Ivan the Terrible: Sheltering the Out-of-Bounds Child

A chapter from The Sun's Not Broken, A Cloud's Just in the Way: On Child-Centered Teaching

COPYTRIGHT 1983 Sydney Gurewitz Clemens. 

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The strongest child I've ever encountered was Ivan.  He had gone to a foster home in July of his fourth year when his parents abandoned him, his two older sisters and his baby brother.  By August he'd been seen by a doctor, diagnosed as hyperactive, and put on Ritalin until his foster mother decided to take him off medication.  I'm glad she took him off, because I don't want to work with drugged children.  The one time I was asked to work with a child on Ritalin, I agreed to do so only if he was freed from medication.  The loving gardener cultivates without chemicals.  When children need to find self-control, let's spare them from dependence on drugs.  (See Peter Schrag's book, The Myth of the Hyperactive Child, Pantheon, 1975.) 

In September Ivan came to our class.  Here are our log entries about him:

September 15.  Anxious that I take his picture in a hurry!  Rode bike strongly.  Heard story tape twice: later told his foster mother, "It says, 'Turn the page, the cow jump over the moon.' " Turns pages well.  Loved organ, but turned the switch on and off despite our telling him to leave the switch alone.  Went up the treehouse.  A bee came by him in the playground and he freaked out, terrified. Very excited when he eats: dropped food on the floor three times. Eats largely.

September 16.  Played a lot of organ, ate a lot again. Pulled Georgia in the wagon. Heard a tape a couple of times. Asked Katherine if he could help her put out the bikes again, and did it with good sense, returning for another bike after each one was out without any adult prompting.

September 17.  Enjoyed story, Caps for Sale—he'd heard it before, somewhere.  Can restrain himself from talking out of turn, but it's really hard for him, since what he has to say is so powerful.  Said his sisters and brother and mother hate him.

September 20.  Put bikes away on his own.  Likes responsibility.  Planted a marigold.  Up the ladder.  Worked a long time on a collective drawing: made a person who later became a monster.  Decided to let cottage cheese slop down his chin when his mouth was full.  Very messy.  This bothered Katherine who told him not to do it, and he stopped. 

September 21.  Got weary toward end of day but couldn't talk about his fatigue and its cause with me.  Tested well on verbal, visual, and number÷is classically bright.  On the phone in the playhouse, talking to Joyce, whom he calls "my girlfriend."  Told Katherine, "She doesn't like me, she loves me."  He began reading, and his first two words were "Ivan" and "teacher."  Painted÷his original picture disappears under a second layer each time he paints. 

September 22.  Wanted to remember his reading words by their sequence, but learned how to identify them by their appearance, instead. 

September 24. The others are upset by his boisterous interruptions of our meetings.  Ivan needs to be helped to be calm in the group.  We'll try having Katherine sit close so we don't need to interrupt the meeting just because he does.  Asked for his mother's name to read.  Says she misses him too.  Picks up everything fast÷body language as well as verbal.  Someday this will be a safe space for Ivan. 

September 27.  Very angry today, erupted and erupted.  Settled for permission to go out in the yard and yell and run around.  Strongest four-year-old I've ever known!  Punched pillow.  Volunteered to be rocked.  I'm exhausted. 

September 28.  Conference is set up for next week with his Department of Social Services worker, his foster mother, and my friend, Dr. Martin Shaffer, a psychologist.  I am feeling relief that we are getting to work on this child's problems, since his pain is apparent most of the time.  His bedwetting is regular and made placement in a foster home hard; all four children wet the bed every night from the eleven-year-old down to the baby. 

October 1.  Conference: hard to talk with faster mother since she was taking Ivan and Harry home, and "keeping" two other children, all of whom kept interrupting our conference.  She feels that he's too demanding and sometimes "gets to" she appears genteel, but pushed one of the little kids hard.  Another person struggling to do her best, I take it.  She said we could make a home visit. 

October 6.  Seemed to hold back when playing with our inflated swords with Rita.  Very gentle.  When playing Lotto Katherine had five boards and gave three to Ivan and two to Harry, promising Harry three next time, but Ivan said, generously, "Give it to Harry."

October 7.  I read a story about a rocking chair, and then he asked, in a little boy voice (not his usual tough, sophisticated way at all),  "Sydney, give me some lovin."  Says his foster mother doesn't hold him on her lap.  Said he likes his Daddy's lap.

October 11.  Lots of hugging and "I love you" and asking for lap, loving.  Does it in righteous fashion, asks and accepts in a way I can only admire.  Certain it will come.  Uses food for confrontation a lot grabbed the pomegranate we were all sharing and licked it, very gross for the adults to deal with.  Can't use machines for a week because he's still unwilling to leave on and off switches to the grownups.  I love him, but he does get to me. 

