My Mom always used to think The Giving Tree was one of the saddest, albeit necessary, childhood reads. The story primarily focuses on two characters, illustrated using simple linework and a limited color palette. The plot, written by Shel Silverstein, traces the life of a boy from childhood through adulthood, focusing on the relationship he’s forged with a large tree in his backyard. The tree, with its long branches and seeming abundance to give, gives the boy everything he requests. From the tree’s trunk to her branches to her brittle twigs, the boy becomes fluent in the art of taking: remorseless and selfish possession without regard for reciprocal appreciation. While audiences tend to be divided as to the premise of the book, with some believing it teaches about unconditional love, while others claiming it demonstrates the negative outcomes of a lack of boundaries, it is undeniably sad how self-absorbed people could be. Granted, this is quite typical for young children. Their early development inherently results in egocentric views of the world and the people in it, treating most everything as disposable and interacting with people as if they’re owed the right to correctness, to food, to shelter, and to their point of view. Because of their age, it’s unlikely that self-obsessed toddlers are self-obsessed at all, but simply lack the capacity to take the perspective of another person. They don’t yet realize their tantrum-fueled strong will is one of many wills, one of many desires, and one of many cravings. Some toddlers grow into adults who have keen awareness for the feelings of others, while an increasing degree of toddlers mature into “adults” with a fierce arrogance and complete indifference to any person, topic, or conversation that doesn’t directly benefit their own wilted self-esteem.
The adult version of the main character in The Giving Tree seems to fall into the latter category. There will unfortunately always be people like this who inhabit our lives, many of whom we are forced to associate with in some capacity (i.e., professional relationships, neighbors, or forced acquaintanceship). If I’m being perfectly honest, the characterization of the young boy in the book is the reason why I get minimal joy out of working with children with autism. Now, before my hypersensitive internet stalkers deliberately knot their undies into a bunch with this statement, I don’t necessarily believe that autistic children possess calculated selfishness. They do, though, show a general disinterest in other people; this is one of the hallmark symptoms which proves autism to be such an isolating disorder. Not only did I never have any intention of working with children, as I’ve lived most of my life finding them insufferably annoying, any profession working with disabled people failed to pique even my lowest levels of interest.
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My background is in Clinical Psychology, a discipline I had decided upon following my first hospitalization with my eating disorder. Idealistically blind to how the system is only built to keep people ill, I was convinced my personal experience with battling anorexia, in tandem with a sharp clinical eye, would help swaths of starved women craving both hunger and purpose. My interests would then expand into any and all forms of compulsive behavior disorders, from substance abuse to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to treating decades-old phobias. It should come as minimal surprise, then, that I find working with nonverbal children to be unfulfilling and, frankly, painfully boring. The small shred of motivation I’d garner for this population would come only in the recognition that education systems and clinics are steep in ideology, and I saw room for possible change. Administrators seem determined, whether deliberately or subconsciously, to craft children into fearful, resentful, anxious, and highly dependent beings incapable of tolerating life’s inconveniences; Greg Lukianoff and Johnathan Haidt, in The Coddling of the American Mind, consider modern education to be a breeding ground for teaching habits of anxious and depressed people. I tend to agree. Perhaps this was my reason for finding this sort of school-based work repugnant; only few seemed to wholeheartedly believe these kids would become of anything other than the boy in The Giving Tree.
I’ve written frequently about not wanting children, ever. The reasons remain widely unknown to me, but I’m certain they are rooted in deeper explanations than just that of a mild irritation with children’s behavior. Despite my conscious awareness that I’m simply uninterested in being a mother, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my entertainment with typically developing kids in microscopic doses. Although I frequently have to pretend to find babies cute, as I legitimately look at pictures of squirmy little bags of water and feel a whole lot of vapid nothingness, my innate, feminine brain configuration appreciates their innocence and relentless desire to be of service. So naturally innocent with a nascent desire to help, these innocuous creatures are capable of teaching life’s most valuable lessons--- despite an utter misunderstanding of the meaning of life and minimal experience with it. Their wide-eyed, virginal kindness is as endearing as it is depressing; endearing in the sense that they’re completely untainted by life’s experiences and residual troubles, depressing because such chastity can never be “re-learned” as an adult.
