We continue with a series of stories about Mohonk. The stories that have come out of working with and helping families and children in our local communities and across the world in our 42-year history would fill volumes. Some of the personal stories will pierce your heart and touch you because of your own experiences. Some will make you cry. Others will amaze you-astound you- and humor abounds in many stories as children, for example, mostly adolescents, struggle with such challenges as opening a consignment store in the heart of downtown Westport and dealing with permits, broken toasters, and diamond rings to say nothing of the variety of customers who crossed the threshold of a sign that said: “NOW OPEN!” where Starbucks is now in downtown Westport.

Jimmy and the overlord’s Rolls Royce

Jimmy was a very large African-American adolescent who had been living with us for months. Jimmy had been homeless and need a place that he wouldn’t get thrown out of. He never knew who his father was and his mother had disappeared. He played basketball and football. No surprise. He also looked intimidating but had an embracing way about himself and an innocence that made him almost seem at odds with his physical presence. And now that our basketball hoop was smashed by the garbage truck. Jimmy was looking for a solution. Our new neighbor came into his view hidden about one hundred yards through a forest of trees.

That new neighbor had recently moved in, and he was very rich to say the least. He purchased a six-acre parcel of land that adjoined Mohonk. There he built a mansion, complete with four twenty-foot tall lonic pillars at the front entrance. He lived there only six weeks out of the year so he could visit his grandchildren in Westport. Jimmy decided to casually walk over and knock on his door. He asked the 72-year old gentlemen with thinning hair if he couldn’t mind moving his bright yellow convertible Rolls Royce so he could play basketball using the hoop in his driveway. Jimmy was nonchalant in asking for this favor; he simply wanted to play basketball and our hoop had been damaged. The mature reserved overlord of his castle was, of course, startled to see a very large African-American adolescent standing in his front doorway with a basketball under his right arm, wearing a tattered T-shirt that read New York Knicks. But he was struck even more by the innocence of Jimmy’s voice and the expression on his face. The man invited Jimmy in to actually have a tea and join him in a conversation/ not a Coke, tea. While Jimmy was still there the overlord decided to call us to ask about him. My mouth fell open and I apologized like a kid who was caught stealing candy from a baby. He interrupted to say Jimmy was such a nice gentleman and he wanted to buy us a new basketball hoop. I told him the dump truck company was going to pay for that. He then asked if Jimmy would be going to college. I said that was his intention, and he offered to pay for the cost-all four years. The image of this rich older white-haired gentleman having tea with Jimmy as if it were nothing very unusual brought laughter throughout the house. But Jimmy could play basketball. The boys at Mohonk also learned an important lesson. Don’t judge anyone buy just what you see. And don’t let them judge you by the way you think you look or act. Jimmy stayed with us for two years. Today he is a film-maker and travels to cities to speak to youth about “Doing the Right Thing.” He also made T-shirts for his two children. It read No Such Thing As A Bad Kid. That is our mission statement.

Love and Abuse

This is a story about the meaning of love. It is about Peter and how one of our brain-based methods enabled him to look at his tragic life from different sides, the good and bad, the abuse and love, hell and heaven. It is a story about his drug-addicted mother who refused to have an abortion after becoming pregnant with him by a man she didn’t even remember the name of. It is also a story about Peter’s removal from his home and placement in numerous foster homes and facilities before coming to Mohonk and learning something he never imagined possible. His mother loved him like life itself. He never knew that.
Sam came in quickly. He looked a little concerned. You could see that little tweak on his forehead. “Peter’s in there just standing at the clock. He doesn’t look so good. He’s not even talking! That definitely means something must be wrong.”
That was unusual. I walked into the rec room, and Peter was just as Sam had said. He was staring at the clock and not moving. His eyes looked like he was staring into space, but he was fixated on the clock. He did not look over at me as I approached him
“Are you okay Peter?” He just turned his head ever so lightly and said flatly, “I guess.”
