Intelligence, Memory, and Mental Health Epithets

Our adopted daughter, Sara Jane Agard, is now two and one-half. We were told that her birth mother was bi-polar, oppositional and defiant, severely retarded, schizophrenic, borderline personality disorder, and on and on and on. Because she was so defiant, the mental health professionals gave her every mental health diagnosis (epithet) that they could think of.

Sarah has been with us for all but the first sixteen days of her life. We have been told that she will be seriously delayed and have a severely low I.Q. We have seen none of that!

Let me give an example from today. A few weeks ago I bought her a bunch of books from the annual library sale. Because, unfortunately, there are not many blacks living in our county, many of the children's books on sale were books featuring black children. I bought seventeen such books. After the first read, my favorite book was Asana and the Animals, by Grace Nichols, with wonderful illustrations by Sarah Adams. I read it to Sarah a few weeks ago, along with the other sixteen books.

Today we read it for the second time. I got to the page where on the left side was the poem Grasshopper One. I started to read it, but Sarah started saying, "Don't Cry, Caterpillar!" that was the title of the poem on the right-hand side of the page! Even more startling to me was her comment later on in the book, when we were reading about elephants at the zoo. Again Sara interrupted me to say, "I want to read about the alligator!" Sure enough, I turned the page, where the next poem was entitled, Lying Still In Muddy River!

If Sara is severely retarded, what does that make me? I surely did not remember the Don't Cry Caterpillar story about a caterpillar who worries if she will still be herself when she has wings, and I did not remember that the alligator story followed the elephant story! We will just keep on loving Sara, and keep her as far away from the mental health professionals as we possibly can!