Dibs: In Search of Self

by Virginia M. Axline

“He can explain it to you,” his mother said. “In fact, I’m beginning to think he has all the answers.” There was an unmistakable note of pride in her voice.

Two college girls carrying books walked past the window. They looked up at Dibs leaning out the window. “Hello,” one of the girls said to Dibs. He ignored her. “I said hello,” the girl called out. Dibs continued to ignore her. “Can’t you say hello?” asked the girl. “Can’t you talk? What’s wrong with you? Cat got your tongue?” Dibs did not say a word. He stood looking out the window, watching them in silence. When they were out of sight, he spoke. “I watch them go by. I don’t talk to them. I don’t answer them. There goes the man in the truck. I didn’t speak to him. There goes a woman walking down the street. I don’t speak to her. I don’t say a word to any of them. There goes the truck. Goodbye truck!” The truck drove away with a roar of the motor.

“Don’t want to say hello! Won’t speak to them!” Dibs shouted. “Will not talk!” “You watch them and hear them speak to you, but they hurt your feelings and you don’t want to talk to them,” I said. “That’s right,” he said. “People are mean so I don’t talk to them. But I speak to the truck. I say goodbye to the truck.”

“Sometimes you knew the answers only you wouldn’t say? Is that the way it was?” I asked. “I don’t know when I knew and when I didn’t,” Dibs said, verbalizing the confusion that must often have been thrust at him. He lay down in the sand on his back and twisted around until he touched his toes to his lips. “See what I can do?” he said. “I can bend double and nobody ever taught me how.”

“What is in this can?” he asked. “Scouring powder,” I said. He smelled it, shook some out in his hand, looked at it, then suddenly put it in his mouth to taste. “Oh no, Dibs!” I exclaimed. “That’s scouring powder. Not good to taste!”

He turned and looked at me coldly. This sudden reaction of mine was inconsistent. “How can I tell how it tastes unless I taste?” he asked with dignity. “I don’t know of any other way,” I told him. “But I don’t think you ought to swallow it. It isn’t good to taste.” He spit it in the sink.

His sensitive armor was ready to put on quickly when his feelings were hurt.

“You wanted to find out for yourself. Now you know,” I said.

I printed the code, “How old are you?” “I am six,” he wrote for his answer. “I have just had a birthday. I like me. You like me. I will save these messages.”

“Another day brings me back to the magic room where I do whatever it is I have to do. Today I have planned the things I must do.”

“I am a boy,” he said slowly. “I have a father, a mother, a sister. But I do have a grandmother and she loves me. Grandmother has always loved me. But not Papa. Papa has not always loved me.”

Dibs was off again into the safe world of his intellectualism.

“In here I am safe,” he said. “You won’t let anything hurt me.” “You feel safe in here with me,” I remarked. He was leading up to something of importance to him. I had to proceed with utmost caution so that I would not get in his way or push him ahead before he was ready.

Dibs sat down at the table, staring straight ahead. “They used to lock me in my room,” he said. “They don’t do it any more, but they used to.”

It had been a rough hour for Dibs. His feelings had torn through him without mercy. The locked doors in Dibs’ young life had brought him intense suffering. Not the locked door of his room at home, but all the doors of acceptance that had been closed and locked against him, depriving him of the love, respect, and understanding he needed so desperately.

“Papa doesn’t like me to talk to the air, but in here I will if I feel like it.” “In here, if you feel like it, okay,” I remarked.

Talking had become an issue between the two of them and Dibs was an expert at withholding speech as a way of getting back at his critical father.

I had thought that at some point along the way we might have some group therapy for Dibs to give him the opportunity to become a part of a small, interacting group. I had had no word from the school and had no way of knowing what progress, if any, he was making there. I decided to ask Dibs what he thought of the idea of bringing another child here in the playroom with him.

“There are children in my room at school,” he said, after a long silence. “I...” He hesitated, turned and looked at me. “I... like... them,” he said, stammering a little. “I want them to like me. But I don’t want them in here with us. You are just for me. Something special just for me. Just us two.”

“Four o’clock,” he said. “Four o’clock chimes and four o’clock flowers. And the sun is in the sky. And there are sunflowers. There are so many different things.”

The way I want it to be.”

“I am Dibs,” he said. “I can do things. I like Dibs. I like me.” He smiled happily, then started to play in the water.

He drank from the bottle and stood looking at me while he did. “When I want to be a baby, I can be. When I want to be grown-up, I can be. When I want to talk, I talk. When I want to be still, I be still. Isn’t that so?” “Yes. That’s the way it is,” I said.

“In here,” he said. “Remember, in here, it’s all right just to be.”

“Goodbye,” he said. “I’ll be back next Thursday and fill up again with happiness.”

“Oh, mother, I love you!” he cried out as he hugged her. Both of us were surprised at this spontaneous expression from Dibs. His mother’s eyes filled with sudden tears. She nodded her farewell and left, clutching his hand tightly in hers.