That also was unusual. Peter was known for talking, smiling and coming up with ideas and solutions to any problem that presented itself at Mohonk, whether it regarded a crack in a floor tile or the pain in another resident’s heart. His eyes often sparkled. They were not now.
Peter was also very pleasant looking intelligent kid with swaths of blond hair that often streamed haphazardly across his face. He did well in school, and had no criminal history or use of drugs. That would not have been expected considering his past.

What may have been most interesting about Peter was that he was not impressed with himself. Everyone else was impressed with him, but he was not. He was as far removed from
pretension as one could imagine. Sometimes he helped other kids with their homework. He even helped Mr. Price figure out our group home’s budget
“Peter”? What’s wrong? What’s up? I’ve never seen you like this before.” No comment came, but he blinked.
“I know,” I said sarcastically, “You’re thinking about the passage of time and how to stop it.” I thought he might laugh or smile at least. I had that kind of relationship with him.
He then started speaking softly and slowly. “No, I’m thinking about my mother.” He added nothing else and continued staring at the clock.
I nodded my head even though he was not looking at me and asked him if he would like to talk about it.
Peter’s mother had died nine years ago. Peter was 17 now. Since that time he had been in six foster homes, three other group homes, and he was now here.
Mohonk was a nice place, probably the most beautiful in New England, but it was a group home; up to four beds to a bedroom, sometimes too noisy, sometimes too unpredictable. Many kids came through here. Many stayed just a few months, some a few days or weeks and then returned to their homes. Peter had been here about eight months. There was no place he could go.
Still, he had kept a positive demeanor and a hopeful outlook for most of the time that he had been here. He was not on any psychotropic medications either. He did not need any.
“You always seem happy Peter. You don’t look so happy now. Tell me why?”
“I was thinking about my mother,” he repeated. Then he added, “I miss her.”
That was a startling revelation. He had never said anything like that before. According to Peter’s records, his mother neglected and abused him. She was a drug addict. She was drunk. She was often not home in their small, plain, unkempt, one bedroom apartment. Peter spend many nights alone.
“You miss hat?” I asked sincerely.
“I used to just think about where we lived.” He now said. “I used to just think about her being high or drunk and not there for me at night. I used to think about the way she looked. But now,” he paused, “I think that she just loved me. She loved me.” He said it like he never realized that before. “What everyone was talking about in the house meeting made me think.” Peter’s head turned down to the floor. I could see a tear glimmer in his eyes.
Several days ago at a house meeting we had begun talking about how we might want to apply what we had come to call our Pros and Cons Brain Stretcher. The kids came to call it the “Yups” and “Nopes.” That method meant we looked at problems, practical or personal from two different sides, pro or con, good or bad, helpful or hurtful, no matter what the subject.
“How about our feelings,” I said at our meeting. “How about things we hated or regretted? How about things from our past? Do you think that there may be different ways of looking at them?” They were ready for this, but Peter had said little about his mother. He was embarrassed, but when he did, it was not positive at all. He had difficulty thinking of it from any sort of positive perspective. That seemed totally understandable, but over the next few days he began thinking of his past differently, from that “other” perspective
He was telling me about his new found revelation now.
I put my arm around his shoulder. I didn’t need to say anything. Reasons didn’t matter. Whatever his mother’s background or behavior was, that didn’t matter. The neuroscience was interesting. But I was not thinking about that right now. It seemed too cold to even think of such things.
I wondered how heavy a burden Peter must have been carrying on his shoulders; excuse me, in his memory, for all these years. Was Peter’s exuberance and sparkle just a defense mechanism to hide his pain? That works. Could be. His psychological profile indicated that Peter had “suppressed and intellectualized” his past. Those are two common defense mechanism that many psychologist describe in their evaluations. Recent imaging data has indicated that clinical suppression may involve the “executive control” areas of our brains, namely, areas in the prefrontal cortex. This neural intervention disengages processing in sectors of the brain important for memory formation and retrieval, in particular the hippocampus. As such, and if true, that had a number of implications to me as to how I dealt with Peter, how I talked to him as a clinician or even just as a caring person. I was both.
