How My Wife Helped an Immigrant Child Overcome the Trauma of Separation
Sometimes the way we address our social issues only serves to create more problems
My wife worked with an immigrant child who had spent time in a camp after being separated from his parents. During his internment, somebody had taught him to crochet.
Somehow this little boy ended up in northern Wisconsin in an ELL class taught by a Peruvian immigrant. My wife marveled at his skill. She said his fingers moved in a blur and the creations emerged as if he were weaving them out of thin air.
“That’s so beautiful,” she said. But when she came home and told me about him, tears welled up in her eyes.
“What that poor little boy must have been through.”
We don’t know. We don’t know.
When she complimented him, he would respond with a shy smile, but he wasn’t after praise. The movement of creation calmed him. Such was his trauma that without his crochet hooks, he began to tremble.
Naturally, some of the other teachers objected. Some would point and then shrug and insist that the choice wasn’t theirs to make. Rules are rules after all. “Surrender the hooks. You can hold a pencil if you need to hold something. You can take notes and…
