When Isabelle speaks, she has a slight nasal slur. "You look so nice and so beautiful and so sweet." You're my friend in the whole world," she crooned. Then Isabelle took my microphone in her hands. Who was I? What was I doing here? Which TV show did I like? Did I know the Muppets? I turned around, and quite suddenly, the room was filled with questions. She had crept in from school and was giving me a hug. Then, just after I turned off my recorder to take a break, I felt two small arms circle my neck from behind. Jessica spoke with me for over an hour in the family's home in their woodsy, suburban neighborhood while we waited for her three children to come home from school. And, you know, I'd rather her be overly safe than be on CNN." "And these are like middle class type schools. "She's not allowed to go to the bathroom alone at her school, because there have been numerous instances of girls with Williams syndrome being molested at school when they were alone in the hallway," Jessica says. Isabelle is not supposed to tell other schoolchildren that she loves them. Isabelle is not allowed to tell them that she loves them. Every teacher at Isabelle's public school has been warned. It's not just Jessica and her family who must be vigilant. And when the doorbell rings, Jessica will leap over a coffee table to intercept her. She tries not to take Isabelle to the store. She can not take Isabelle to the dog park. In fact, because of Isabelle, Jessica has had to rethink even the most basic elements of her day-to-day life. "It's like, 'My friend, you have no idea,' " Jessica says. But the reality could not be more different. Essentially, the woman blamed Jessica for not keeping closer watch on her daughter - for neglecting to teach her the importance of not getting into a car with someone she didn’t know. "She said, 'I am a stranger, you know!' " Jessica says. The woman, Jessica says, was incredibly angry. Then Isabelle overheard a lady just down the beach. Isabelle had been begging Jessica to go to Dairy Queen, and Jessica had been putting her off. A typical example happened a couple of years ago, when Jessica and her family were spending the day at the beach. "We would try to restrain her, but it was somewhat half-heartedly, because we didn't want to embarrass her by calling her on the carpet about how open she was," Jessica says.īut as Isabelle got older, the negative side of her trusting nature began to play a larger role. In those days, Jessica says, she and her family were more or less tolerant of Isabelle's trusting and loving nature. Strangers would stop Jessica to tell about how adorably loving Isabelle was. She reached for them all, and, in return, everyone loved her. She loved everyone: family, friends, strangers. early-warning system."įor Jessica, there are good and bad things about parenting a child with this kind of personality.įor instance, when Isabelle was younger, she was chronically happy. "They don't have that kind of evolutionary thing that other kids have, that little twinge of anxiety like, 'Who is this person? What should I do here?' " Jessica explains. (NPR is not using full names in this story for privacy and safety reasons.) This means that it is essentially biologically impossible for kids like Isabelle to distrust. There appears to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals (oxytocin) that signals when to trust and when to distrust. Researchers theorize that this is probably because of a problem in their limbic system, the part of the brain that regulates emotion. But also, kids and adults with Williams love people, and they are literally pathologically trusting. Children with Williams are often physically small and frequently have developmental delays. Jessica's daughter, Isabelle, has Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder with a number of symptoms. "Will you take me? Can I go home with you?" Jessica heard Isabelle plead. It was the usual post-drama-class conversation until about two minutes in. Isabelle, as she usually did, exchanged hellos and struck up a conversation. The woman was neatly dressed, most likely just a well-meaning suburban grandmother who had come to retrieve a grandchild on behalf of an over-extended parent, most likely a perfectly harmless person. The drama class had just gotten out, and everybody was standing around talking when Jessica noticed her 9-year-old, Isabelle, making her way over to an elderly woman Jessica had never seen.
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