Despite the possibility that Peter might have adapted to his strained world by using these defense mechanism, his overall demeanor did not suggest it. He was a help, and he made others smile and feel important, even think he made our psychiatrist feel worthwhile. He had that way about him. It seemed natural, Natural? Okay, the science; Maybe it was genetic. Before long we will be able to determine the genetic link that might play a part in a case such as this, Of course, the interface of a genetic component and the type of upbringing a child might have or not have had, that is the environmental influence, is also indispensable in any assessment that I might do.
Neuroscience is also unraveling that at a quickening pace. I understand much of this. I might think about that later. I would of course, but not now.
“Through all you have been through, you are now feeling that strongly about your mom?”
“I never realized that before,” he said. “I was looking at it from different sides.”
When the kids had been talking about the “pros and cons” of their parents and their homes, one boy, Dan, had difficulty finding reasons as to why he should go home or why he might really have wanted to go home. He did have, however, a beautiful and loving home. That affected Peter. He was also trying to think about why he would want to return to live with his mother if she were alive. He had difficulty thinking about this at first. It made no logical sense, no practical sense, no personal sense, no common sense, at least on the surface.
Still, he told me later that he thought about it a lot over the next few days. The reason as to why he would never want to return to live with his mother were easy, but now he was thinking about why he would.
“What made you aware of this? What was going through your brain?”
Peter looked back up at the clock
“You must have had some wonderful moment with your mom.”
“I never thought so. When my mother wasn’t drunk, she was miserable. She was miserable. But, but, that misery was because she felt bad about what she thought she was doing to me.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I could tell. When she was sober or wasn’t high, she would spend lots of time trying to make dinner for me. Sometimes it was even good.”
Peter began to smile a bit. I was imagining the images and smells that might have been going through his mind.
“Then sometimes it was…. “ He paused as if he did not want to say it even though he knew it. “It was bad!” Now he laughed! That was great I thought. Then he went on without stopping.
“At bedtime she would read stories to me. You know, when I think about it now, she wasn’t very good at that either.”
“But they were perfect, weren’t they, Peter?”
“Uh Huh. She was with me.” He smiled softly and thoughtfully. I could see the images and memories in his eyes, the good memories, the good feelings, the loving feelings he was discovering after all these years, his lifetime.
“So despite all of – of everything, she was a wonderful and loving mother.”
“Yes” he now said without pause. “I could see it in her eyes. I saw it in her eyes.” He cried a bit then, but soon recovered. You certainly could tell that he missed her. He had never thought of that before. But now he had been thinking about the other side, another perspective than one of shame, embarrassment and regret. Suppression and intellectualization did not now seem part of where his mind, excuse me, his brain, was doing.
Peter had never realized this so clearly before. Deep down he must have, but he was never this conscious of it. I believe that the days he spend thinking of his past his mother from a different point of view, that is, from, “How might your mother have been helpful to you,” changed his thoughts, his way of viewing them. That was, the “other perspective.”
As I look back now, I was touched by this experience, but then I thought, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if I could have done an fMRI scan or PET scan of his brain at this moment? There would be something relevant to see, something that would explain how this method was affecting Peter’s thought processes from the perspective of the brain. I thought of that later, and, of course, there is an identifiable useful neurophysiological explanation for all of this. There was also a good and bad reason why it might have been useful to have some neurophysiological explanation for all of this. There was also a good and bad reason why it might have been useful to have some neurophysiological assessment technology available. The bad reason would have seemed much stronger at the time though. Still I thought a lot about the fact that this method was based upon a definable, replicable neurophysiological basis. Period. That is where it was born, and now I was witnessing its reflection in the behavior, the heart of a young man.
“Are you still thinking Peter?”
Peter was deep in thought. He did not answer me, but then he added more.
