neurological diagnosis like C.P. or autism or even PDD (‘Pervasive Developmental Disorder’). He just saw the kid as basically a normal ‘late bloomer’ toddler and so he told his mother. ”As such, he told her, I believe that he has the potential to become a normal youngster and even a normal adult, even if he goes through school a couple of years behind.” He further told his mother that he would not have put him through all that ‘E.I.’ and that he simply would have let him grow up and mature at his own pace with plenty of love at home and without coercing him into activities and participation in learning as he was now forced to attend. Dr. Martin hammered these comments by reassuring her with the recent news (kept hidden in the US) that in some Scandinavian areas -where kids in high school show more proficiency than in the US- ‘school attendance was not started till 6 or 7.’ Mom felt happy to hear that.
Along the same lines, Dr. Martin further told the mother -a matter not easily admitted and shared among parents, considered sort of demeaning, as if your kids were slow- that HE, a doctor now, was once held back in elementary school (he had grown up in Western Europe) and had become a straight A student after that. That two of his own kids, now high achievers and PhDs, had attended just 1/2 day kindergarten, NOT intensive, “early stuff’. “Holding a late bloomer back simply sets him when he is ready at his own speed, so he feels more comfortable, instead of being pushed, struggling all along and trying to catch up,” he told her.
And of course the first thing mom did when she got home was to call the school - Sandwell Elementary- and tell them that she was going to keep little Harry at home from then on; that she planned to give her son herself all the stimulation he needed -and that he could handle- until HE was ready for regular school. Believing the specialist Dr. Martin, she thought that he was just a late bloomer and that he would mature at his own good pace without forcing things onto him. Well done!
“And Dr, Martin told you to pull him out of school?” the Principal asked her.
“Yeap! He did! And I am very happy with it and I feel he is right!.”
Needles to say, that created a commotion in school. In a teachers’ conference, only two teachers who knew the mother personally and felt she was a very capable woman, agreed with her decision of pulling him out of Pre-K. But most showed displeasure and even outrage. Sandwell school took mostly pre-schoolers and was heavily invested into Special Ed, Early Intervention, early stuff, the 3-T’s, etc. Cases like that of Harry Jamison would give the school and its programs a black eye…
And of course the Principal called the local Office of Professional Conduct (OPC, The Wolves) to hurt Dr. Martin. It brought against him ANOTHER complaint to the State Health Department!. He is bad for our area, for our schools. The man has to go! [Indeed, Dr. Martin was asking for it! I say]
5-C: A mother with a set of triplets, Mrs. Moulder, from a town some some 70 miles away, came one day with the three kids to see Dr. Martin. Actually she had had quadruplets but the fourth hadn’t made it beyond birth. The three were 7&1/2 months old. Mom was concerned that they were simply not up the level of the other infants attending the same nursery school. They were not babbling, they did not lough, hardly smiled, did not roll or sit up, lying most of the time on their backs, but seemed to her otherwise good looking and sort of happy. One of the three especially was not interested in anything, her eyes wandering aimlessly. The two boys were ‘a pinch more with it’ than she was.
Mom had had difficult time conceiving. She and her husband had tried locally every available aid to conceive, word-of-mouth suggestion, professional medical advice and had even entertained just adopting. Then they heard of a far away center that specialized in IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). It would be a very expensive proposition but they went for it… And it worked!
She did conceive via IVF (for five fetuses!) with her husband’s sperm. One died intrautero. Another did not make it more than a couple of hours after the C-Section that had been performed on the 8th month; the autopsy had revealed a severe congenital heart defect incompatible with life. Just three survived. But the three, a girl and two boys, were thriving slowly, not progressing at the speed of others of similar age. All three had a heart defect -just ‘a hole in the heart,’ no big deal- but had no other obvious physical anomaly. Their local pediatrician did not have a diagnosis for the parents and simply told them to just give them time.
Dr. Martin examined all three as they laid with just their diapers naked on blankets on the floor of his office. The physical and neurological parts, like measurements of their head, an eye exam, muscle tone and reflexes, were all unremarkable. That was simple and straight forward. The most important part for him was observing them as he talked to mom and she gave their history, and also hers and her husband’s family history. They clearly had limited eye contact, especially the girl, and in spite of Dr. Martin, on his knees, trying to stimulate them with toys, playing with their hands, tickling them, etc., he could not get them to look into his own eyes or smile and giggle. He thought at their age that was very worrisome.
Dr. Martin was particularly a stinker about pulling out of her mouth -nearly with forceps- health and ‘social function’ of as many relatives as she knew going back to second cousins. She seemed clearly reticent about giving all that history, probably guessing where Dr. Martin was leading to. And yes, she had a maternal first cousin with Down’s syndrome, another who had been a bit slow in school and only did menial jobs and her husband had an aunt said to have had C.P…
Dr. Martin was frank with her and told her that all three were autistic, especially worst, the girl. Mom had heard the word but no one had ever mentioned to her that her kids were so… He suggested to her to just keep loving them and holding them and talking to them often and also to give them time. ‘If they one day ‘pop out of the shell and open up, becoming normal kids -as some do- they will do so on their own,’ not with intensive therapy and stimulation though such was available in a number of places. He even gave mom the name and addresses of a couple of such centers specialized in autism (as in the previous case) if she wanted to contact them herself. He would send her and her pediatrician his consultation, so she could bring his notes to wherever she went.
She did call the center specialized in autism at the University of Chichester, a good three hours away from her home. They wanted his consultation before she went there, not knowing that she was going to bring it along; they called Dr. Martin in person to ask him for it. They were concerned -to get paid, one presumes- ’that she had not been referred by a physician’ as mom had just made the appointment on her own.
“Don’t you think those kids badly need our special services?” they asked him.
“Well, I’ll leave the judgment of that to you; after you see them and work with them,” he answered in a brief phone conversation with the center’s intake clerk.
Dr. Martin was aware already that his negative feelings about extraordinary intervention for autistics were already known in Chichester… He was also aware of the organization ‘Autism Blabbers’ (or something like that, and that TV-aired commercials emphasize how crucial it was -for successful intervention- for autistics to be diagnosed ‘as early as possible.’ The average diagnosis then was usually made at age two. Yet Dr. Martin could detect it much earlier, as in the Moulder triplets, but did not think it was so crucial to find it that early. In his opinion, if an autistic child pops out of his isolation shell at some point, he does it on his own, regardless!
The Director of the Center for Autism of the U. of Chichester had already reported Dr. Martin to OPC, the State Health Department, The Wolves, as dangerous!
Some four years later Dr. Martin would hear from Mrs. Moulder that her triplets were still ‘slow’ (still autistic), several years behind in their speech… He’d been right!… But The Wolves -or elementary schools- would never accept that…
5-D: Dr. Trist was a known G.P. who lived and practiced in a suburban town not far from Dr. Martin. He too, as the Moulders above, (5-C) had in his family a set of autistic twins. Both had been delivered by a C-Section that otherwise went on uneventfully. Things went well for them in the first six months or so, but Dr. Trist, their father, began to be concerned after that when they were slower than his charts