Subject: As Drug Babies Grow Older, Schools Strive To Meet Their Needs
Date: Published: 12/27/89 (202 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Second Chance:
    As Drug Babies Grow
    Older, Schools Strive
    To Meet Their Needs
    ---
    A Los Angeles Program Deals
    With Behavior Extremes,
    Short Attention Spans
    ---
    Lots of Old-Fashioned Love
    ----
    By Cathy Trost
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    LOS ANGELES -- The children look like a casting call for
 Sesame Street, but they carry unseen burdens.
    One slim, six-year-old boy sits on the floor with his
 classmates happily singing an alphabet song.  Two years ago,
 he used to throw hour-long tantrums.  He would build a tower
 of blocks, then shout that it was on fire and knock it down.
 Last year, while classmates watched the space shuttle blast
 off on television, he banged on his desk and cried.
    What little his teachers know of his background helps
 explain some of his problems.  While pregnant with him, his
 mother used alcohol, cocaine and PCP. After he was born, she
 would abandon him from time to time in deserted buildings.
 Once, a building exploded in flames when he was inside.  "He
 had an area in the schoolroom where he could just go and
 cry," says a social worker at his school.
    The troubled boy is part of a pilot project here for
 children exposed to drugs in their mothers' wombs.  These 30
 or so preschoolers and kindergarteners represent the advance
 guard of a generation of drug babies who are growing up and
 starting school.  The project's goal is to provide early help
 to children who are of normal intelligence but considered at
 high risk for developmental, behavioral and learning
 problems.
    Researchers are just now beginning to uncover a web of
 problems related to prenatal exposure to crack and other
 drugs, though much still is not known of the long-term
 effects.  A child's ability to learn may be impaired.  Fine
 motor skills may be hampered.  A child may have difficulty
 developing strong attachments for others.  Extremes of
 behavior are common, from apathy to aggression, passivity to
 hyperactivity, indiscriminate trust to extreme suspicion.
    "These are vulnerable kids who won't make it in a
 classroom where at four you're supposed to know how to print
 your name and all the ABCs," says Carol Cole, one of the
 teachers in the program.  "Their preschool and kindergarten
 environments need to be more protective."
    The numbers of afflicted children are multiplying,
 especially in drug-laden urban areas.  Within a few years, 40%
 to 60% of the children in some inner-city schools will have
 been prenatally exposed to drugs, predicts Judy Howard,
 clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of
 California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, whose research
 helped spark the project.
    Even the suburbs and the urban enclaves of the well-to-do
 are likely to see the effects of the drug epidemic in their
 classrooms soon.  A 1988 survey of 36 urban and suburban
 hospitals found that 11% of the newborns had been exposed to
 drugs in the womb.
    Most schools are ill-prepared to handle, much less
 nourish, such children.  Drug-exposed children may look
 normal, but their disabilities often frustrate teachers who
 may not be familiar with their backgrounds.  To help spread
 the lessons it is learning, the program's administrators
 opened their classrooms to a reporter, requesting only that
 children's names not be used.
    On a recent day, the classroom at the Salvin Special
 Education School crackles with the combustible energy of
 three- and four-year-olds pushing dolls in strollers and
 hurtling down slides.  A girl crawls on a visitor's lap.  She
 says playing outside and coloring are her favorite things to
 do.
    She is being raised by her 50-year-old father, who
 teachers say started using heroin at age 13.  Her 26-year-old
 mother has to go to meetings because she uses drugs, the
 child says.  Her grandmother died of AIDS, contracted from her
 husband, a drug addict.
    Teachers say the little girl is doing well in school, but
 her actions sometimes betray a wellspring of frustration.
 Once, a teacher recalls, the child was playing in a sandbox
 when she got upset.  She reached into her sock and pretended
 to pull out a knife to jab at a boy's face.
    Drugs and violence are familiar to these children.
 Circle-time talks sometimes include the news of a mother's
 jailing or a parents' fight.  "To pretend that it's not a
 reality is to deny them," says Ms. Cole, the teacher.  She
 recalls the time two preschoolers argued over a wagon and one
 angrily threw the other the sign of the Crips, a notorious
 drug gang.
    Another time, she asked her class for the name of the
 "special house that caterpillars make before they become
 beautiful butterflies."
    "It starts ca-ca-ca," she hinted.
    "Cocaine!" one of the boys proudly replied.
    Teachers also see more subtle signs of the children's drug
 exposure and fragmented lives.  A girl demands to be left
 alone, bumps into walls, or stares blankly into space.  A boy
 screams and throws himself on the floor because he wants to
 be picked up but can't express himself.
