A mother of three children, now in her mid-thirties, complained that her youngest child, a five-year-old boy, is oppositional and aggressively defiant, and as a consequence always hyperactive, running away from getting his butt smacked. He also reverses his letters when writing and skips a few here and there while reading. This missing out of a letter or two in words makes him come up with some unique pronunciations which make others laugh but for her, they are a matter of great concern for they bruise his self-esteem.
The mother placed the blame for her child's behavior squarely upon her husband's family being alcoholics. "The child's father, his uncle, his paternal grandfather, they all drink. And it is obvious to her that they do so to hide the fear that runs in their genes.
"This fear," she continued, "as a child, they deal through hyperactivity, which is a muted form of constantly distancing themselves from the fearful world, but when they grow older and cannot be physically hyperactive, which as a child they could, they turn to the bottle. For alcohol is great stuff to block fear. As soon as they are drunk they are not afraid of anything and in fact, become a nuisance provoking others to fight them."
She added that the boy constantly tests limits with her while he unquestionably obeys his father, who hardly takes interest in him. It was felt by the mother that he is less afraid of her because he counts upon her forgiveness, and also because the fear that his father generates in him, which must be taken out somewhere, he takes it out by being a tyrant towards her. By showing dominance over her he denies he is afraid of his father or anybody else. "I am the one who bullies therefore I cannot be viewed as the one who is afraid," so goes his reasoning.
When asked why he reverses letters she said since he is so fearful of his father he reacts to it not just by bullying me to prove to himself he is terrorizing others instead of being terrorized by them but also by defiantly doing the opposite of what is expected of him. By not writing as how it should be done, he makes his stand against the world at one front to deny his fear of it at another.
And why does he skip letters, she said, say in a word composed of 6 letters he often sees only 4 because he is so eager to run away from where his performance will be judged and he will be humiliated that as soon as the challenge of reading comes, the part of the mind which wants to take off succeeds in not noticing a couple of letters while the rest of the mind wanting to read and accomplish something manages to register the rest. This tendency to have a blind eye towards some aspects of the word may be part of a general tendency to not notice the world fully but only parts of it.
This scotomotized appreciation of the world while a handicap in some functions may serve the fearful person well in developing some extraordinary niche ability in other areas. While his father cannot read or write but at an elementary level, he is very good with his hands and can repair anything, the mother proudly proclaimed. This quickness with hands in straightening out anything that is broke is a continuation of his childhood hyperactivity, she added. The reading and writing of letters and words were too slow a form for his hyperactivity to find fast enough expression so he abandoned the world of letters and literature, choosing the world of repairing leaking water pipes, cold furnaces, broken lawnmowers, etc. All these jobs make others' lives comfortable and that has something to do with his wanting to make up (penance) for his tendency to defy the world.
