Triumph Over Adversity 3-in-1 Collection

So that’s what we’d done, divvying thing up according to our own ‘skill-sets’ (to use the jargon) so that I ran the Unit, while Jim’s role was more peripatetic: he could often be found pounding the mean streets of the school corridors, chasing after some errant or absconding child or other. In the main, though, he was classroom-based, drafted in as and where needed. If a teacher was having problems with a particularly disruptive pupil, Jim was the go-to guy to form a cunning plan to contain the chaos.

This morning, however, Jim was going to contain any chaos that might break out with my little lot, ably assisted by Kelly. All I needed to do was set things up for that morning’s activities, and though I knew that there wasn’t that much need for me to organise every tiny detail, I was far too much the control freak not to do so.

And it seemed I wasn’t the only one keen to get a march on the day. As I walked in through the reception doors the first people I clapped eyes on were Henry and little Ben sitting quietly on two of the black seating cubes that were normally reserved for visitors and parents.

‘Good morning, boys,’ I said, eyeing them curiously. ‘Now, it’s far too early in the day for you both to be in trouble. So, let me see, are you waiting for me?’

They both jumped up and Henry grinned at me.

‘Yes, we were,’ he said, ‘weren’t we, Ben?’

Ben nodded. ‘Just so you know we’ll keep an eye on things for you. You know, till you get back after dinner … you will be back after dinner, Miss, won’t you?’

I was quite sure that was the most Ben had so far said to me in one go, without prompting. Which was very pleasing. I’d not personally found him that challenging so far but he was a boy whose reputation for causing trouble among his peers definitely preceded him.

I was also pleased that these two were clearly forming some sort of bond, and I made a mental note to check if they shared a route to school, since this wasn’t the first time they seemed to have arrived in school together.

‘Yes, I will,’ I told him. ‘And thank you so much for reassuring me. It always helps to know there will be a few people who’ll help things run smoothly.’

‘And we’ll keep an eye on Imogen for you, Miss,’ Henry added. ‘And I won’t get into nothing with Shona, neither. Just in case you were wondering, that’s all.’

‘Well, that’s good to know as well, Henry,’ I said, trying to suppress a laugh as I ruffled the hair of first the taller and then the shorter of the boys’ heads. ‘I can go off to my meeting without worrying now, can’t I? Thank you both.’ I glanced at the big clock on the wall. ‘But, if I’m not mistaken, the bell is going to go at any minute, so if the two of you are going to be my undercover helpers you’d better scoot off. You won’t be able to help me if Mr Dawson sends you out for being late, will you?’

They scooted off and I headed off to the staffroom for a coffee. I had 20 minutes to spare and I intended to make the most of them. The staffroom was heaving, as it always was at that time of the morning: everyone dashing around, collecting internal mail from their pigeon holes, grabbing paperwork, scribbling last-minute notes, marking last-minute books – all of them trying to cram a quart’s worth of organising into a pint-pot, before the ringing of the dreaded bell. It didn’t seem to matter how passionate any of us felt about our jobs – when your day was dictated by the tyranny of that buzzer, your response was exactly like that of one of Pavlov’s dogs; it meant ‘Showtime – you’d better be ready!’

The room cleared as if by magic moments later, leaving me with a steaming mug of instant and an upbeat frame of mind. It was the little things that brought on that happy mindset, and this was one such – the simple matter of Henry and Ben’s thoughtfulness was enough to lift my day.

Despite their well-documented penchant for disruption and violent outbursts, I had a soft spot for both of these boys. Which was probably part of my job spec – being keen to unearth the positive in a difficult child was pretty much essential – but it was still pleasing to be feeling it, rather than just doing it.

Both boys lived chaotic lives and both had huge self-esteem issues, and I was particularly pleased to see Ben, who I was only just getting to know, showing potential for having more productive relationships with his peers.

