Genie - the "feral" child

In My Humble Opinion
1

There have been a few short threads about Genie, but none recently. I knew a little about Genie, but was reminded of her a few days ago because it was the anniversary of her rescue in 1970. So I read a bit more, including one of the books about her.

Genie’s history is well known, absolutely heartbreaking, and she is still an important case to science, particularly in language acquisition. But I was struck by one aspect of her story because it turns up in some similar cases: the delusion on the part of a parent that they were “protecting” their child by isolating them.

Genie’s father believed she was retarded (which seems to have never really been proven either way) and - so he apparently claimed - felt she needed to be protected from the outside world. The man was obviously mentally ill, and we can’t know if that was a cynical rationalization for his horrific treatment of Genie. But the same thing comes up in a more recent case in Austria. The father claimed he was moved to “protect” his family by isolating them from the world.

This delusion strikes me as interesting. Much of human behavior exists on a spectrum. Drives and impulses that may be useful and adaptive at one level become harmful when brought to extremes. I’m not a parent, and I wonder if I’m unequipped to know what it feels like to be responsible for a child.

Questions for discussion:

I’m sure every parent feels the need to protect their children. Can anyone speak to this drive being so powerful as to cloud one’s judgement to a worrisome point? I’m not just talking about being a strong advocate for your kid when they have problems in school. Is this a drive that overtakes people at times?

Could that drive, combined with mental illness, perhaps account for parents like Genie’s?

To what extent are we all subject to the “protector delusion”? There are people who are drawn to those with disabilities out of a sort of savior complex, and in some cases it becomes dangerous. What’s the line between being a helper and being an exploiter?

Genie, for all her limitations, had a profound affect on the people around her after her rescue. She was said to have an uncanny ability to communicate non-verbally. My reading leads me to believe the scientists did want to do right by her, but were unable to resist the potential gains of studying her closely (and they were correct that she was important to understand). Did they allow themselves to be drawn into an inappropriate savior complex situation too?

2

I’m not a psychologist, so take what I say with a grain of salt. From what I’ve read the drive to protect one’s children is not described as a disorder. It is a naturally ordered behavior since humans care for their young, I don’t know the term for excess if there even is one. Hyper-protective instinct? But once you go past the threshold and harm the child, there are better more specific terms like paranoia or phobic anxiety.

Most of the research on overprotective parenting focuses on the effects had on children (social anxiety disorders, selective mutism) rather than the psychological profile of the parent. I managed to find one paper you may be interested in reading,

Thomasgard, M. Parental Perceptions of Child Vulnerability, Overprotection, and Parental Psychological Characteristics. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 28 , 223–240 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022631914576

When I worked in a medical office I also had occasion to read up on Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is when for whatever reason you lie about your kid being sick (to doctors even). These people will purposely infect their children, falsify tests, etc. There’s a good deal of research on that particular niche but the bottom line is we have no idea why people do it.

~Max

3

It’s hard to understand how a parent could do this to their child, which points to a mental disorder on the parent’s part. I don’t know how anyone could justify isolating their child from the world in that way.

4

I have read a lot about the Fritzl case. I am less familiar with the case of Genie, although I did read the link in your OP.

In my opinion, the true motivation here is not a desire to protect, even if it is the motivation that is verbalized. One characteristic of human psychology that is well-documented with case studies is the human ability to make up a story/explanation when they don’t know the real answer. My guess would be that these fathers had other motives for locking up and abusing their daughters: a need to feel in complete control of something/someone or a person on whom to concentrate all their feelings of rage or insecurity.

The true motivation is probably so complex that even a trained professional could not completely explain it, let alone the mentally disturbed person experiencing the feelings and urges. I think any attempt to explain the behavior as a “need to protect” is merely an inability to explain the true motivation, and that excuse being a poor verbal approximation of the true motivation.

5

You need to understand that is a very wrong thing to be sure of.

6

This step-parent felt a tremendous need to protect the Napierette when she entered the field of social work. She worked in prisons, worked with homeless folks, worked with child abusers. I felt this way even though I also believe that social workers should exist, and thought she’d be a good one. So, I have to think this judgement was clouded, even though it didn’t rise to the level of trying to stop her.

