Zoe

The very first time I remember seeing Zoe was when he was just a toddler. We had just moved into a new subdivision in a small town in southern Ontario, where there were many young families. I had not really had much of a chance to meet any of the neighbours in the area yet.

One of the first projects that we had undertaken, was to have a cedar fence built around the back yard, which was newly sodded, but basically not yet landscaped.

One early spring morning, as I was kneeling on the ground in the back yard, planting some small trees and shrubs, in a sunny, back corner of the house behind the garage, I suddenly noticed a very small, Oriental child, with large, dark brown eyes and straight, jet-black hair, peering at me from between the new cedar fence boards. He was about ten feet away from where I was busy planting. As I stood up to take a closer look at him, he waited there, stared at me for a moment, then he burst into laughter and ran through the back doorway of the house next door.

Until that point in time, I had not been aware that anyone had even moved into that house, so to see a child standing there, took me totally by surprise. I could not help but laugh too. Children's laughter is quite contagious. I think that I fell in love with him at that moment.

A few moments later, Zoe's father, a middle-aged white male with medium coloured, brown hair and a distinct receding hairline, peered over the top of the fence and greeted me in a friendly manner. As he took off his glasses, he introduced himself as my new neighbour. He told me that he and his family had just moved in and that he had heard his son laughing and wondered why he was laughing.

The father certainly did not look like Zoe. Nor did he have Zoe's gift of laughter, although he was pleasant enough to talk to. In fact, after I got to know him, I found out that he loved to talk and realized that he would talk on and on, about anything and everything, every time he had a chance to chat.

It was quite a while before I actually got to meet Zoe's mother, a young Oriental woman who could not speak more than a few words of English. She was quite a pretty woman and very gracious in her mannerisms. Our actual conversations were very limited for a long time because of the language barrier. Generally her husband would speak on her behalf or interpret for her.

Over a period of time, we all became quite good friends and they both seemed to enjoy the fact that I took an interest in Zoe. He was just a wonderful little fellow who was curious about everything. It was as if his eyes would sparkle in the light. When he understood something, he just seemed to beam with a joy that radiated from within.

As time went on, I made a point of talking with him and explaining things to him, as best I could. It was not long before he was 'allowed' to come and 'help' me when I was working in the back yard. And help me, he did. Everything that I would do, he would try to do too, in his own way. If I planted a flower he would pull it out, take a close took at it and re-plant it in his own way. He would try to plant sticks and rocks, or even some of his toys too.

He seemed to be such a happy little boy that it was a pleasure to have him around, regardless of what I was doing at the time. We spent a lot of time together and many times just played and rolicked in laughter together.

Over a period of time, I noticed a gradual change in Zoe. He was still healthy and active, but he was not the same bubbly, little boy who always had everyone laughing at his antics. In fact, he was becoming extremely frustrated and could not seem to express himself in an appropriate fashion. Instead of laughter, from his home or back yard, there was the continual screaming of an angry, unhappy child that echoed all over the neighbourhood.

As the months passed, Zoe became very sullen and quiet but at other times, extremely hyperactive and destructive. His parents did not know what to do with him. It appeared that a part of the problem was related to the fact that they were continually arguing and there was a new sibling on the way.

Shortly after, a younger brother was born and matters became even worse. Zoe became resentful and jealous, hitting and biting his younger brother and repeatedly regressing to earlier childhood patterns of behaviour. He continually wet himself and reverted to baby talk, if he tried to talk at all. Most of the time he just screamed when he wanted something. His food and his dishes would go flying all over the room when his parents tried to get him to eat. He would only drink from his brother's baby bottle. For the parents, what was happening was becoming a nightmare.

I continued to spend time with Zoe whenever I was able to do so, partly at the father's request and also to give his mother a chance to spend time with the new baby. He was a beautiful Oriental baby with such a gentle, quiet nature that he immediately became the center of attention for everyone when he was awake.

Over the next year, Zoe seemed to be getting worse. His father began yelling at him, every time he did something wrong and that only seemed to make things worse. He was getting attention but in a very negative direction. At one point the father unhappily confessed that he hated to come home from work, because there was just no way to control what was happening with Zoe's behaviour. The entire house was in turmoil and the father admitted that he had started drinking in excess.

Shortly after that the mother took the children and went to the Orient for a brief holiday. When she came back nothing had changed. Zoe was getting more destructive, hyperactive and aggressive, and less communicative with everyone verbally. He seemed to be one very uhappy little boy.