“She never taught me how to brush my teeth or tie my shoes or ride a bike. She tried though. She really tried. Once she became so frustrated because she just didn’t know how to do it, how to teach me to ride a bike. She didn’t even know how herself. She shook his head slowly.
Despite these revelations, the only thing in Peter’s voluminous records that might have suggested that she cared, that she loved him, was that Peter was an unexpected, mistaken pregnancy. She was not sure who Peter’s father was. She never saw whoever it was again. Her social worker had strongly suggested that she have an abortion. She said “No.” The state even threatened that they would take the baby away. She said, “No,” even though she knew it would be very hard for her.
Peter’s mother had a profound and positive effect on her son despite everything. Didn’t she? That now seemed clear. It was positive, and it was love. Peter had not seemed to realize that before. It was there, but it was deep inside waiting for the chance for someone to suggest to him about thinking of these things from a different perspective. He asked himself.
I could imagine, and even describe the likely neurophysiological underpinnings of how this unexpected effect of our approach was reflected in Peter’s brain. An fMRI or PET scan of Peter’s brain would show it as well. That is good. But it did not sound so exciting at the moment.
Those readers who appreciate the science behind this might appreciate how such a touching and meaningful event might be able to be demonstrated and explained by our increasing knowledge of the nervous system and our capacity to measure how it works. It can explain what was going on in this situation and how our methods affected him. But for no I may have found a way to describe it even better here, perhaps more accurately.
Years after this experience with Peter, I may have uncovered the science behind what was going on in Peter’s brain even better. I learned this from a sermon emailed to me in 2009. It was not sent by a pastor, rabbi, or even a religious person. I don’t even know who she was really. She got her degree from MIT. It describes the learning and memory of her infant daughter trying to learn to sit up. Here it is.
And what forming in the infant mind? Imagine what that child feels. She is experiencing sitting with as yet no understanding of the point of it or how the whole thing works, but she hears encouraging voices and sees loving faces. She starts to tip and as if by magic something rights her. What was that? She probably doesn’t even wonder. She didn’t see, doesn’t know. Maybe she believes she righted herself. Or maybe she feels it’s just the power of loving eyes that kept her from falling over.

John: Living and Dying

Upon first look, John was one of the most forgettable and unattractive kids that had ever stayed at the Mohonk Children’s Home in its entire 39-year history.
John had come sometime in the summer of 1992 at the age of 16 and managed to stay until the following year. Many of the other boys and even many of the staff learned to just avoid him. He did not seem to care about others, or even himself. When he left not much was said, but it affected me a great deal.
I had treated John with the same love and respect that I had treated every child who showed up at our door. He had no father and his mother was a drug addict. John simply knocked on the door and was invited in. He had been on the streets for seven weeks and looked it. He smelled and was very hungry. He gobbled down every morsel that was put in front of him and even licked the plate clean.
“Where can I sleep”,” he then asked. No thank you was offered after he ate. That was John. Still, I knew he appreciated what he got, but he would never show it.
When asked to do something John would always say yes. Most of the time, though, he would forget to do it or just not do it at all. When asked about that he usually would just shrug his shoulders. If he had been asked to leave the house for good, he just would go. He never got mad because, as he later told me, everyone was right about him. “I’m not worth much.”
But he was.
Over the months that I got to know John I watched him play with my three year old son, Brooks. He laughed with him and engaged him like it was the best time he ever had. When I talked to him about it, he told me that Brooks was lucky to have a father who played with him. He was lucky to have money, and he was so lucky to have toy trucks, especially toy trucks.
“I’m going to be a truck driver. I just want to drive all over the country all the time by myself.”
“How will you do that?” I asked
“I don’t know. I will,”
John never knew how he was going to do anything. He just went about his life as if the circus would suddenly appear. But, on the other hand, one got the feeling that John did not care if it ever showed up.
