‘If I was naughty,’ Maria told me one evening, ‘Mum made me eat chilli sauce.’
I was changing the sheets on her bed, while she sat on the floor twiddling the knobs of an Etch A Sketch, and for a moment I paused and glanced towards her, then quickly turned away again and started folding the pillowcases I’d just removed. I didn’t want to make eye contact or stop what I was doing, in case this put Maria off saying anything else. It was only a few days after that awful phone call with her mum, and I wanted to tread extra carefully.
‘Your mum made you eat chilli sauce when you were naughty,’ I repeated, unfolding the pillowcase and then folding it up again.
‘Yes.’ She paused for moment. ‘Chilli sauce is really hot. It makes you cry when you eat a whole spoonful of it. Not cry like when you’re sad, though. It makes your eyes water and your mouth feels like it’s burning. And then you cry because it hurts.’
‘It must taste horrible,’ I said, sitting down on the chair beside Maria’s bed and looking at the pillow I was holding on my lap. ‘I think I would have been sad too, if it had happened to me.’
‘And sometimes . . .’ Maria shook the Etch A Sketch and erased the picture she’d been drawing. ‘Sometimes Gerry put honey in my hair and made me sleep in the cupboard where he said ants and spiders would come in the night to eat it. I don’t think they did though, because the honey was still always there in the morning, and my hair was all hard and sticky.’
‘Maria,’ I started, but she ignored me and carried on talking, which I was glad about. ‘Gerry said that if I didn’t behave myself he would make me sleep in the rabbit hutch. I told him I didn’t care because at least I would be out the house, but he told me he would come outside and scare the living nightlights out of me, and that he’d be able to see if I tried to escape.’
‘The living daylights.’
‘Yes, that’s it. “I’ll scare the living daylights out of you, Maria, do you hear?”’ She said this in a deep, gruff voice.
Then, before I could say anything, she did what she often did in those situations and changed the subject without even pausing for breath. ‘Can I have crisps for my lunch tomorrow?’ she asked.
I wished I could say, ‘Yes, Maria, you can have anything you want!’ but I had to be consistent, so I said that no, she couldn’t have crisps for lunch, but she could have some tomorrow evening, after her meal, if she was still hungry.
‘OK,’ she shrugged, even though she usually threw a little tantrum whenever we returned to this same argument.
‘He used to lock me in my room,’ Maria then said. ‘I wasn’t allowed out, even to go to the bathroom. So I used to pee my pants and he’d be really angry and shout at me like this.’ She held her hand a couple of inches away from her face and shouted into it loudly, ‘“You’re dirty! You’re a crybaby!”’
‘Then he’d get this slipper and hit me on the bottom, really hard. He said it was to teach me not to be a baby, because only babies wet their pants. But I didn’t do it because I was being a baby. It was because he locked the door.’
The more Maria told me, the more I understood why she had so much anger and resentment bubbling away inside her, and why it sometimes seemed as though the smallest, most insignificant incident could trigger a full-scale meltdown. She clearly felt safe now, and as she made disclosure after disclosure I could sense the tension escaping from her body.
‘I’m glad I can talk to you, Angela,’ she smiled. ‘It feels good to talk. You believe me, don’t you?’
A look of worry suddenly shot across her face.
‘Maria, of course I believe you.’
She sighed deeply and smiled again. ‘Good. I hope my next foster carer is as nice as you, but I’d rather stay here. Can I stay here?’
I was very heartened to hear Maria say she’d like to stay with us, but of course the plan was for her to move to a long-time foster carer, freeing Jonathan and me up to take in another teenager who we might be able to help using our specialist knowledge.
I explained to Maria that we would love to have her stay with us for longer, but that it was not our decision, as it was up to Social Services to make the arrangements. It was difficult, as I had no idea how quickly Maria would be moved. She’d had so much uncertainty in her young life, and it wasn’t over yet.
‘Gerry used to play this game,’ she told me the next day, as we were walking to school. ‘He put a big hankie over my eyes and tied it behind my head, really tight, so it hurt and I couldn’t wriggle my face to push it up and see underneath it.’
She scuffed the toe of her shoe on the path and sent a pebble skittering along it in a cloud of dust.
‘Your stepdad made you wear a blindfold,’ I repeated.
‘Yes,’ Maria said. ‘Then Frank and Casey and Gerry used to play this game where I had to walk from the back door in the kitchen to the far end of the living room. If I bumped into anything, I had to go back to the kitchen and start again. But Frank and Casey used to stand in front of me, or jump out and scare me, and they put things on the floor so that I’d fall over them. Then they’d laugh at me and say I was stupid.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a game at all,’ I told her.
‘He used to play lots of horrible games,’ she said. ‘Now that they’ve got this full care order, does that mean I can get my hair cut without having to ask Mum first?’
‘I’ll check with the social worker,’ I answered, following Maria’s lead in changing the subject. ‘But I’m sure the answer will be yes.’
