57 Rajan and Parimala
I have to make a special effort to spend time with children like Mahesh and Isra, because we have a number of other children who are much more demanding of one’s time and attention. Last year it was decided to bring the children from another House to this one so as to save on duplication of resources. At a stroke the number of children increased from 14 to 22. Of the new arrivals one stood out immediately and was well known throughout the House in hours. Rajan is a mentally retarded and hyperactive boy of about 11 or 12. Unfortunately he made himself well known by his violent behaviour, pushing down the other children, upsetting the medicine tray, and turning everybody’s food plate upside down. It took us days to adjust to his presence in the House, and given even a moment when he was not being watched, something or somebody would go tumbling to the floor.
Since last year there has been some improvement with Rajan and he’s hardly ever violent with the other children any more, though he’s still given to upturning anything he can lay his hands on. He is a very difficult child but what he’s really demanding all the time is that somebody care for him, and take time to be with him. At the moment we are going through a period when he likes nothing more than to be picked up and carried around the ward, and when its not possible to respond to his needs he just flings himself on the floor and cries and cries until I go over and get him – by now nobody else will do, and he protests even more if somebody else tries to calm him.
Rajan is of course a very jealous child, but he’s not the only one, and parcelling out time between about five children who all need a full-time father for themselves is not always easy. It’s sometimes simply a matter of trying to find time for the one who is protesting the most at the moment.
A recent arrival in the House is Parimala, also mentally retarded. She is about eight years old and the eldest of three children. Her father, who works on a tea estate in the upper hills, came and practically begged for the child to be taken off his hands, and one can see why, for Baby as she is otherwise known, is much given to punching and biting the other children. It must be said that she is quite discriminating in this regard, and only attacks those who may take my attention away from her, and I’ve also noticed that she only goes for those who know they are being punched or bitten – a number of the children have so little contact with their bodies as not to know when they are being hurt. I worked out a strategy to deal with her anti-social behaviour by keeping the other children at arm’s length as it were, but she just started spitting at them from a distance. Baby is not a pleasant child at all and can be most unlovable and I was just about at wit’s end with her one day, and asked sister what I could possibly do. ‘Just give her the attention she needs,’ was the reply, and so I redoubled my efforts to spend time with her. She doesn’t like being picked up so I end up pushing her round the ward on a little blue train until my attention fails and she manages to do something outlandish at which point I put her in isolation on a bed in the middle of the ward.