As Bob Seger sings it best, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”
I’ve consulted with elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, public and private, therapeutic and charter. They’ve all equally succumbed to the intellectual drainage that is America’s education system, particularly in the last 2-3 years. This being said, those schools with a bent for creativity and mastering of critical life skills were those who could afford to teach in unconventional, “free range” manners, such as the Montessori method. The Montessori school I collaborated with was by far my favorite setting, which may be surprising, to some, considering the very young ages of their teeniest members. Unlike my brief run-in with the autistic preschooler, these children craved reciprocal action. Their warm and buzzing little bodies, exuding what felt like a visible halo of giggling warmth, reminded me of my own childhood, a simpler time when my brother and I were limitless in our capacity for joy. We’d only later come to embrace the sadness that life experience brings, a peculiar mourning for the life we once lived as free-thinking youngsters devoid of inevitable guilt and shame. It brings with it a grim understanding that things will never be this simple, that unbridled happiness completely detached from responsibility or resentment is only possible in spurts, in intervals. Such is life. Anyway, I digress.
Because my extraverted personality and conversational quirks have carried through most miserable aspects of my life, my ability to connect with these little people, untamed in their perceptions, was as eye-opening as it was jarring. When I began working with autistic children, I absolutely hated it. To be frank, I don’t feel much differently as of writing this piece, despite the popular narrative relating to a “higher calling” or “desire to help the kiddos”. Before moving into the heart of this piece, I have a confession to make: I hate the word “kiddo”. I have never muttered it in my life, as it gives me a sensation of my teeth itching along with a safety pin being dragged across a stinging sunburn. Once again, I’ve digressed into a meaningless dispute that has minimal importance beyond slight amusement. To reiterate, though, my background is in clinical psychology, with treatment relying almost entirely on my clients verbally recounting their experiences. A robust language ability, then, is required for my specific approach to therapy to be even remotely successful. This affinity for deep and profound conversation is, as many in the field know, mostly deficient in autistic clients. “Kiddos”, by proxy, are unequipped to both initiate and sustain conversations relating to what they’ve learned from their most difficult circumstances; this skill is even more stunted for those with autism and related disorders.
This incongruence between my interests, my education, and the clients I was forced to work with would conjure up a scalding resentment I still struggle to describe. The amount of money I’d paid, and the voluntary student loan debt I’d cried uncle to, resulted in THIS? Being instructed to teach children how to do things that are not at all my job? I couldn’t understand (and still don’t understand or accept) why Masters-educated clinicians are tasked with teaching skills not only detached from the science of human behavior, but that which are the responsibility of a child’s parents. For example, it has become common to teach children how to use the bathroom, as well as change their diapers throughout the day if need be. Seriously? In what world does this seem like it could be of any long-term benefit? Not only does it morph a therapeutic relationship into that of a parent and a child, it allows parents to successfully evade what may arguably be the most tedious of parenting tasks. In all honesty, it is unacceptable for a child over the age of four to not be successfully potty trained. But Kayla, their sensory needs are different and they feel discomfort more intensely than regular kids! Yes, I tend to agree that these pose unique barriers to a lesson most would consider fairly benign. This has become the excuse, though, and accepting this completely-avoidable trap has reinforced perpetual laziness. Ahhh yes, another rabbit hole better suited for another day.
