[dropcap]M[/dropcap]itch (not his real name) is just nine years old and has lived in Saint Lucia all his life—a blessing, some might say, but also a curse, considering the island’s shortage of facilities that elsewhere are taken for granted. According to his
father, Mitch’s mother is a heavy drinker, who was often seen smoking even as she breastfed him. Many are convinced Mitch’s mom’s drinking while pregnant is responsible for all that’s wrong with him.
As a baby Mitch shared living quarters with his mother and two-year-old brother. Occasionally the boys would be dropped off at their father Andy’s (not his real name) and picked up later by their mother. When the boys were just two and four years old, she took them to their father’s and never returned for them. By Andy’s account, although he fought a long court battle to have the boys’ mother’s presence back into their lives, as it stands right now, “Human Services don’t even want her near the children because of her drinking problem.” Mitch and his older sibling have been guardianed mainly by their dad and grandaunt, at separate addresses.
When Mitch turned six, Andy started receiving “bad reports” from his son’s school. “He was touching people’s things, destroying other children’s belongings, sometimes even his own belongings. There are times when his mind would tell him to do things and he’d do them. He told me he started doing things that were wrong because voices were telling him to do the wrong things he was doing.”
Andy says he would try to discipline his son. He would take away the boy’s toys, talk to him, even beat him sometimes when he thought that was necessary.
When the boy was nearly eight he had to be taken to the National Wellness Centre. Although Andy was uncomfortable with the idea, he followed doctors’ orders and agreed for his son to be put on special medication. “They said it would calm him down,” Andy recalled. Later, however, when he noticed his son was developing tics, he returned Mitch to the Centre. “The medication was too strong for him,” Andy said. The boy was taken off the suspect medication and another was prescribed.
When Mitch turned eight his grandaunt, who usually picked him and his older brother up after school, requested the boys be transferred to another school for her convenience. At his new school, Mitch’s behaviour further deteriorated. “He would go through the other kids’ bags; he’d take their stuff. I even heard he wrote a note in which he referred to his teacher as a bitch, then handed it to another student to pass to his teacher.”
Andy says Mitch was suspended three times: for sticking a pencil in another student’s face; for touching a teacher and for threatening to shoot other students. Andy explains: “They say he said he would take a gun to school to shoot a child.” But Mitch told his father what he’d said was he’d “take a crab to school and let it bite the other kid.”
Officials from Mitch’s school, keeping in mind the times we’re living in, are especially cautious about threats. After the boy’s last suspension Andy and Mitch’s grandaunt were invited to a meeting with the school principal, Mitch’s teacher,
a doctor from the Wellness Centre, the district officer, and the chief education officer. It was generally agreed that everything possible would be done to give Mitch the help he needs. But on September 3, Andy received a call from the school informing him that his son had not been assigned a class and was sitting alone outside the principal’s office.
When Andy went to the school to find out what was going on, he was handed a letter dated July 2, from the Ministry of Education, informing him that “all the necessary medical treatment recommended [for Mitch] must be attended to during the 2018 summer vacation.” Moreover, that Mitch would be accepted at the school only if his guardians proved via a note from his physician that he was ready to resume classses.
When Andy sought an explanation from the education ministry as to why he had not received the letter earlier he was told the ministry had no contact for him. Andy says that after Mitch was denied placement in the school, he made several attempts to meet the ministry’s requirements but was unable to meet with Mitch’s physician at the Wellness Centre.
The doctor at the Centre had a different story: “He [Andy] was supposed to take his son for check-ups during the summer vacation but he never did.” The doctor explained that when Andy came in search of her on September 4 she was attending to another patient, so she sent out a nurse to speak with him. “I could hear him outside shouting that he wants his letter,” the doctor recalled. She said she expected Andy to wait until she was free, at which time she would have conducted the examination necessary before writing the letter required by the education ministry. But since she was unable to attend to Mitch the moment he arrived at the Centre with his father, Andy left in a huff with his son.
There has not been another meeting since September 4, no words exchanged between Andy and Centre personnel. Meanwhile, a disturbed and untreated Mitch sits at home, unable to attend school.
