Hide or just love: What did they do with "special" children in the families of presidents and monarchs

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Children with mental disabilities can be born literally in any family. So the powerful of this world in the twentieth century had enough "special" relatives. True, different families treated this radically differently, and some stories evoke tenderness, and some - horror.

Prince john

The uncle of Elizabeth II, Prince John, is known for suffering from epilepsy and mental retardation from an early age. The youngest son of King George V and brother of the future King George VI, John was a very pretty boy. If his blond hair curled, he would look exactly like angels on postcards fashionable at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Despite this, John now and then displeased his parents. The king told American President Theodore Roosevelt that all princes are obedient children except John. Sometimes John muttered something under his breath, and he also did not keep up with his brothers in his studies. However, his father and mother still loved him, John constantly participated in family holidays, went to visit relatives, they even tried to hire a teacher for him.

At about eleven years old, the epileptic seizures became more severe, and John still, despite individual lessons, could not catch up with the development of other eleven-year-old boys. Moreover, he was a lively, interested, well-formulated child, he had every chance of development, albeit not to the level of children without health problems. But the parents preferred to fire the teacher, and send John to live separately from the family in one of the family estates.

Fortunately, contrary to the myth, he did not live there alone: with him was his beloved nanny, who had known him from infancy. But the family had no time for John: everyone was busy with the war and its problems. Since John was yearning without communication, the queen ordered to find him friends from the local children. John's faithful friend was the teenage girl Winifred, whom he had known since pre-war times. Sometimes brothers and sisters also came, but rarely and not for long; John was very happy every time. From excitement, he again experienced seizures, and as a result, they decided that visiting his family had a bad effect on him. Only at Christmas was he brought to the family.

At thirteen years old, the boy died during another attack, at night. The newspapers wrote that death found him in a dream - and only then for the first time did the public learn that the younger prince suffered from epilepsy. About the mental lag, however, and then not a word was said. Now many are wondering if John had an autistic disorder, which at that time was not yet able to recognize, but this question does not change anything in his fate.

Five uncomfortable female relatives

John is not the only mentally handicapped relative of Queen Elizabeth. Her two maternal cousins lived with a diagnosis of "imbecility" and were hidden from the public. Their mental development stopped, according to some evidence, at the level of five years, moreover, sexual development went its own way, and at some point Nerissa and Catherine - that was their name - became aggressive and too interested in sexual manipulation. The girls' mother tried to look after them until the last, but in 1941 she arranged for them to live permanently in a psychiatric hospital. The eldest was twenty-one, the youngest fifteen. At the same time, three of their cousins were admitted to the clinic with the same diagnosis.

In the hospital, all five women were paid for by their maternal grandfather, Baron Clinton. After the hospital was taken over by the state. Everything that Baron Clinton's granddaughters had from now on was state-owned, starting with underwear. Their main entertainment was the television (it could have been before, but television was not widespread until the sixties).

Only after the death of Nerissa did the secret of the royal family come to light. The Queen was reproached for allegedly hiding uncomfortable cousins in the hospital and that there was not even a normal tombstone with a name on Nerissa's grave. The stone was placed, but Elizabeth was very worried that the transfer of her cousins to the clinic was attributed to her. In 1941, she did not even know about their condition and was too young herself to decide anyone's fate.

Anna de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle was considered a harsh person, but his heart melted when his eyes fell on his youngest daughter Anna. Anna was born with Down syndrome. The father found out about this immediately: the child was carried to him in complete, one might say, deathly silence. At that time, such children were mostly abandoned, and they died small in orphanages. But Charles de Gaulle was not in the habit of leaving his own people. He took upon himself all the worries about upbringing, entertainment, consolation of the baby, about whom he was warned: she will be so stupid that she will not even understand that you love her, and can accidentally kill herself, just running around the house.

Anna didn’t kill herself, she recognized and loved her father (“daddy” was the only word in her lexicon!), And de Gaulle did not even think to hide from the general public that his daughter had Down syndrome. Thanks to this, by the way, over time, the French also changed their minds about children with the syndrome.

For many years, the only way to distract de Gaulle from his work was to say that Annette was crying. The stern soldier threw everything and rushed to console his sun. There were no development programs for children with Down syndrome, so de Gaulle did not even try to develop his daughter - but he gave her so much love that she always felt happy and repaid with the same sea of tenderness.

