Lynnie* was a cute little girl of nearly five years when she was first enrolled at the center. She seemed to be pretty smart, too, except that we couldn’t talk with her. She mumbled unintelligible sounds as if she was talking with imaginary friends and was having such a real good time at it. What more, Lynnie couldn’t keep still, nor does she have eye contact with any one.
The little girl’s parents are a young couple, both of them are nurses. Though her father is working at a private clinic somewhere in the city, he has plans to work abroad where his wife works. Lynnie has been living with her grandmother who doted on her. For grandmother, Lynnie is the prettiest and smartest girl in the world, so, she overlooked Lynnie’s difference from her classmates. Lynnie’s short attention span she attributed to the girl’s over-playfulness and Lynnie’s difficulty in speaking she blamed to her own inattentiveness and laziness to talk with the little girl. We understood all of that, and we knew that it was wiser to talk with Lynnie’s father instead of her grandmother.
Incidentally, Lynnie’s father brought her to the center one day. Our preschool teacher talked to him and asked him if they already took Lynnie to a specialist concerning her speech, which, we thought, was the most obvious. The father admitted that he already considered taking the girl to a specialist as he was afraid the girl might have ADHD, but the grandmother was loath to the idea and kept on insisting that there was nothing wrong with her granddaughter. And since it was the grandmother who pays all the bills, she has the last say in the matter.
We simply wish we just imagined the whole thing and that there was really nothing wrong with Lynnie, otherwise, we will just end up feeling sorry for the little girl and feeling sorry for ourselves for being not helpful enough.
*not real name
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