A Child's World

In a sunny room at Smiths Hospital, Henley-on-Thames, England, children sat at small tables last week putting colored pegs into holes. Except that the children were psychotics--mostly the scarred offspring of disturbed parents--the room had all the friendly calm of any normal kindergarten. What made it doubly so was the children's custodians, placid-looking young women in their early 20s, who spoke little but seemed unusually affectionate. They sat with their arms around the children, frequently hugged and kissed them. It was no chore to the women; they were all mental defectives, who think on a level close to that of their charges (aged two to twelve) but have the maternal feelings of adult women.

When Smiths was founded three years ago as the juvenile annex of Borocourt (mental) Hospital, its regular staff was soon plagued with a familiar problem. Ten skilled (and overworked) nurses were unable to get really close to the hospital's 40 seriously disturbed children. Said Borocourt's physician-superintendent, Dr. Gerald O'Gorman: "If we're very lucky, we may get the children to form an attachment to an animal--but what is vitally needed is relationship with a human being."

Into Maggie's Arms. Last year Dr. O'Gorman got an odd idea, hesitated ("It did seem a bit cracked"), finally went ahead. To create human relationships for the children, he called on 20 of Borocourt's higher-grade mentally defective young women. He allowed each to act as a Big Sister to two Smiths children, told them to cuddle their charges (under nurses' supervision) as much as they wanted. They promptly worked wonders.

"They have the bodies of women and the minds of children," Dr. O'Gorman says delightedly, "which was just the combination needed." On four-year-old Jane, for example, the effect has been startling. Jane entered Smiths last year, utterly demoralized by her well-educated but intensely demanding parents. She alternated between incoherent screaming and stunned silence, slept exactly two hours in her first eight days, required three people to undress her. The "continuous cuddle" given Jane by a nurse and doctor were unsuccessful--then Big Sister Maggie (mental age: five) took over. Jane went to bed with Maggie, curled up in her arms and finally fell asleep. Last week Jane's shrimpish little face, once twisted with rage, beamed mischievously as she and Maggie sat on the floor, playing a private game of their own. For the first time, Jane was chattering spontaneously: "Come here, Maggie. Sit down."

Into the World. Jane's case is not at all unique. When Lucy, now ten, was a toddler, she resentfully poured what she thought was some hot water over her new baby sister. It was hot paraffin, and the baby died. Lucy's horrified parents eventually drove the "wicked" child into Smiths--and the loving arms of Big Sister Agatha, who has since restored the stunned, mute child to hesitant speech and a chance for recovery. So close have many other children become to their Big Sisters that the hospital's new problem is how to "wean" them from what Dr. O'Gorman calls "such completely undemanding affection."

Last week, thanks to their Big Sisters, Smiths' children were persuaded to bundle into buses and ride off to the nearby town of High Wycombe. There the public hall was gaily decorated, pungent with the odor of cakes and candy, loud with a piano thumping out nursery rhymes and rock 'n' roll. Father Christmas himself arrived with a bag of toys. A year ago the regular Smiths staff might not have been able to get their patients into the hall at all. This year everybody--the shiny-eyed Big Sisters included--enjoyed a wonderful holiday party.

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