John died about 10 years later. Before then he had called me from different places all over the country. He didn’t drive trucks though. He hitch-hiked. He could not become a truck driver because he had lost his license three times. Once I gave him an old car so that he could have a place to sleep. He promised me that he would not drive it if he did not have insurance or if he lost his license. It made no difference to John. He landed in jail for one month for driving without a license.
I was the only one John ever called through all of his self-created problems. No one else cared and he knew it. Sometimes he would call just to talk, to hear a human voice of someone who might give him the time of day. However, I never lost hope that John would find a niche in life, someplace. There might be something that would carry him through the years, maybe give him hope, and maybe make him realize that he was worth something. I believed that there was no such thing as a bad kid. I was not naïve. By now I had been involved in the life of so many young people and I just wanted to give John a chance should he turn a corner. Even though he might not, I wanted him to know that there was at least one person who cared about him, and believed in him no matter what.
John never asked me for money or favors. Never. He just accepted his fate wherever he went. On several occasions I used my credit card to give him some credit at different markets around the country. I had to make sure that the credit did not include cigarettes. I supported him in different ways, always with promises from him which he would not keep. I knew that. I often advised him about what he might want to do to help himself, and he always knew that if he came back that I would be there to help him. I hoped that at some point he would. But John just wanted to be a truck driver and drive all over the country by himself. There was no reason to come back, he thought. But there was.
The next to last time John called me he told me that he had contracted AIDS. He said he had sex with a prostitute at a truck stop in Texas. He was nonchalant about it. I told him about the medications he could get even without money. He said that he would do that. He took medications for a month and then stopped. He didn’t know why he stopped. I am not sure to this day if it was because he did not care if he died or that he was so irresponsible that he just did not want to make the effort to get his medications every month or so wherever he might be. I think it was the latter.
The last time John called me I had been in shock for many weeks. My son had died. Brooks had died at 16 years of age from the side effect of malarial medication he took while we were climbing mountains the Andes of Peru and helping out at an orphanage in Lima. I took Brooks there to be with him one-on-one as I had done many times before. We had wandered in Egypt and climbed the Pyramids and walked among oases. We had trudged the back roads of small Sicilian towns begging for adventure and always found it. We had high adventure and laughed together, talked about life, tried foods we could not pronounce, paraglided off mountains and scuba dove on reefs, and we always visited an orphanage or hospital for children. We laughed with the children, played with them and always gave gifts that we brought, whether ice cream, basketballs or anything else. I wanted Brooks to know firsthand how much more we were all the same rather than different. John, and other children like John, were not different from us. We had hopes and dreams. We needed friendship and love. Brooks saw that since birth in everything that we ever did. He saw the rich and the poor children who came to Mohonk treated the same. He saw the brilliant and special needs children care for the same way. He saw that good looks, athletic ability and talent in anything did not change the fact that each child was wonderful. Brooks was brought up at the Mohonk Children’s Home for the first eleven years of his life, and he knew what all those words meant.
“John,“ I said, “Brooks had died.” The silence was very long. Then John began crying. He said nothing at first. I had never heard him cry before. John remembered playing with him many times, and he remembered how happy I was and how I loved to see them playing together. Then he asked a question which I knew he did not expect an answer to.
“Why didn’t God take me and not Brooks?”
I was quiet, I had no answer. There was nothing to understand, nothing to say. I thought of God and I thought of Brooks and I thought of John. I thought of how important reasoning and finding explanations was to me in much of my work in life, but now I had no question or answers.
Quietly through tears John and I then said goodbye.
One month later John came back to see me, but by the time he did he was on his deathbed. I visited him in the hospital when I found out. He told the doctors to contact me the moment he was admitted.
When I walked into his room he was a shell and barely cognizant of what was happening. He was filled with morphine. He was shriveled and old at 26 years of age. He stated at me and could not talk or even smile, but he looked so deeply into my eyes. He knew who I was, and he was glad I was there. I took John’s hands in mine. I kissed his forehead.
“John,” I then said, “say hello to Brooks when you see him. “He said yes without words.
