The Story of Sandy

by Susan Stanhope Wexler

The foster parent who dared to fight for the sanity of a deeply disturbed little boy reveals her remarkable experiences in this beautiful and triumphant book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

174 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Iamshadow · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can put casual historical racism, sexism and ableism aside, this book is an easy, quick read. It is light on details, sometimes frustratingly vague, skipping over whole years in a moment. When you get down to it, though, the real interesting feature of this book is the question of Sandy's problems.

Born to an obviously bipolar mother, Sandy spent his first three years being occasionally loved and very often completely neglected, his mother vacillating between devotion and believing that Sandy was either the reincarnation of her twin brother (likely also bipolar, who committed suicide on the day of Sandy's birth) and believing that Sandy somehow 'killed' him.

Many of Sandy's problems are classic symptoms of neglect in a very young child, but others are somewhat more ambiguous. His extremely fastidious habits when eating, his reversion to crawling, his stiff gait and toe-walking, his uncanny laugh, unusual vocalisations, talking of himself in the third person (when his regressed speech began to return), his mania for routine and repetition, his violent, nauseous reaction to activities involving slimy textures (eg. finger painting) all speak of a child on the autistic spectrum.

So which was it, autism or trauma? My personal opinion is, yes. As in, both. Even if his mother had not been neglectful, I think Sandy would have regressed to a degree, and would have ended up with the label of 'emotionally disturbed', a catch-all term at the time given to children with autism and other developmental disorders, trauma, and mental illness, with very little distinction. And had his mother been thought neurotypical, she probably would have been vilified more. As it is, though there's acknowledgement that she's the cause of some of Sandy's problems, she's never blamed, simply talked of as being extremely ill in an empathetic way.

At the time of the ending of the book, Sandy is enrolled in a small school with a group of students with a range of abilities and disabilities. From the account, he's happy there and achieving at a level, if not of his neurotypical peers, then at higher level than a variety of experts initially thought possible.

[Jennifer Bessette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story of an emotionally disturbed boy's progress in the care of nurturing grandparents. Interesting factors: child received attention intermittently from bio parents in first few years, yielding a degree of "foundation"; in care of attentive grandparents, the boy still had many different caregivers who came and went; significant hx of mental illness on maternal side; autistic bxs indicating spectrum disorder, aside from consequences of neglect; relatively unexplored terrain of child psychology when therapist applied psychotherapy beginning at age five; remarkable narrative of unconscious influences and their marked impact later, including train, bridge and giraffe.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written in 1955 and amended in 1970. Much terminology and ideologies are outdated and maybe offensive to a modern reader, if they do not take the era in which it was written into consideration. Although outdated, it is still an interesting study into child development theory, early childhood psychology and intervention.

[Val · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I work with people with disabilities, this was quite fascinating!!! I think this book can be used for the argument of nature vs nurture in a lot of ways. It has its sad moments, but nothing too overly sad because it ends so happily.

[Yz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an amazing, important, and inspirational read! 🩷🥹🫶

[Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a really heartwarming story but it wasn’t my favorite of all time