“He is so much better,” she said. There was a happy glow in her eyes, a little smile on her lips. “He is calmer and happier. He doesn’t have temper tantrums any more. He hardly ever sucks his thumb. He looks directly at us. He answers us when we speak to him most of the time. He shows an interest in what is going on in the family. Sometimes he plays with his sister when she is home. Not always, but sometimes he will. He is beginning to show some affection to me. He will come up to me sometimes and make a comment about something on his own. The other day he came into the kitchen where I was making some cookies and he said ‘I see you’re busy making cookies. Your cookies are very good to eat. You make the cookies for us.’ Us. I think he is beginning to feel that he belongs to the family now. And I think... well, I think I am beginning to feel that he is one of us.

Now I ask myself what I have done to cause this problem between us? Why did this all happen? What can I do now to help set things right? I’ve asked myself again and again, why? Why? Why? Why did we fight each other so? So much so that it almost destroyed Dibs. I remember when I first talked to you that I insisted that Dibs was mentally retarded. But I knew he wasn’t really retarded. I had been teaching him and testing him and trying to force him to behave in a normal fashion ever since he was two years old — all of it without any real contact between the two of us. Always going through things. I don’t know what he does here in the playroom. I don’t know if you see any sign of all the things he knows and can do. He can read. Almost anything he picks up. He can write and spell — meaningfully. He keeps records of things he is interested in. He has scrapbooks he has made of all different kinds of bark and leaves.

Trying to get closer to him and all the time only building a wall between us.

He had no peace. Except when his grandmother came to visit. They had a good relationship with each other. He relaxed with her. He didn’t talk much to her. But she accepted him the way he was and she always believed in him.

I felt that I had to make up to him for all the other deficiencies I had given him. I felt responsible for the way he was. I felt guilty.”

When a child is forced to prove himself as capable, results are often disastrous. A child needs love, acceptance, and understanding. He is devastated when confronted with rejection, doubts, and never-ending testing.

The picture she had painted of her life with Dibs had a chill in it. It was, indeed, a wonder that the child had maintained his integration and receptiveness. The pressure he had endured was enough to drive any child into a protective withdrawal. She had proved to herself that Dibs could learn the tasks she set before him. But she had felt the absence of a close relationship with her son. This kind of exploitation of the child’s ability, to the exclusion of a balanced emotional life, could destroy him.

Why can’t I let Dibs just be a child? My child!

We blamed Dibs. Poor little Dibs. Everything that went wrong between us was his fault. Everything was his fault. I wonder if we can ever make it up to him.”

“There have been many intense, troubled feelings tangled up in this relationship,” I said. “You have named some of them. You have talked about your feelings in the past. What are your feelings now?”

“My feelings are changing. I am proud of Dibs. I love him. Now he doesn’t have to prove himself to me every minute. Because he has changed.

“Attitudes and feelings do change,” I said. “I guess you have experienced that.”

Probably because she had been accepted as she was and felt unthreatened as a mother, she had been able to dig deeply into her own feelings and come up with significant insight and understanding.

Not only was Dibs finding himself but so were his parents.

Miss Jane called me on Monday,

He is happy, calm, and showing an interest in the other children. He speaks very well most of the time, but when something bothers him he lapses back into his abbreviated, immature speech.

I was careful to accept only as much as he wanted to give; I never pushed him. I made it a point to acknowledge in a friendly way everything he did and said to encourage him to do more.

And then, of course, the other children were so busy going about their own business that they accepted whatever Dibs did without question.

Dibs had lived in two worlds for too long a time for any of us to expect immediate and complete integration.

Dibs should learn to accept himself as he was and use his abilities, not deny them. But socially and emotionally, Dibs was achieving new horizons for himself. They were fundamental to his total development.

His intellectual abilities had been used to test him. They had become a barrier and a refuge from a world he feared. It had been defensive, self-protective behavior. It had been his isolation. And if Dibs did begin to talk, read, write, draw, in ways far beyond those of the other children around him, he would be avoided by them and isolated for his differences.

“I am Dibs and I want to talk,” he added. “I am in an office with Miss A and there is a tape recorder here and I am talking into it now. I go to school.” He named the school and gave the address. “There are teachers in my school.” Each teacher’s name was recorded in full. “There are children in my room and I will tell you the names of all the children.” He called out the names of all the children.

“That is too much noise. Be quiet when you are in the house. Oh, it is Papa. What do you mean by slamming that door, Papa? You are stupid and careless. I don’t want you around me when you act like that. I don’t care what you want. I’ll make you go in your room and I’ll lock you up so we don’t have to listen to a screaming, stupid man!”

He went back to the recorder and turned it on again. “Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a big house with his mother and father and sister. And one day the father came home and went to his study and the boy went in without knocking. ‘You are a mean man,’ the boy cried. ‘I hate you! I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you!’ And the father began to cry. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I ever did. Please don’t hate me!’ But the little boy said to him, ‘I am going to punish you, you stupid, stupid man. I don’t want you around any more. I want to get rid of you.” He clicked off the recorder and came over to me.