    This is the first day of school for a chunky
 three-year-old in pink and white barrettes and a pink
 corduroy jumper.  Though she is very bright, the girl's
 language skills lag those of others her age by about six
 months.  Her coordination is poor, too.  Simply building a
 tower of blocks is a struggle.
    These children also carry the scars of their unstable home
 lives.  Many have been abandoned or taken away from their
 biological parents, then bumped from home to home.  Exposed in
 the womb to heroin, cocaine and PCP, one boy was taken from
 his mother by the state after his sister was born addicted.
 By age three, he has been in six different homes and now
 lives in a group home staffed by nine care-givers.
    On the average, the children in the pilot project have
 been placed in three different homes; some have been shuffled
 through as many as seven or eight.  Not one of the eight
 children in Vicky Ferrara's kindergarten class lives with his
 or her biological mother, though some of the mothers drift in
 and out of their children's lives.  Most of the children are
 being reared by foster parents or grandparents.
    "That kind of `who's going to take care of me' gets
 translated into difficulty making transitional changes, even
 from art class to the playground," says Ms. Cole.  She
 believes such insecurity could mean difficulties later in
 making commitments, from jobs to relationships.
    In the classroom, two three-year-old boys dressed
 identically in shorts and suspenders play quietly.  The boys
 share a foster mother who cares for four preschoolers and six
 infants in two group homes.  All of the children, Elouise
 Dangerfield, the foster mother, says, have been "touched by
 drugs."
    One of the boys was born prematurely to a drug addict who
 hasn't seen her son since he was a few months old.  As a baby,
 he was plagued with respiratory problems and other ailments
 that kept him hospitalized for six weeks.
    The other boy's mother gave him up at birth.  His father
 has been in jail for most of his life.  At birth, the boy
 suffered seizures that doctors thought were linked to his
 mother's drug use; he spent time on breathing monitors and
 sedatives.  "He was the kind of child who had nightmares in
 his sleep," says Mrs. Dangerfield.
    Mrs. Dangerfield says the boys have thrived in the
 program.  In an ordinary classroom, teachers wouldn't have
 been able to handle the boys' temper tantrums or short
 attention spans, she says.
    Children are referred to the program by hospitals, social
 service agencies and foster-care providers.  But only a tiny
 percentage can be accepted.  Attention is lavished on those
 fortunate few.  The 24 preschoolers, for instance, are
 assigned three teachers and five aides.  All the children are
 seen regularly by a social worker, a psychologist, a
 pediatrician, a speech and language therapist, and a physical
 education teacher.  Parents and care-givers are invited to
 attend a support program.
    Caring for drug-damaged children demands an extraordinary
 commitment from the staff -- in and out of the classroom.
 Some ferry children to after-school parties they normally
 would have missed for lack of transportation.  Others spend
 long hours with children's families or caseworkers.
    But such care is costly.  The Los Angeles Unified School
 District pays up to $18,000 a year to educate each of these
 children.  In contrast, it pays an average $4,000 a year per
 child in its regular classrooms.
    "It's worth it in line with what we are learning," says
 Phillip Callison, the district's assistant superintendent for
 special education.  Among the lessons gleaned from the
 two-year-old project:  Routine is crucial.  Abrupt transitions
 from one activity to another can be unsettling.  Lots of
 old-fashioned love helps immeasurably.
    Educators across the nation are hoping to apply some of
 these lessons in their own school districts.  Representatives
 of several school districts have sought information from the
 project's teachers and administrators.
    The results here are hopeful.  The boy who was terrified of
 fires and explosions turned out to be a gifted child; his
 talents are emerging as he becomes more secure at school and
 with a loving foster family.  He is the first in the program
 to be adapted into a regular first grade.  Two others have
 graduated into a regular kindergarten.
    Ms. Ferrara, the kindergarten teacher, says the biggest
 change is that the children "are now able to discuss their
 feelings, needs and wants" rather than misbehave in
 frustration.  When one girl first came to the class, "she went
 to 20 different toys in 20 minutes," flinging them around,
 says Ms. Ferrara.  "Now, she has whole themes in her play."  It
 also helps that her sixth foster home has been a success.
    It's story time for the preschoolers, and a teacher is
 reading a fairy tale to a four-year-old girl in a red dress,
 red socks and patent-leather shoes.  "They lived happily ever
 after," the teacher concludes.  Then she pauses, and adds, "I
 hope that happens to you."

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