I was very pleasantly surprised one morning to see Zoe's mother standing on my doorstep. She had never come over by herself before. She came to ask for help with Zoe. In her broken English, she managed to communicate the fact that she wanted me to spend a couple of hours with Zoe, every Thursday morning. She knew that Zoe and I related well generally and she felt that I should be the one to work with him. She said that her husband was getting more and more upset with Zoe all the time.

I was a bit sceptical at first and wondered if there was really anything that I could do with Zoe that might be beneficial to him or to the family in general. She was quite insistent that I would get paid for my work with him, although I really did not expect them to pay me for spending time with him. I knew that working with Zoe would be a challenge. I decided to talk to his father about it first and he agreed with his wife that it might be a good idea.

I don't know what Zoe understood in terms of having to come over every Thursday morning, but I do know that while he seemed a bit reluctant to stay by himself the first couple of times, it soon became apparent that he was more and more willing to come and spend time with me. We had spent a fair amount of time together when he was younger.

When Zoe was with me, he was extremely hyperactive but generally content, as he went very quickly from one project to another, for the couple of hours that I had him with me each Thursday morning.

I decided to work with him on a pre-kindergarten level as much as possible, when I could maintain his attention for any length of time, as he was now between three and four years of age. His attention span was extremely short, anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute. He would go from one thing to another all of the time that he was with me. He just did not stop.

He was full of life and energy, so I attempted to do things with him that could use up some of his excess energy and then get him doing the kinds of things that any child his age should be able to do. He seemed to do well with that kind of a program, as unstructured as it had to be, considering his level of activity. I also made certain that there was a rest period and a snack break included in what we were doing.

Before long, he began showing up at my door on Thursday mornings, all by himself, as his mother stood on her front door step, waiting for me to open the door for him. He was always right on time. He learned how to ring the doorbell. His eyes just glowed the first time I answered the door and found him there all by himself. He was smiling from ear to ear.

I had a fair number of children's toys and Zoe began bringing his own favorite toys in a small back pack. Sometimes, he brought his brother's toys as well, much to his mother's dismay. I found his brother's bottle was in the back pack several times, when I was looking for a change of clothes for him. His mother always packed a change of clothing for him, just in case he needed it, which he often did.

Gradually, I began to see a much happier child emerge as if from a cocoon, in spite of repeated regression to earlier stages of childhood behaviour. A lot of his destructive behaviour gradually stopped although he still tended to throw things and drop things intentionally, as if to see how I would respond to his behaviour. He was no longer screaming unless he became extremely frustrated with something.

Basically, he remained non-verbal. I wondered at one point if he was deaf, but he did not appear to be hard of hearing at all. I began to suspect that I was taking care of an autistic child. Having a background in pediatrics, I understood the condition, although I was certainly no expert in terms of autism.

Part Four

Over a period of the first couple of months, I was getting increasingly concerned about him, because I was not seeing any real degree of progress either in his level of communication or in terms of any lengthening of his attention span. But his father told me that he was becoming less destructive at home and screaming a lot less, so there was some definite progress in that direction. I decided to continue working with him.

I was actually enjoying my time with him, as his level of curiosity was so high that nothing escaped his attention. So as quickly as he left one project, I had another one for him to work on. Some were relatively simple and some were quite complex. I maintained a high level of verbal communication with him. There was almost no verbal response from him, but I could see that he enjoyed and responded positively to the songs and the nursery rhymes, as well as to the rythm of music. He loved to draw and paint or simply have a story read to him, although he seldom sat long enough for me to read a whole children's book. He was just a very busy little boy.

When he would become extremely active I would take him outside and let him run, after a ball or whatever. Sometimes we would just go exploring in the back yard and find all kinds of treasures or just go for a walk.

When we first started playing with family type toys, he would physically bash the other family members, particularly the smallest one. Gradually, that ceased as he began to realize that it was not acceptable behaviour. While he was not punished as such in a verbal or a physical sense, it was made apparent to him that there were things that he should not do. He was rewarded for his positive behaviours and not rewarded in any sense of the word for negative behaviours. Negative behaviour patterns got no attention at all and he soon realized that what he had been doing at home, was not going to work with me.

Part Five

A breakthrough came one Thursday morning as I worked with Zoe. I had been reading some nursery rhymes with him and he seemed to be enjoying them immensely. As he finished 'reading' the book, I went over to 'his' little table and put a blank piece of paper and a set of water color paints on a place mat. The placemat had a photograph of a northern Ontario waterfall.