7

I read the abstract and it is interesting. It seems to track with Genie’s father. Hadn’t thought of the Munchhausen syndrome angle.

A fair point in view of what we are discussing.

8

Two things, here: First, it’s not at all clear what “doing right by her” would even entail. It simply wasn’t possible, at least not with this century’s psychology, to give her a normal upbringing. Give her as good a life as we’re capable of? Yes, of course… but what does that entail? How can we even know, without studying her extensively? And second, does studying her even hamper efforts to give the best life possible, at all?

9

desire to protect <===> desire to control

10

Very true - Genie couldn’t possibly have had a “normal” upbringing after what she endured. She was 13 when she was found. I think a good case could be made that nobody should have been doing ANY research with her at all, except by therapists designing her care and rehabilitation.

But… despite there being a strong argument for that course, I don’t actually agree with it. The researchers around Genie have come in for a lot of criticism, but I tend to side with them after my reading. I used to be a teacher and have some training in special education. The tests and activities they were using to investigate Genie were reasonable, very possibly engaging for her and I doubt very much that they overworked her. I have the sense that they all cared for her, even the couple of people on her “team” who don’t come off well in some of their behavior. But I do wonder if things might have been different if Genie had not been a subject of study.

Perhaps not - I think the fact that she was put back into her mother’s care, and then a series of foster homes after that proved nonviable, was the real negative turning point for Genie. We can only hope she’s had a peaceful life since.

11

One of my favorite short SF stories is called The First Men, which starts off with a discussion of feral children and suggests that perhaps if gifted children were raised in the right environment, they might develop advanced abilities.

12

I worked with a few kids who had been locked up by - what might be described as - an overprotective caregiver. I never met the caregivers in question or had much information on them at all, just the kids to go on. What I came to say is that kids like Genie and horror villains like Fritzl are the extreme ends of the spectrum and they end up in the media.

One little girl that came to mind had been well cared for by her grandmother, but locked in an attic. She came in, five years old, with her hair nicely braided, clean, dressed and well fed. She could speak just fine for her age, but it was complete batshit nonsense. She was hilarious with a great sense of humour and the sweetest girl. Discovering the outside world with her was a privilege and of course quite overwhelming.

It was all so strange it was hard to get a picture of what her life had been like. She had clearly been loved and she missed her grandmother. Her grandmother must’ve been banana’s, loving and caring but in the wrong way. She didn’t know anything about anything real, but could easily amuse herself (and others, if they were willing!) in her own little world.

She’d never met another human besides her grandmother until she was rescued from the attic. It must’ve been pretty big too, she was mostly physically fine, just a bit behind. She sang her own little nonsensical children’s songs, taught by her grandmother. Some of the songs had little nuggets of crazy, untrue wisdom (like showers are evil). Or a rhyme where she’d gently touch your facial features along with nonsense words - sweet and loving and kinda pedagogical-but-not. She was parroting the way children do, but parroting a very crazy old lady.

It was a while before she managed to connect to the other children, of course. She’d ask for things and we’d get her what she’d asked (like: a doll, say) but it would be wrong somehow and she’d be so baffled and sad and we’d try and try. Items of clothing had made up names, but food she knew, I think. We had kids at times who didn’t know words for meals or different foods - a whole different kettle of fish.

Wow, it was weird. It was years ago but thinking back it was so weird. One of a kind. She was lovely and adjusted eventually, but stayed quirky.

What was wrong with her grandmother? She was crazy. Yet she knew how to take care of a child. I wonder if her fear was that her granddaughter would be taken away? Or just paranoid in general? Did she fear the outside world? I’ll never know, but I know she loved her granddaughter a lot. Somehow her caring malfunctioned and locking her granddaughter in the attic seemed like a good idea…

13

Another girl was an entirely different situation: I was assessing her class (7-8 yrs) on something unrelated.

I only spent about half an hour with her, so I know virtually nothing. I immediately knew something was way off when she walked in, but couldn’t tell what right away. My first thought was just very shy, then no, developmental disability? But no, not that exactly.