My judgmental awe of what our field was reduced down to was further pronounced by the clients I was given in a traditional clinic setting. The vast majority of my clients would fall into the moderate to severe autism range, making for two people highly uncomfortable around each other but unable to admit to it. Or, frankly, unafforded the power to do anything about it except concede to our raging chagrin. In addition, their strange mannerisms and utter absence of self-awareness made me, dare I say, cringe. I am grossed out easily, a deep-seated belief I’ve stated out loud only to be met with clinicians rightfully cackling and sneering, “Good luck with this career choice, then!”. Well, fuck me. Boogers, spit, messy eaters, drool, urine, feces, vomit, sticky hands--- they induce a similar feeling to that of saying the word “kiddo”, but at a greater intensity. The kids’ lingering aromas, and the sickening sights witnessed in school cafeterias and bathrooms, haunted me for days; I see them in my food, in my toothbrush, in my showerhead. Everything becomes an acid-trip-gone-awry, where my brain’s associative properties malfunction and begin to connect every conscious moment into a memory of how gross children are. I vividly remember my first school position working with children with severe autism; I lost ten pounds in 2 weeks because I couldn’t eat anything after what I’d witnessed. Maybe they felt the same about me.
Perhaps the purpose in this piece is to help practitioners recognize that their lack of interest in autism or children or severe disabilities means nothing about their character. Your good faith and your values are entirely separate from your clinical passions, and it’s imperative this be accepted should you stand your ground against highly sensitive, trolling idiots. While I roll my eyes and recoil at the fact that this even needs to be stated, you can care deeply about the wellbeing of another person and still find their behaviors repugnant. A disinterest or hatred of working with particular groups also does not reflect a defective, diseased part of you that requires purification. Because, let’s turn the tables: would a behavior analyst, who has only ever worked with nonverbal preschoolers, be willing, capable, or thrilled to work with a heroin addict in detox? Likely not. We’re all entitled to our interests and our dislikes, and autistic children are not exempt from falling into the latter category. Sure, we may not “dislike” them, perse, but we can certainly dislike what the work entails.
There are plenty of good-hearted people whose primary fixes are these sorts of children, along with those who pride themselves on their ability to tolerate things most normal people would find vile. I remember Greg Hanley recounting a story of a client vomiting into a fan, causing a ricochet of chunks to lurch directly into his mouth. He was able to find humor in it and continue about his career serving such profoundly impaired people, likely reaping tremendous emotional and financial profit. Me? Fuck no. I’d prefer to make half the money landscaping than ever be in a situation like Greg’s. In my ceaseless bellyaching and recoiling of the experience, I’d ostensibly be met by other clinicians passive aggressively stating, “Well, this is what you signed up for.”
This is misleading and flat-out inaccurate. No, a degree that was once an experimental branch of psychology does not “sign one up” for playing Mom. Such thinking reminds me of conversations I’ve heard behavior analysts have with others that I don’t particularly agree with in terms of the logic employed. Some behavior analysts contest that individuals unwilling to work on toilet training with autistic children, or copy-and-pasting the same old behavior plans for the highly aggressive autistic child with zero language, “shouldn’t be clinicians at all”. I wholeheartedly disagree. This sentiment operates on a faulty premise in that it assumes all budding professionals who enter the field do so for identical reasons. It concludes that we are all motivated by the same desires, that we all hope to work with the same types of cases, and that we’ll all correspondingly reap the same sense of reward. Remember earlier on, with the example of The Giving Tree, in which I mentioned children are inherently selfish because of their emotional development? In terms of childhood and adolescent development, this thinking, that is, that any analyst uninterested in children is not an analyst at all, would be considered logic along the maturity level of a two-year-old. It is highly egocentric and fails to account for others’ wills, others’ perspectives, and others’ experiences. It’s acceptable when children behave this way; it’s terrifying when clinicians follow suit.