I tried to imagine what it must be like to be him. According to his notes, it was his birth that had precipitated his mother’s death. She’d been a non-attender at her antenatal clinics and had suffered from undiagnosed pre-eclampsia, which, tragically, was caught too late and resulted in her death. This left her newborn child to be taken home by his shocked and grieving father – the only child of a man who hadn’t the first clue how to raise one.

But with no other family in the area, it seemed Ben’s dad lacked either a choice in the matter or much support and, from what Gary Clark had told me, had taken to drinking too, in recent years, and when drunk would regularly point out to his frightened, bewildered son that if it hadn’t been for him his mother would still be alive.

What a burden for a child to carry. No wonder poor Ben was angry all the time.

It was Imogen who was bubbling to the surface of my mind again as I walked the short distance between the staff-room and Gary’s office. Imogen had actually started to say something to me on Friday, something my instinct told me might be important. I was therefore itching to see what the specialist had to say and what kind of strategies he might be able to suggest to help me coax her to say something more.

Mr Gregory was an experienced speech and language therapist with a special interest in selective mutism, and I was pleased to see he didn’t look too scary. It was silly, and I always berated myself for it, but without a string of letters after my name I had always felt a little intimidated when faced with suited and booted professionals. I was confident in my abilities, I worked hard, and knew I was good enough to justify my position – I just couldn’t get past the feeling that I didn’t have the credentials to prove it, I supposed. Not a chip on the shoulder – I had nothing but respect for my colleagues; just that nagging voice – that women in particular are so good at – that I was lucky to count myself as one of their number, despite Mike endlessly telling me not to be so daft.

But there was nothing to fear here, and I felt immediately at ease. He was a genial man in what I guessed was his early sixties, and straight away I realised the meeting wouldn’t be as formal as I’d thought.

‘You can put those away,’ he said, chuckling, seeing me and Gary both arming ourselves with pens and notebooks. ‘I haven’t come here to deliver a lecture; just to chat about what we already know about the girl and see if I can suggest some techniques you could try in order to get her to start talking again. Of course,’ he added, ‘whether that happens – not to mention when – will depend to a great extent on what made her choose silence in the first place.’

‘So that is a fact, then,’ I asked, ‘that the child actively chooses not to talk?’

Mr Gregory made a yes and no gesture with his hands. ‘It’s probably too simplistic to talk in those terms, but, to an extent, yes – in that it’s an anxiety disorder rather than a physical one, whether it’s conscious or not. It’s usually something that happens to a child who already has a nervous disposition, and that in itself is often inherited from a parent.’

Which parent in this case? I found myself wondering. Mum or dad? That in itself would be a useful thing to know.

‘Children with SM,’ Mr Gregory went on, ‘are characterised by their ability to speak normally in an environment in which they’re comfortable – say, at home – but unable to communicate in stressful social situations, of which school, for most children, is the most obvious example.

‘It often starts young, too – typically when a child first encounters school or nursery, and it needs careful, consistent management if it’s not to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s one of those mental health disorders, sadly, that feeds off itself, so the last thing to do is to leave it to sort itself out in the hopes that it will get better, because generally it won’t.

‘There is another type of SM, however, that can be brought on by a specific stressful life-event or sudden trauma. This is slightly different in that it tends to be more conscious a withdrawal of speech; they are choosing not to speak as a way of retreating from the reality of an unbearable situation. Again, if this is left unchecked, the prognosis tends to be poor, as it can then morph into the former type of SM, with all the negative ramifications that has.’

Mr Gregory paused for breath, then smiled. ‘Does that all make sense?’

Gary nodded, and I resisted the urge to reach again for my notebook. I was itching to write all this down. ‘Yes, it does,’ Gary said. ‘And I suppose the first thing we need to do is identify exactly where Imogen fits into this. She’s obviously not been mute since pre-school – well, as far as her records show, anyway – and from what we’ve heard from her grandparents’ – he glanced across at me – ‘she’s the antithesis of the shy, nervous type at home.’

