Zoe (Part Three)

Zoe (Part Three)

Part Three: Help for Zoe

I was very pleasantly surprised one morning to see Zoe's mother standing on my doorstep. She had never come over by herself before. She came to ask for help with Zoe.

In her broken English, she managed to communicate the fact that she wanted me to spend a couple of hours with Zoe, every Thursday morning. She knew that Zoe and I related well generally and she felt that I should be the one to work with him. She said that her husband was getting more and more upset with Zoe all the time.

I was a bit sceptical at first and wondered if there was really anything that I could do with Zoe that might be beneficial to him or to the family in general. She was quite insistent that I would get paid for my work with him, although I really did not expect them to pay me for spending time with him.

I knew that working with Zoe would be a challenge. I decided to talk to his father about it first and he agreed with his wife that it might be a good idea.

I don't know what Zoe understood in terms of having to come over every Thursday morning, but I do know that while he seemed a bit reluctant to stay by himself the first couple of times, it soon became apparent that he was more and more willing to come and spend time with me. We had spent a fair amount of time together when he was younger.

When Zoe was with me, he was extremely hyperactive but generally content, as he went very quickly from one project to another, for the couple of hours that I had him with me each Thursday morning.

I decided to work with him on a pre-kindergarten level as much as possible, when I could maintain his attention for any length of time, as he was now between three and four years of age.

His attention span was extremely short, anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute. He would go from one thing to another all of the time that he was with me. He just did not stop.

He was full of life and energy, so I attempted to do things with him that could use up some of his excess energy and then get him doing the kinds of things that any child his age should be able to do.

He seemed to do well with that kind of a program, as unstructured as it had to be, considering his level of activity. I also made certain that there was a rest period and a snack break included in what we were doing.

Before long, he began showing up at my door on Thursday mornings, all by himself, as his mother stood on her front door step, waiting for me to open the door for him. He was always right on time.

He learned how to ring the doorbell. His eyes just glowed the first time I answered the door and found him there all by himself. He was smiling from ear to ear.

I had a fair number of children's toys and Zoe began bringing his own favorite toys in a small back pack. Sometimes, he brought his brother's toys as well, much to his mother's dismay. I found his brother's bottle was in the back pack several times, when I was looking for a change of clothes for him. His mother always packed a change of clothing for him, just in case he needed it, which he often did.

Gradually, I began to see a much happier child emerge as if from a cocoon, in spite of repeated regression to earlier stages of childhood behaviour. A lot of his destructive behaviour gradually stopped although he still tended to throw things and drop things intentionally, as if to see how I would respond to his behaviour. He was no longer screaming unless he became extremely frustrated with something.

Basically, he remained non-verbal. I wondered at one point if he was deaf, but he did not appear to be hard of hearing at all. I began to suspect that I was taking care of an autistic child. Having a background in pediatrics, I understood the condition, although I was certainly no expert in terms of autism.