After a few hours, I left. On my way home, thirty minutes later, the hospital called to tell me that John had passed.
I was quiet. I cried. I imagined John being with my son. I was glad I could see John one more time, and I was glad John was at peace.

Bringing Hope to a Child Behind Bars: Andrew’s Story

This is a story about Andre. Andrew had been living on dead-end and dreary streets. Those streets reflected his own depression and sense of hopelessness. Now he was in prison. It was the end of his life he thought except for a gift he had living in his fingers and his brain. He loved to draw. This story reflects the use of several method based on how the human brain works that brought Andrew away from his dead-end.
Andrew was an unimpressive, disheveled 17-year-old boy who had been arrested multiple times for painting graffiti on the sides of abandoned factories in Waterbury, Connecticut. His parents did not want him to stay in their home. He was now in prison at the Long Lane Juvenile Detention Center in Middletown, Connecticut.
Andres did not seem like a belligerent, antisocial adolescent, but he had been diagnosed with what was then called psychopathology – a fairly catch-all diagnostic term that included children who had difficulties adjusting to society (Later called an antisocial personality that certainly did not fit Andrew. He had caused some problems for the staff of Long Lane because of his recalcitrant suborn nature. But lately, he had been appearing self-absorbed and much quieter. They believed that some sort of depression was overtaking him and therefore asked me to talk to him and evaluate him. Andrew refused, not wanting to talk to anyone. As a result, Long Lane locked him in isolation with the exception of meals, two hours of academic instruction, one hour of television, and one hour of recreation each day until he was willing to comply. Despite Andrew’s reluctance, I decided to visit him.
That would get his attention, and that was the first brain-based method I needed to use. Andrew seemed a little surprised that anyone would want to visit him. Good. He had been standing and staring at the bare wall above his bed, seeming to be transfixed, but he turned toward me expressionless, lifeless, and then calmly sat down, focusing on his sneakers.
I waited, but he had nothing to say, so I laughed. “I think you should paint your sneakers.”
Andrew lifted his head and a quiet smile suddenly enveloped his face, “Would they let me?”
“Of course,” I got up, said goodbye, and left. Not only was he a bit startled and now paying attention, but he was now imagining something positive and rewarding in a dimly lit isolation cell. That is How the Brain Learns Best. His brain was in high gear, and he was lit with a seed of hope that something good was happening in his life. Hope is a good thing.
I returned several hours later with the multi-colored pens that Andrew could use while I was with him. His attention and his positive feelings were wrapped up in thinking about how he would design his sneakers. His emotions were also aflame. His face described the excitement and pleasure. That is How the Brain Feels, and I wanted him to be lathered in those emotions.
Andrew now felt safe. He felt that I was on his side, and he began to open up. I was very surprised by the revelations that came forth. His self-absorption was healthy; his emerging realization that he was spending too much effort in fighting authorities rather than looking after himself.
By my second visit, Andrew’s sneakers were brightly colored, and he began talking quite a lot. At the end he asked, “Why are you visiting me here when I’m willing to come to your office?”
I paused for a moment and shrugged. “You know, actually, I don’t like my office, and coming to see you is a good excuse to get away. It is messy, and I would make a bad impression on the youth at Long Lane.”
Andrew believed me at first, and his bewildered expression showed. He had many occasions to interact with police, therapists, and teachers, and humor was not an expected form of interaction. I maintained my deadpan stare until we both began to laugh. His laugh was full and unconstrained, but more than that, it resonated with the sound of someone who could finally open up freely. That was what I had hoped for.
The next day when I arrived at Long Lane, I discovered Andrew was being kept in even more restrictive isolation until he cleaned a wall of his room. Security unlocked his door for me. There, on the wall next to his bed pillow, he had drawn a remarkable sketch of a large fierce hawk with talons extended to prey upon a scrawny hapless mouse. He has used the colored pens I had given him. The artwork was beautiful. The mouse was staring at the hawk in sad and defeated acceptance of his fate, with the middle digit of his left paw erect and pointed toward the hawk’s bloodcurdling eyes.
