the child needs. Children, especially in this school, might be stuck in ways in which expressing this need is difficult and perhaps even quite painful. Adults are quite tall and massive compared to children. It is physically and emotionally traumatic for a child to be pushed, dragged or slapped around by someone so much more massive. The personality of the child is being shaped at every moment. So we must ask ourselves what kind of children we are raising, and what are the implications of this for the generations to come.

We should not compensate for our lack of skill by using forceful methods. A gentle hand in the right place is most often the best solution to any given problem that may arise. Again, it is up to us to simply listen and understand where and how to place our hands, our words and our attention in a loving way. Very seldom is it necessary to override the child and create more pain by using brute force. Certainly, we all lose our patience at different times, but this is no excuse for even the most subtle forms of abuse, even if it exists under the guise of an educational or therapeutic technique. We are all learning. And with a little education, we can hone our teaching / healing skills to reach a child even more profoundly than we may have thought possible.

The following recommendations can be applied to all educational and therapeutic settings for children:

Respect each child.

When holding hands and walking, do not drag them through your adult stride and pace, move at their pace in their stride. Remember, their movement, balance and coordination are going through constant change and adjustment until even many years after they stop growing (and even more so for blind children).

Do not strike a child. If you have a request, speak to their hearts directly. If they know you respect them and care about them, they will be thrilled to follow your direction.

Do not override a child with brute force. Use skillful means to understand their needs and struggles in any given moment rather than brushing their behavior aside.

Finally, give love first and foremost. Then the process of developing life skills and ways of navigating the world will be much easier as each child will be emotionally balanced and thus more motivated to be active in life.

Transition Group

The period of time during which these children have been “stuck,” to varying degrees on various levels, has resulted in the buildup of a certain amount of resistance to change, as to be expected. This can be as simple as a restriction in the rib cage that, when released, could dramatically improve breathing and circulation and consequently result in greater emotional and mental well-being. A therapeutic intervention, however, challenges what one has grown accustomed to, however dysfunctional, and as a result, it might be uncomfortable and scary to a child. The more skillful we are, however, the more a child will begin to cooperate with us and thus facilitate a smooth transition through a challenging healing process.

The healing for the children in this group will take much longer than I have had time to offer. This is why I have chosen to focus my efforts on the children in the Montessori group who, for the most part, have a capacity to heal and adjust to the changes initiated through my intervention much more quickly and amicably with less initial resistance. Nevertheless, I have included my observations on the following two boys, A. and W., that I worked with briefly to discover what I have observed time and again that takes place when a child is severely stuck for a significant length of time.

Both boys did not express an interest in treatment and actually declined when asked. Again, it is quite common to decline any sort of new experience, as the act of processing something new is quite stressful for these children. Both boys, or really their conditioned, defensive personalities, initially resisted treatment. Their true needs, however, were soon revealed as they guided my hands to the places on their bodies that needed attention. This guidance, however, was on their own terms rather than mine as their personalities have developed around a deeper need to guard against the stresses of life that they experience much more intensely compared to “normal” children. This was further evidenced by the fact that they could not tolerate as much as the more balanced children, and would let me know very quickly when they reached this limit.

With time and patience, developing trust and rapport, one could have a deep and profound impact with these children to show that there is truly an intelligent, aware spirit at work underneath the defensive personality that is trapped in a deeply distressed body. When we understand this very simply fact, then the manner in which one would relate to this kind of individual is thus altered such that we would acknowledge the following:

that the child does hear and understand what is taking place around them

that the child has developed coping mechanisms to deal with the stressful nature of being trapped in a compromised body, and thus we must

understand the importance of accepting these coping mechanisms

that these coping mechanisms tell us about the nature of where and how they are stuck

that these coping mechanisms are not a flaw (for example, a child that parrots back statements and questions spoken to them needs time and space to process the statement or question. They may already be so uncomfortable that even that one piece of information is too much for them in that moment. We must be gentle and kind while also challenging them just enough, but not too much. Do not assume that something is wrong and they are somehow faulty.

Conclusion

Many of the observations I have listed I would be able to address with regular treatment. In my limited time, however, I have done my best to help, but natural healing takes time compared to conventional medicine which often offers immediate relief of symptoms, but seldom addresses the deeper cause.

I highly recommend establishing a relationship with a holistic healing center that has the skill and resources to provide ongoing treatment for those children in greatest need. I recommend Ayushakti, an Ayurvedic health center in Mumbai that is run by Drs. Pankaj and Smita Naram. There are certainly many other great practitioners, but the question is whether they have the time and resources to provide continuous pro bono or discounted services to the children at the school. Finally, there will always be children in need. So an ongoing relationship with a healing community would be ideal. And there are many ways in which it could be a mutually beneficial relationship for all involved.