She couldn’t answer my questions, which is fine, I switch to asking about zoo animals. That usually gets them talking and they’re getting things right and before you know it they’re showing off. But no, she couldn’t name any zoo animals. I had pictures with me, but she couldn’t even say which she liked. I reminded her that are no wrong answers here. Nothing.

It was odd because by then I could kind of tell it wasn’t fear or developmental disability. So I tried any animal. What’s your favourite animal? Mine’s my dog. Etc.

Slowly came to realise she didn’t know any animals. She couldn’t name a single animal. Abuse.

Went to see the teacher, who said: “Yes, I thought you’d ask about her, what’s your assessment?” I said I was extremely worried about her home situation and didn’t think it was developmental disability, but really I had no idea and it wasn’t what I was assessing. Just wanted to note my worry and know she was getting help. The teacher told me she’d been kept locked up along with her siblings.

It wasn’t like Genie, the girl could walk and talk. There’d been some stimulation. But she’d never been exposed to any animals, not even pictures or words. Probably a whole lot more too, but that’s all I ever knew.

Maybe her parents sort of baffle me even more than the extremely evil or outright crazy cases. She was alive, not malnourished, had siblings, knew some things… I’ve no idea what was wrong with her parents. Like, why care for her at all, then?

14

Thanks for the insights, @gracer. This hits close to home, because merely a week ago an eight year old girl was rescued after having being locked up her whole life by her mother and grandparents, in a house at a busy street of the town I live next too. It’s big news here, when has Attendorn ever appeared in international news like the Guardian?

This poor girl also wasn’t physically harmed or malnourished, but of course must have severely developmentally deficits. She told her rescuers that she never had seen a forest or a meadow, and where we live, almost everywhere are forests and meadows, and that she had never ridden in a car. Everybody here asks themselves how this could happen and what was the motivation of the mother and the grandparents, and everyone is worried if that poor girl will ever recover from this cruel upbringing.

15

I want to say kids are resilient, because I’ve seen some amazing resilience. But I do think that already having experienced some love or connection is key, because with kids who recover well after very bad abuse and cruelty, I think they usually had more exposure to various different people. Like maybe those social pathways in the brain have been formed, at least?

And of course, understimulation in early development can’t be rectified later in life, as we know from Genie and the Romanian orphanages. But she’s just a bit behind in climbing stairs, she’ll catch up. She won’t be able to focus her eyes on the far distance, I don’t know how well that recovers at eight.

It sounds like she was more like the girl in my first example, in which case she has - in my experience - a good chance to adapt and do very well. I think being separated from her mother and grandparents will be very hard for her. That’s the worst part. Even kids from violent abuse miss their abusers, but I think they might accept faster that they can’t stay with them.

16

I’m not sure how relevant this is, but it seems to me that maybe a microcosm of the scenario can be observed in how anti-vax parents behave. When my kids were young, there was a lot of loud noise about the supposed dangers of the MMR vaccine, and at the point when my kids were due their vaccines, we didn’t have the same clarity of information we have today, nor the sense of finality that came about with the resolution of the Andrew Wakefield case.

As parents, we were presented with the opportunity to fear: ‘what if this thing everyone is doing, is a bad thing? What if we are doing something right now that will be very bad for our children?’. In our case, it was just the public conflict of opinion obscuring the access to quality information to make the decision - and for a lot of parents, this fear and protective instinct drove them to make a worse choice for their kids. It’s not the same as when that instinct is subverted by mental illness, but I think it’s the same instinct being affected.

17

The girl now is in the care of a foster family, but it was reported by officials that she will be granted contact to her mother and grandparents, for this reason.

18

This is my theory for how I turned out okay. My early childhood was filled with very loving relatives. And I got a lot of attention from them. Which is why it irks me when people applaud others who achieve excellence despite difficult backgrounds. I mean, I get it, and I’m not saying they shouldn’t be supported and feel good about themselves, but it sort of implies that those other kids who struggled in life could have achieved the same if they were just strong enough. Success often comes down to whether you ever had people in your corner, in spite of it all.