Yes, I do believe practitioners are compelled to “pay their dues”, which may take the form of working with populations they dislike or being tasked with addressing skillsets they’ve historically struggled with. This conveniently comes with the recognition that, if the only jobs available are those serving autistic children, the hopeful practitioner may need to buck up and learn to make it tolerable should they hope to become licensed. It’s worth mentioning, though, that trench work with autistic kids, like wiping their ass when they’re 12 and spoon-feeding them when they’re 20, doesn’t necessarily imply you’re clinically prepared to be an efficient clinician. Again, we’ve stumbled upon yet another insufficient idea, something increasingly common amongst practitioners. The arbitrary rule stating, “You’re not a real clinician unless you’ve wiped an ass” seems to assume that the more difficult and disgusting the task, the smarter a therapist becomes. Obviously, this is false. Doing things we never thought we could can be rewarding, as well as teach invaluable lessons as to our resiliency and perseverance. This also being said, using the rules of this statement, should we begin killing and eating our own livestock, without any seasoning or so much as a quick flash in a pan? You know, for learning purposes? Because more is better, and better is also sickening? It’s silly and contributes zero to one’s clinical propensity. In retrospect, my forceful submission in consulting with school after school, chock-full of severely impaired kids, built a side of my character I’ve only recently come to enjoy. This doesn’t automatically occur for everyone, though. It often doesn’t occur at all. And you know what? That’s okay. You’re not a Nazi, a eugenicist, or a child abuser. You’re a person with your own self-proclaimed interests.
To reiterate, my perception of children is that of being both inspiring and intolerable. In my work with kids, my thinking often spirals into that of wondering how me, a woman, could be so uninterested in being a mother. Hints of me have sometimes wanted to want kids, but the true, unfettered longing never came. It’s more likely my feminine twinges were gas or withdrawal symptoms from weaning off of Klonopin.
The Giving Tree concludes with the boy-turned adult taking the tree’s apples and selling them, along with removing its branches to build a home and hacking her trunk to construct a boat and literally sail away into the sunset. What an asshole. Ultimately, the tree has nothing left to give and is reduced down to a lonely stump, both physically subverted and emotionally naked.
In working with autistic children, I feel similarly to the tree. While I don’t necessarily believe that these children are manipulative and selfish in the same manner as the main character in the story, their disability often hinders any ability to develop rich, reciprocal relationships with their peers or their family. This is especially pronounced in those with severe to profound impairments. Their parents can positively inform most any idealistic practitioner who believes otherwise: their child’s autism is not a strength, a superpower, or a gift. Some readers have deduced (what I believe to be correctly) that The Giving Tree encourages parents to give until it pains them, until their physicality and spirituality aches. That the ultimate proof of unconditional love is to have nothing left to give and no remaining sense of self. This is bullshit and cruel. It may be one of the litany of reasons why parents of severely disabled kids are more anxious, more depressed, and more isolated than parents of typically developing children; 50% of mothers reported elevated levels of depressive symptoms, compared to 6%-13% of mothers of typical children. What about fathers? The data, unsurprisingly, is sparse and unclear.
Further, the poor education given to those in the field of behavior analysis leaves practitioners intellectually defenseless in the face of distraught families. We become animus-possessed by graphing and instructing parents to take data on their own children, believing our only shot at being of service is to rely solely on meaningless dots. While it’s imperative to measure our own behavior and encourage others to do the same should they choose to commit to change, we must also accept that there is no metric to account for the entirety of the human experience. Shoving an excel sheet into the hands of a crying and lonely mother? That should be reportable to the board. Rattling on about behavioral jargon to a family gripped by the wrath of their disabled, adult son they’re terrified of? Equally cruel. I don’t mean to sound as if these methods of education or therapy are intentionally dismissive, as I understand this is how many are taught to compose themselves with clients. But these are human beings, people who feel things, and are desperate for a connection that doesn’t involve talk of their child’s endless complexities and needs.
Maybe we’ve inadvertently become the boy in The Giving Tree. So reliant on comfort and correctness but also arrogant in our own conceptions of meaning or purpose. I don’t believe we’re eternally fucked, but I also am not optimistic we’re motivating any form of long-term change with our current cohort of practitioners. All of this to say, many therapeutic fields relying on insurance billing as their primary source of income are, sadly, a lost cause. This is further compounded by individuals who “motivate” others by outlining everything a behavior analytic license can do, yet proceed to berate people should they not work with autistic children. Perhaps these biased clinicians are those who are due for some self-reflection and time spent engaging in hobbies, as an emotionally driven clinician is a dangerous one.
You can be compassionate, kind, and good-hearted… and still find children annoying as all shit.
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