I nodded. ‘And I’ve seen that for myself, when I visited. From what I’ve seen, Imogen isn’t an anxious child, particularly – just a challenging and deeply unhappy one.’

‘So you heard her speak, then?’ Mr Gregory asked.

‘Yes and no. I heard her shouting, but I didn’t actually see her. Her grandparents told me she always was very vocal – and extremely demanding, too – but as soon as she was aware of my presence she stopped speaking immediately.’

‘I think you’ve probably just answered Mr Clark’s question, then,’ Mr Gregory said. ‘And having looked at the notes you emailed, the picture seems reasonably clear. Imogen’s selective mutism is probably a post-traumatic coping mechanism. In which case the key thing is to find out what’s caused it. Which is the poser, of course – since, unless we find a way in, she’s not going to tell you.’

‘She did try to speak to me, actually,’ I said. ‘At least I think she did. Last Friday.’

I told them both about the few words Imogen had managed to get out, and how I’d been pondering what they might mean all weekend.

‘The mother, perhaps?’ Gary wondered. ‘It would be interesting to find out more about that whole situation, wouldn’t it? What actually happened there. How rare must it be for a mother to leave her child so completely?’

‘And so suddenly, come to that,’ I agreed.

‘It certainly sounds as if the mother leaving might be the root,’ Mr Gregory said. ‘Though this happened a couple of years back, did it not?’ We both nodded. ‘Yet the SM is fairly recent – a matter of months, isn’t it? What about the grandmother? How do you think things are there?’

‘Difficult to tell,’ I said. ‘Though I know both grandparents are at the end of their tether. As I suppose they would be, given their age and state of health. And there’s also the step-mum, of course – she was apparently also at her wits’ end; in fact, it’s the step-mum who appears to have been the main target of Imogen’s distress. That’s why the grandparents have her living with them now – because she simply couldn’t cope with Imogen’s tantrums any more.’

‘Of course, what we most need,’ Gary said, ‘is for Imogen herself to tell us what’s wrong, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Which is only going to happen if we can get her to speak while she’s in school. Which is the problem. Because as soon as she was aware she had my full attention when she did speak, it was like a physical shut-down. Wham! Shop closed till further notice, you know?’

‘Well,’ said Mr Gregory, ‘that’s mostly what I’m here for. To give you a selection of strategies to try, in order to bring that happy state of affairs about. So, to start …’

Now I did open my notebook.

An hour and a half and four mugs of coffee later Gary and I were armed with what almost felt like an information overload – it seems there were as many ways of trying to crack the code of a child’s selective mutism as there were reason for them ‘choosing silence’ in the first place. I learned something else, too – that a lot of the strategies I’d been reading about on the internet, and which I’d thought sounded logical, were, in fact, absolute no-nos. I grinned to myself as I headed back to the staffroom, thinking how I might not run that particular one past Mike. Being non-digital-age compliant almost as a career choice, my husband was always sceptical about my internet browsing and the ‘facts’ it threw up. ‘The internet isn’t God, Casey,’ he’d often be heard pontificating from on high. ‘Just because bloody googly, or whatever it is, says so, that doesn’t automatically make it right!’

But it was with that in mind that I took advantage of the hour I had to kill before the lunch bell; which I spent in a quiet corner of the staffroom, with both computer and books, to try and pull together – or at least make a start on pulling together – some sort of reference guide of strategies we could put in place for Imogen right away.

I thought she might what? That was the first question I wanted to answer. Might come home again? Might send me back to Dad’s? Might have abandoned me? Answer that, instinct told me, and we’d be on our way.

Chapter 10 (#uc374aa13-50dd-54e0-95f2-ea1005475a74)

I was buzzing by the time I got home from work that evening. I felt all the new stuff I’d learned whooshing round in my head, and on the verge of a very important breakthrough. I knew that all I had to do was to work out and apply the right strategy, and bingo. What that was going to be exactly, I hadn’t quite worked out yet, but I was determined to keep up the momentum.