Love vs. Genetics

Watching the case of Danielle on Oprah this week was both heart-breaking and fascinating at the same time. I couldn't believe that extreme neglect could cause such a huge physical impact on a person. I had always thought that a person would be able to develop fairly normally as long as he wasn't born with a condition like autism or down syndrome. Sure, I expected Danielle to be depressed and lacking social skills but I could never have imagined her development would be lacking to this degree. I used to volunteer at a summer camp where volunteers were paired  one-on-one with a child that had some sort of mental disability. One day I was assigned to a little girl named Julia, who like Danielle, was around 8 or 9 years old but behaved like an infant. She couldn't walk upright, she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't speak and on the play ground she had to be pushed in a baby swing. Let me just say this was one of the hardest days of my life. Julia's severe mental handicap was the reason she could not function like a normal child, but if you didn't know, it would hard to tell the difference between Julia's condition and Danielle's condition. I found it very interesting that the lack of love, attention and social interaction that Danielle received could be as costing to her brain development as the genetics in Julia.