Little Lost Souls

Louis attended special education classes because he had been deemed academically "slow". After a few months of living with us we started to play board games that Louis absolutely loved, especially Monopoly. Louis always wanted to be the banker, and so after a few times of playing we let him. He was wonderful at counting back money and adding the dots on the dice. He knew the rules and nobody could fool him if they tried. So why was it that a third grader was doing first grade math? Because no one in his family had any expectations of him. He didn't have to put forth any effort. And if somebody knew just how smart he was, they might have made him work at his level. There was a atendency toward laziness with this child.

Every Saturday when it was time to clean his room, Louis could not figure out how to take the dirty sheets off of his bed even though he had been doing it every week for about a month prior. He "didn't know" how to pick toys up and put them away. Every Saturday was the same. If I gave him a dust cloth he just touched the surface in one spot and called it done. If he was asked to strip his bed, he stood in amazement and asked what I meant. If he was asked to pick up toys, he picked them up and held them. He just stood there looking at me, and then said, "now what?" I had to be sure to choose the right words. "Pick your toys up and put them where they belong." Every Saturday until I became a little wiser, I took the dust rag and showed Louis what I meant. I pulled back the covers on his bed and asked him to help put on the clean sheets. Once I realized that he had figured out how to not do his chores and have me do them, he was responsible from start to end without me in the room and received rewards for doing the job on his own.