When I Whisper, Everyone Listens

The cousins and Machiavelli, the whisperer

My second daughter Michelle seemed so much easier than Anne, her sister two years older. I was bamboozled. By 18 months, Michelle had concluded that Anne's confrontational style was too exhausting and unreliable. Charm worked much better. When asking for something, Michelle would preface it with so many appreciative compliments that I was eager to do what she asked. Michelle was almost grown before I realized that she had gotten her way much more than Anne had.

My favorite Michelle story occurred when she had just turned 3. She fell in the playground and needed ten stitches. The ER was a horror as I had to fight tooth and nail to stay with her. Right after the accident we went on vacation with my parents, my brother Joe, his wife, and their three kids from Kansas City. Michelle was very close to my parents. Whenever she was angry at me, she insisted, "I need to call Grandma." She had never had to share Grandma and Grandpa with anyone but Anne, and by 15 months she had mastered getting her big sister in trouble.

Immediately after her cousins arrived, my chatterbox ceased talking. After a day of absolute silence, she deigned to whisper, but only to me and my mom. Her absolute command was terrifying. Even after she woke up from a nightmare, she remembered to whisper. When I was playing with her in the water, I could coax her to make sounds, but she refused to utter sounds that were words. I was frantic, convinced that her fall had caused brain damage or a lasting emotional trauma. Was she upset that I was pregnant with younger sister Rose?

When Grandma Mary asked why she wouldn't talk, Michelle whispered. "With my cousins here, when I talk, nobody listens. But when I whisper, everyone listens." Her ingenious scheme worked wonders. Everyone spent the entire ten days trying to trick Michelle into talking. I had just gotten a tape recorder, and the impact of Michelle's silence is documented. All recorded conversations dealt with the strange silence of a certain three year old.

I was nervous that Michelle had discovered a new way to make us her minions and was going to whsiper for weeks. But the minute Joe and his family drove away, Michelle started talking and has never stopped. Study those pictures. Would you suspect that sweet, smiling little girl in the green bathing suit was Machiavelli in disguise?

Michelle told this story on her college applications. "It is rather funny to think that in my large family of overachievers, a three-year-old's decision not to speak in one of our fondest and most memorable stories. To this day, I cannot speak a word to my Uncle Joe without receiving the loud surprised reaction, "She talks." All colleges eagerly accepted her.

Have you ever tried not talking for an hour at an immediate family gathering of 11 people?

Why Do I Feel This Way?

Some parents have asked me why I feel so passionately about preschool psychiatric diagnoses when my own daughters didn't have such serious problems. I will let you in on a secret. Bright, creative children can have a terrible time adjusting to traditional American grade schools. Bright bored children don't finish worksheets, don't pay attention, daydream, forget assignments, leave books and homework home, ignore the teacher, read ahead of the class and miss their place if called upon, miss many days of school.

My local school insisted on testing a kindergarten boy for development disability; his IQ was genius level. When my writer, pictured above, was in first grade, her teacher refused to assign her to the advanced reading group until she was more "cooperative and compliant." Rose never became compliant. In kindergarten she refused to do assignments because "writers use their own words." In high school she refused to do art projects because "artists paint what they need to, not what the teacher assigns." Now I would be told to have her tested because her "emotional maturity" lagged behind her intelligence. My two high school valedictorians were not given any awards from grade school because they missed too much school. They only truly liked school when they got to Yale.

Your bright preschooler might face as many challenges as your friend's autistic or ADHD son. More schools have special ed services than have gifted services. Again and again, I questioned whether home schooling might be easier than my daily struggle with their school. Younger parents might not anticipate the extent to which they need to be advocates for their kids in American's test-obsessed schools. Getting high test scores is more important than being a gifted musician or artist. Kids who don't adjust to the norm are stigmatized. The most creative, divergent thinkers our society desperately needs can be slapped with a psychiatric label and have their giftedness drugged out of them.