Maria was now almost ten but her morning ritual still included trying to tame her tangled hair. Though she didn’t call out in the night any more, she often told me that she had bad dreams, woke up several times in the night and was scared of the dark.
‘I couldn’t stop turning and tossing,’ she said.
‘Tossing and turning? Oh, that must be why your hair is in such a terrible tangle again! Come here, let’s get the spray out and see what we can do with this haystack.’
‘I thought you said it was a bird’s nest?’
‘It used to be, but I think it’s grown!’
Maria had asked me several times if she could have her hair cut to a more manageable length and style, but to date her mother had always refused to give her permission. Now, though, it was up to the local authority to make that sort of decision, although as a courtesy they would always approach the mother first. A few days later, Maria emerged from the local hair salon with her hair cut into a neat, shoulder-length bob, and ‘tackling the bird’s nest’ became a thing of the past.
‘That’s a set of weights off my shoulder,’ she said, as she walked down the street.
‘I can imagine it is,’ I said, smiling at how she’d not quite got the phrase right once again, but also thinking what a symbolic statement it was.
It takes a long time for an abused, anxious child to learn to trust anyone again. Coming to terms with childhood trauma is a subject I’ve studied over the years, as scientists have learned more and more about the workings of the brain. Several recent studies have discovered that traumatic experiences in early childhood actually cause areas of the brain to develop in ways that it can take years to reconfigure, if it’s possible to do so at all. There still hasn’t been any conclusion to the nature–nurture debate – about whether our personalities are dictated primarily by our DNA or by our early experiences. What is known, however, is that the nature part of the equation, which involves the DNA, is set in stone and can’t be altered, but that there are parts of our genetic make-up that can change as a result of the experiences we have as babies, or even while we’re still in the womb.
When babies and young children are exposed to stress-inducing events, their bodies produce excess amounts of the stress hormone cortisol, which has a damaging effect on the development of the brain. There seems to be some indication that the ‘magic age’ in terms of brain development is three, because although high levels of cortisol do more damage before the age of three, any damage that is done can also be more easily reversed before that age. However, it is thought that as children get older it takes much more time and effort to reconfigure the ‘abnormal’ neural pathways.
Some studies have suggested that what’s ‘normal’ has been established in a baby’s brain by the age of six months. So a baby who has been subjected to fear, anxiety or any other kind of abuse will grow up to accept levels of stress other people would find very difficult to deal with. A knock-on effect of that is that it takes a very high level of stimulation to make the child react.
I find it very interesting to read about these studies, especially the ones that help to explain some of the issues we’ve faced with the children we’ve cared for over the years. I have learned that it takes a very long time for the nerves in the brain to develop new pathways. And until that happens, you can’t expect children who have lived their entire lives in threatening, abusive, frightening environments to learn within a matter of months, or even years, to behave differently.
Having that knowledge makes it much easier to understand why a child like Maria can sometimes switch from good humour to full-blown temper tantrum at the slightest provocation. Instead of processing the message with the cool, reasoning part of her brain, it goes to the so-called ‘hot’ part and she responds to the perceived threat by overreacting. That’s why children like Maria need a lot of support. Children don’t choose to behave badly. They react in certain ways to certain triggers because they’ve been neurologically primed to do so. So they have to be taught a different way, and by repeating something to them over and over again, you can help them to create new neurological pathways that they can then follow automatically. I think of it like finding a good, new, hazard-free route through a forest and using that same route for long enough to create a new path. I know from experience that it works, but it takes a long time.
The question was, now that Maria’s time with us was coming to an end, how would she fare in her next foster home? And how long would it take for her to become a more balanced, stable and happy young person?
‘Do you think she’ll ever be able to get over what she’s been through?’ I said to Jonathan when we talked about the implications and practicalities of her full care order.
‘Honestly, I don’t know. I have a horrible feeling Maria will always be haunted by her past, to a greater or lesser extent.’
‘Haunted,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Unfortunately that’s a good word to use. Gerry is spooky, isn’t he? He has scared the living daylights out of Maria.’
‘Yes, and Christine is, well, I suppose she’s a bit of a ghostly figure, isn’t she?’ Jonathan replied. ‘I mean, she’s not quite there, as a mum. She’s appeared in Maria’s life when she’s felt like it and then – poof – it’s like she’s disappeared into the ether. It has been so unsettling for Maria, not knowing if her mum is going to be there for her.’
I gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Sorry, my skin just crawled,’ I said.
‘I know that feeling,’ Jonathan replied.
In time, after many weeks, Christine did phone her daughter again, telling her she’d changed her mind about cutting her out of her life, but giving no explanation as to why.
‘That’s good,’ Maria said, looking as if she didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Instead she chose to run, as soon as the call ended, dashing out of the house and across the field. Jonathan gave chase, to make sure she was safe, but luckily Maria didn’t go far.
‘Sorry,’ she said when he caught up with her. ‘I couldn’t help it. I just did it, without thinking.’
‘It’s all right, you’re safe, Maria.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes,’ Jonathan said. ‘You are safe, Maria.’
She nodded uncertainly and they walked back to the house together.