October 12.   Absolutely plays dominoes counts, knows colors, moves.  Asked to join Harry and Moses and played nicely. 

October 13.  Doesn't do the bear puzzle as well as we'd expect.  Is it because the baby bear is cuddled up to the mama? 

October 19.  Very negative day.  Unplugged the projector which freaked Katherine out-ran out of the yard.  Cried when I held and rocked him.   I sent up flares to our social worker.  Is barred from using the projector for a week. 

October 20.  Good day, perhaps because lots of rocking and loving early in the day, later a hug as he came to the meeting kept him in pretty good shape. 

October 22.  Phone rang early and he asked, "Should I get it?"  I said, "No, thank you."  This is Ivan letting me regulate his behavior!  Let mim have the projector back (told him his week was up—so I lied a little) and he loved seeing his slides again. 

October 25.  He found Anita bleeding and crying in the yard and carried her across the yard to Katherine! 

November 4.  Reluctant to do arts, wants to r-r-rum little cars all the time, but enjoys art when I tell him to paint or draw for a little while.  Like kids who hate to get into or out of the bathtub. 

November 15.  Visited Ivan's home.  It is visually very stimulating, many plants and many, many decorative objects around.  Seven or eight children running in and out made me unable to attend to much of anything there.  Ivan liked having me at his house, but seemed more concerned that the other kids shouldn't get next to me than with enjoying me himself. 

My friend Isobel visiting today noticed that Ivan has a deep and fine feeling for poetry and music gets out of himself and into the music and is whole.  He delighted her when he chanted, at snack, "Yummy in the tummy." 

November 22.  Got in trouble twice—once he "messed with" my label maker and got benched, emerging contrite to a fine reading lesson.  Other time he threw water at Nell, who cried and cried and cried until Ivan looked really ashamed. 

November 23.  Cursing a lot.  Called me "bitch" and used all the big ones quietly to me; my line is that I don't mind those words but there are people who mind them and Ivan had better be careful how he uses them around these people.  He knows that some of the children really don't like cursing, and that I support their insistence that he not hurt them this way. 

Well behaved and a delight at the Ella Jenkins concert—shouted heartfelt responses to the mime who opened the concert: "We won't hurt you!" etc.  Just peachy! 

December 8.  Told me about the time his mother asked him to get a knife when she was fighting, said "I stayed in the bed."  Who was she fighting?  "My Daddy."  Testing today included: riding bike indoors over the mat kids were tumbling on; piling toast on the table; climbing up a bookcase; and throwing raisins. 

Curled up in a sunny spot with a book for a while, I called him my kitty and took another picture for him to enjoy in the slide projector. 

December 9.  Jealous when our social worker went off with another kid. 

(After winter vacation we were less regular in our logging, since we felt we had a pretty good idea of who the children were.) 

February 1. (Logged by Polly, student teacher) Sydney really "sat on" Ivan today.  He really needed it.  (Yea! Sydney.) 

February 2.  Told me "My heart is breaking."  Turns out his sister kicked him in the stomach. 

February 6.  Gets a lot out of slugging the pillow.  He sometimes yells at a particular person, sometimes feels his pain visibly.  He remembers to ask for the pillow often, and is glad when we think to offer it to him. 

February 7.  Ivan's dream:  I was in a hospital with my mother and she went home and I stole nine dollars form the bank and the police ran after me and I was dead. 

February 8.  Helped the sub run the class. 

February 9. "Bad dreams come from your stupid brain."  "I wanted my dream to live!" 

February 14. Disturbed all morning after walk to park.  Told Katherine "That's where Robert, my Mama's boyfriend, died; he set the house afire." 

March 4.   Asked if Richard, a visitor, was Polly's husband.  Also whispered delicately to me, "Can I give him a hug?" 

Children in our room toilet themselves when they need to, eat when they're hungry, and paint when the spirit moves them.  Ivan couldn't manage these freedoms without abusing them-hurting children and trashing their work-so we had to construct a safe place for him, inside the space the rest of the children use as a school.  Sometimes this meant limiting his choices to activities he couldn't spoil for the others by being wild, so, for instance, we wouldn't let him build blocks with others. 

Sometimes, usually late in the week, he could be treated more or less like the others, except that we had to check more often that he was okay.  Otherwise we'd find that he had disrupted several children.  When Ivan was really flailing about, incapable of self-control, I'd make him into an extension of my left hand.  He'd go through the day with me, like a baby in a stroller, stopping when I stopped, going where I went, and being repeatedly exposed to situations where other children were praised for doing reasonable things. 