“Can you help? I don’t want to clean this off the wall.”
“That’s fantastic,” is all I could say after staring at the artwork in disbelief. “How did you learn to draw so well”| In keeping with How the Brain Learns Best and How the Brain Thinks, I wanted to start with a positively reinforcing comment as well as a question to make him think.
Andrew talked about his drawing and showed me his sketchpad that he kept under his bed. His drawings make me gasp. They were beautiful and were not the typical graffiti drawings that I would have expected.
This young man had a gift.
I returned to his drawing on the wall over his bed. “Why the hawk and doomed mouse”| I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you think you will ever get out of here, out of this room, out of Long Lane”|
“Probably not,” he answered, even though he knew he would someday.
Andrew’s love of art led us to talking about his talent and possibilities for his future. The 17-year-old who had been staring listlessly at the blank wall of his cell was now showing excitement about possibilities, and, most of all, hope. I imagined him thinking about drawing and painting, not on the forbidden walls of public buildings or the walls of isolation cells, but someplace, any place where he would be valued and cherished for what he could offer.
I complained to those in charge. “Don’t just chastise him through solitary confinement even though what he did was wrong. Look at the picture. What does it tell you about Andrew? He’s learning.
He is beginning to realize that he’s fighting the wrong battle. I tried to describe how Andrew’s gifts reflected a gateway to reach him. I suggested he be allowed to design and paint murals for the barren grey concrete walls of the center’s cafeteria. When Andrew learned I had suggested this, a guard told me that he again was staring at the walls of his cell but this time as if dumbfounded by a beautiful dream.
The superintendent did not like the approach I used with Andrew. I tried to sound convincing by describing how Andrew’s artistic ability, anger, and depression could be understood by considering how the brain works and the fact that Andrew’s sense of his plight was reflected in meaningful, deep-felt, and emotional ways through the through the expression of the movements of his hand. He did not use words to express his pain or his insights. Andrew spoke through his art.
I added that the blunt application of punishments and rewards, though often efficient and necessary methods, may not be the only way to deal with Andrew and many of the children at Long Lane. The superintendent’s face was blunt and rather mechanical but he added, “That might have been good for Andrew, but that is not how it works at Long Lane.|”
Andrew was left in abeyance. His life for all practical purposes was put on hold. But his belief that he could survive the maelstrom at Long Lane was well planted. He could see bright colors and brush strokes at the end of the tunnel he had to remain in for five more months. The few drawings he was able to do had no expression that resembled the talons of hawks or the sad acceptance of the fate of a helpless mouse.
Andrew brought to light a fifth brain-based method. It had to do with moving muscles and was given the easily describable name, How the Brain Moves Muscles.
For Andrew, dreaming of what he wanted to draw was not nearly as impactful as the act of drawing, that is, moving the muscles of his hand and fingers. Learning how to draw, like hitting home runs or writing beautiful poetry brings reality to dreams children have. Moving muscles is necessary. It also includes choosing what to avoid as much as what to do. Avoiding falling rocks and dangerous people fits in that category. How the Brain Moves Muscles means the same as the well-worn cliché that “actions speak louder than words,” but when viewed from the brain it is not just a cliché or a psychological construct. It means moving muscles in a coordinated way to get something done. The brain does that. It tells the muscles how to do that. Without that nothing would happen. The world would standstill. As with the other brain-based methods, this basic function of the human brain is a necessity to live.
Andrew was able to leave Long Lane much sooner than expected. He had changed and he was valued. Other children asked Andrew to draw portraits of themselves and just as much, scenes of the city streets and landscapes where these children longed to be. Soon guards, kitchen staff and even the superintendent asked for drawings. The superintendent wanted a drawing of the entrance to Long Lane. Andrew drew it, but at the entrance, he added a child leaving Long Lane with outstretched arms and a huge smile on his face.