Text extracted via OCR from the original document. May contain errors from the scanning process.
and their scarf and belt accessories before choosing one for her appearance at the
breakfast table.
Five-year-old Grace was a suspicious and dictatorial presence in the
Center’s kindergarten class. Articulate and righteous, she confronted children and
staff alike with evidence for the unfairness she found everywhere. In legalistic
defense of her rights and sometimes those of her peers, she used her strong wide
face, penetrating look and quick and observant mind aggressively. Her somewhat
intimidated childcare worker maintained Grace's cornrowed hair with care. Sensitive
to criticism and quick to anger, she competed with her teacher for control of the
class. Her drug abusing young mother had escaped from her own mother’s
authoritarian house, leaving six-month-old Grace in the care of her commanding
grandmother, a matronly church elder. Recent studies by David Reiss and
associates at George Washington University assessed psychosocial dynamics in
genetically varied families. They found that genetic similarities amplified the
expression of individual characteristics of interpersonal relating through what might
be called personality resonance. Relatives often commented that Grace and her
grandmother, being alike, deserved one another. Shortly after her fourth birthday
Grace was removed from her grandmother's home while the circumstances
surrounding the accidental scalding of the bottom half of her body in an overheated
bath were being investigated. She began her first conversation with me, “Hey doctor
baldy, why are your bottom teeth so crooked?”
Damon was darkly handsome, with teasing eyes and a gleaming smile.
Talking to his legal guardian on the pay phone in the afternoon of his second day at
KIDS, he was heard to be making charges of mistreatment by the staff. He asked
his guardian, loud enough to be heard throughout the day room, “What does it take
to get someone fired around here?” Six years old and abandoned by his mother at
the age of three, Damon came to KIDS with a history of provoking administrative
conflicts at several children’s shelters. His record showed that once he successfully
used accusations of beatings to get a staff member fired employing charges that
were later shown to have been fabricated. He argued persuasively, manufacturing
events and quoting imaginary conversations with smooth confidence. He could
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