Every day Ivan tested the strength of our rules.  At the beginning of the year he tried us several hundred times a day.  He'd crash his bike into other bikes, shove the dollhouse dishes off the table where a nice "party" was going on, and yell during the softest parts of a story I'd be reading.  By the end of the year, on a good day, there'd be fewer than a dozen times when he'd test us. 

He spent enormous energy determining that we were indeed strong enough to take care of him.  I took the slide projector to be repaired each of the three times he threw it on the floor.  He found that he got a fair amount of attention from me when he broke an expensive machine, so he repeated the behavior.  Then he got stuck to my left hand for a number of days, unable to choose what he played with, the way other other children did.  He got no direct attention from me in this way.  I just tugged him to come along, and sat him down next to me wherever I sat.  This way he saw the class from my perspective-children working steadily and checking with adults before they moved on to other work or play. 

Since he'd always gotten attention at home for being "bad", he was already convinced when he reached school that survival means being bad enough to get all the attention you need.  We had to let him know that people can have attention for being good, and that they can even have it for free!  Reports from his kindergarten teacher next year showed that he'd learned this hard lesson. 

We carefully heeded what Ivan told us, responded respectfully, and talked about him only with people we knew would help him.  It became clear to him that with us he could safely express his pain. 

Ivan confided some really horrible experiences to us.  Once, when he was less than four, his mother and father were fighting and his mother told him to get her a knife.  He reported that he didn't do it.  To refuse complicity in violence is heroic at any age. 

The other children don't involve themselves directly in the problems of an Ivan.  They may have sympathy, but he disrupts the environment enough to make them very glad to see a grownup step in and firmly restore order.  Disorder is frightening.  Children can relax when a fair teacher is in charge.  Healthy children naturally keep a little distance from neurotic ones.  The healthy ones would like things to be better, but know that they haven't the power to control such a child.  When they are getting what they need from the environment, they don't begrudge him special care. 

Children need to know that they have strong people around them, and teachers have to be sensitive to the use and abuse of power.  Adults owe children at least a few years of safety.  Consequently I often feel even more put off by permissive, kindly, weak teachers than by authoritarian, strict, powerful ones.  We all seek to feel the substance and power of our comrades and mentors, but little children need it by virtue of their powerlessness. 

When children pretend to be Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or the Lone Ranger, what they're saying about themselves is, "The only way to be safe is to have a powerful ally, and this character will be mine, and protect me."  A child with a toy gun is making the same statement. 

(Paragraph omitted 2002, because I've changed my opinion about it, and don't want to rewrite here.) 

Grownups a child can count on may supply a breathing space in a hard world for benign fantasy, delight, joy, and ecstasy, by shielding children as much as possible from what is harsh, cruel, thoughtless and immoral.  The worst damaged children require this kind of fence around their pasture.  They need to know we will take care of them when they're angry-even when they're angry at us. 

Ivan could trust us to take over when his self-control gave out.  He acknowledged his feelings and expressed them, expecting us to be the grownups and keep him safe.  We were proud when we could. 

In a year when others read an average of thirty words by June, Ivan read ninety. He was brilliant, absorbing at a fierce rate all the material we gave him. We made him books on all his important subjects: who he loved, what frightened him, staying dry at night, riding the two-wheeler.  He learned to use this wonderful reading to take charge of some of his out-of-control life.  However, his real brilliance lay in being clearer about what he was feeling than most adults every become.  And he demanded solutions to his very real, though sometimes insoluble, problems.  We couldn't make his parents want Ivan.  We couldn't make his sisters be kind to him.  As a child who had been through violent and painful experiences all his four years, Ivan had ample excuse to become squashed, a vegetable.  Instead, his vitality was deeply attractive, and his contact with his inner states nothing less than inspired.  Every year, when we discuss skin color, some children tell em I'm black like them.  Ivan was one of these.  I'm pleased if they see me as black, because that's the color of the people they love.  (I have straight, dark hair, brown eyes, and very pale skin.  Only someone who was black and loved me and was projecting could think I was black.)  I tell the children I'm glad they love me.  And I tell them I'm white. It seems important to me that they hear that someone they care for happens to be white. It was hard for Ivan to hear me say this. I'm not sure he ever really accepted my story. If he didn't, I'm glad to be black for Ivan.

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For permission to copy this, e-mail Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, sydney@eceteacher.org

Posted March 24, 2002.

E-mail:  sydney@eceteacher.org, www.eceteacher.org • (C) Copyright Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, 2007