Annette was born in 1928, which means that she had to endure World War II - and her father did everything so that the horrors of war and general anxiety did not affect his girl, sensitive to someone else's mood. Alas, de Gaulle was able to save his Annette from the war and could not - from the prosaic flu. At twenty-one, the girl died of complications from an illness. “Now she has become like everyone else,” her father said bitterly over her grave - death equals.

Rosemary Kennedy

The sister of US President John F. Kennedy caused constant irritation in the family. Kennedy was supposed to be the first in everything, the best of the best, and here, here you are - a girl with mental retardation dared to be born. Although, of course, it was not the girl's fault - due to the misbehavior of the medical staff during childbirth, Rosemary suffered prolonged oxygen deprivation, which damaged her brain.

In fact, Rosemary Kennedy's form of backwardness was such that many parents of special children can only dream of. She spoke later than necessary - but she spoke and could always explain what she needed and what worried her. She got to her feet later than necessary - but she walked on her own, and not only walked. Rosemary enjoyed playing simple outdoor games, enjoying a thousand little things.

Perhaps, if in the first years of her life Rosemary received more attention from relatives, she would have achieved better results - but her father built a career, her mother helped him by starting social activity, and besides, both were much more willing to communicate with more "successful" children, almost ignoring "Not good enough" daughter.

When Rosemary was seven, the family moved to New York, and my mother began to work more with her. Parents still turned a blind eye to the fact that Rosemary is different from other children and she needs her own development program. After all, unlike her siblings, she was so sweet and calm! She was even sent to school with her sister Kathleen. But Rosemary could not cope with a pencil, wrote now and then from right to left, could not formulate a clear sentence, and even more so write not on the rulers.

The girl was transferred to home schooling with visiting teachers and sent to the dance. Dancing greatly helped with coordination, but still things did not go well. Rosemary did not cope with the training program, did not cope with household chores, could not even properly cut the meat in her plate. Rosemary herself clearly saw that she was different from her sisters, and was very worried that she did not live the same life; she just couldn't figure out how to make herself a "good girl" too.

Fortunately, Rosemary's mother still loved her daughter more than she was angry with her. When she was advised to send the girl to the clinic for permanent residence, Rosa studied the conditions in the clinics and firmly refused to do so. She sent her daughter to a Catholic boarding school, where, for a surcharge, nuns studied with her separately, and not in general classes. Fortunately for Rosemary, the nuns thought that the best tactic for working with her would be constant encouragement and encouragement - and in those years, many teachers believed that tactics simply did not exist better than rigor and exactingness.

However, all the tricks did not help make Rosemary in the least like a "good girl." She was awkward, confused in the requirements of etiquette, spoke like a child of a young adolescent. The irritation of the family began to irritate itself; this was superimposed on hormonal maturation, and Rosemary became hot-tempered. The solution was not, for example, to sterilize Rosemary in order to suppress the effect of hormones, but … lobotomy, fashionable in those years. Rosemary was twenty-three when her father paid for the operation.

During the operation, Rosemary did not sleep. While her brain tissue was cut open, she was forced to answer various questions. Finally, the answers became unintelligible, and only then did they stop wielding a knife in the brain. Operation tamed Rosemary. Her mental development has dropped to the level of two years, and then there is no time for comparisons and experiences. She even began to walk to the toilet by herself and could no longer walk (after a few years she learned with great difficulty). She also no longer controlled her hand, and her speech remained incoherent forever.

Rosemary was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for the rest of her life. There she was visited by her mother and sister Eunice. Eunice has dedicated her life to improving the treatment of disabled children and founded the World Special Olympiad - games for people with mental retardation. She also opened a private summer camp for children with intellectual disabilities, with a strong focus on sports. In our time, the charitable influence of the movement in working with children with special needs has already been proven.

Rosemary lived a long time and was not very happy. She died at eighty-six years old. In addition to her, many other American women were victims of the lobotomy - the measure was considered shown when, for example, the “hysterical” (uncomfortable) disposition of the wife. It was also exposed to adolescents who were declared unteachable for rather ordinary teenage antics.

Oliver Sachs has done a lot for the acceptance of people with disabilities. Why People Without Mental Problems Look Crazy: Stories From The Practice Of Dr. Sachs Who Turned Medicine Into Literature.