Zoe looked so cute gowned in an old shirt that was pinned at the back. He was wearing a baseball hat backwards and looked the part of an artist. I really was not paying a lot of attention to him or what he was doing. I was busy preparing his next project, as I knew from my nursing experience in pediatrics that if you keep children busy, then they generally don't keep you busy, with a few exceptions of course.

Suddenly I heard Zoe say "Anna-wanna-condo-bondo". I immediately turned and looked at him and said "What did you say?" He burst out laughing when he saw the amazed expression on my face. "Anna-wanna-condo-bondo," he said as a definite expression of something while he continued to paint. I started laughing too, as his laughter was so contagious. I repeated it back to him. "Anna-wanna-condo-bondo." I had no idea of what he was talking about or trying to say.

Zoe continued to paint but with the most wonderful expression of sheer delight on his face. I wrote down the words that he had spoken, so that I would not forget what he said and decided that I would ask his mother later what that meant in her Oriental language.

Suddenly, I was stunned as I realized what he was doing. The place mat in front of him had a picture of a river, a tree, a bridge and a waterfall. He had copied it exactly, but doing it from one side to the other instead of doing it from top to bottom or bottom to top, the way children normally paint. It was a perfect replica. The colours were almost exact shades of the colours in the picture on the place mat.

I decided that this was one picture that I would keep and with his help, put it up on the refrigerator door with magnets. Generally, he took his work home with him and showed it to his mom and dad. As I hung it on the refrigerator door, he just stood there with his hands on his hips, gazing at it, and then looking at the place mat. He was obviously quite satisfied with it, and quite pleased that I had placed it on the door of the refrigerator.

Zoe moved on to his next project and a little while later, his mother came over to pick him up. He was still wearing his painting clothes and his baseball cap. She smiled and said that maybe what he had said was the name of some city, in the place where her parents, lived in the Orient. She had no idea what the word or the expression meant.

By the next time Zoe came over, I had made four little terry towel dolls for him. We sat on the couch together and we made up a story about Anna, Wanna, Condo and Bondo. Each of the dolls had its own name. Zoe was thrilled and left at the end of our morning with the four dolls. I never saw them again.

Shortly after that, the mother informed me that Zoe would be starting kindergarten and that she and her husband felt that Zoe was returning to normal in terms of expected behaviour. He had stopped screaming and was no longer destructive. He had begun to talk in sentences, not in baby talk. He was eating and drinking in a way that a child his age should. There were very few regressions according to his father.

It had taken ten months for this to happen. I could see a noticeable change in him and I knew that my time with him had not been wasted. I was immensely relieved and my heart warmed, when I saw him playing football in the back yard with his father.

Then another strange turn of events took place. Unexpectedly, Zoe's mother she asked me if I would spend time with the younger brother, on Thursdays every week. I cautioned her that it might upset Zoe, but I agreed to look after the baby one morning a week, so that she could have some time to herself. She wanted to take the time to learn to read and write English.

I wondered how Zoe would react to that. Interestingly, he was quite pleased and seemed to be as proud as punch about going to school. The little brother was a joy to spend time with, as he was so content and peaceful. Looking after him was a totally different experience.

According to Zoe's parents, he continued talking and behaving normally. He did very well in school which did not surprise me in the least. It appeared that somehow, something had 'clicked' and he just returned to being a bright and happy, playful child.

After that, I would still see Zoe off and on, but not on a regularly scheduled basis. He would stop in and show me things that he had made at school, or a treasure that he had found or whatever. Sometimes I would sit on the doorstep and chat with him for a while, when he got off the school bus. He would tell me about his day. The odd time, I would babysit him and his brother at the same time, or take them both to the park. It appeared that the family had resumed a normal family life.

Needless to say, the parents were very grateful and I received a beautiful Oriental gift set from them as a 'thank you', which I will always treasure.

I still have no idea what "Anna-wanna-condo-bondo" meant to Zoe. I will never forget that expression. I wonder if he will remember it when he grows up. Maybe then he can explain it to me.

Years later, looking back, I wonder if I had actually found a budding 'child poet' who had spoken to me in a child's 'nursery rhyme', as the lines actually do rhyme.

Anna,

Wanna;

Condo,

Bondo.

I may never know and I realize that I don't really need to know either. If it was a poem, it was 'Zoe's Poem', truly his poem, not mine. The joy and the significance of it was in terms of his life.

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