Education, study and knowledge

Wild children: childhoods without contact with humanity

“The young man was found lost, in a wild state and full of scars from animal bites. She seemed immune to heat and cold, she tore clothes that people tried to put on her and refused to eat cooked food, consuming only raw food. "

It is possible that this description reminds some fictional characters such as Tarzan or Mowgli of Jungle Book.

However, this time they refer to Victor of Aveyron, one of the best known cases of "wild child". This young man was found by hunters at the end of 1799 in a forest in the city of Aveyron, with the characteristics previously described, highlighting also a large scar on the neck probably made with a knife or sharp object, which suggests that they may have tried to end his lifetime.

The case of Victor of Aveyron

The child in question had been spotted on multiple occasions climbing trees, running on all fours, drinking in streams and eating acorns and roots, until he was finally captured when during the winter he approached farms in search of food.

The doctors of the time thought that the boy suffered 

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Mental retardation her not understanding or responding to language. Victor would be adopted by a teacher named Itard, which considered that the infant only had a deficit in language development due to the long period that the child was supposed to have subsisted in solitude.

While a woman called Ms. Guerin would take care of the child, Itard would try to educate and reintroduce the little wild child into society, trying to teach him language, moral behavior and social norms.

However, despite dedicating many years to this task and the importance of Itard's work (his methods being taken into account a posteriori by educational methodologies such as Montesori) no great successes were achieved, the attempt at education was abandoned and the child was left under the guardianship of Mrs. Guerin. Victor would die at forty years of age, still in her care.

What is a wild child?

Victor and many others like him are considered wild children; fall into this category those infants who have been isolated from society for a long period of time of their childhood and / or adolescence, either because they were abandoned in a wild environment, because they were lost, or because they were held or confined during their childhood or puberty.

These children present serious alterations in both behavioral and cognitive aspects, product of the lack of acquisition of knowledge and skills that allow coexistence and participation in the social life of a community.

It should be noted that there is a certain variability in the observed cases. Within the wild children you can find three basic types: children who have lived a long time in solitude (as in the case of Victor de Aveyron), those who survived in an environment hostile being cared for by other animal species, and infants who have been mistreated and confined for much of their lifetime.

Characteristics of wild children

One of the most obvious symptoms is the absence or poor development of language. Although the different authors have disagreed on whether human language is a fully learned skill or whether the structures necessary for it already exist Since birth, the existence of learning periods in which there is an explosive development of some capacities such as the language. These periods are called critical period.

In the case of language, experts have pointed out that the critical period occurs between three and four years of age. In this way, if in this phase the appropriate stimulation is not given, the child's capacities are not develop correctly, weighing down all his evolution and making it difficult for him to adapt correctly to the environment Social. Not only linguistic capacities but also representational, relational and even the construction of personal identity would be affected.

Antisocial children?

Besides the lack of language, Another of the main deficiencies of these children and in turn the one that explains most of the rest is the lack of socialization. Because through social interaction you learn and exchange information with others, it is possible to develop perspectives and ways of thinking and acting that enrich the personal repertoire and contribute to improving adaptation to half.

Due to their poor or no socialization, wild children are not able to participate in the society, acting on the basis of what they have learned throughout their life in the habitat in which they have grown up. That is, their attitudes and abilities make them capable of surviving in the environment in which they grew up, but they are not applicable to community life.

Another element common to most cases is the avoidance of human contact. Both physically and emotionally, these children try to distance themselves as far as possible from their peers, which has made the treatment of the cases difficult in the early stages.

This fact is explained if it is taken into account that, in addition to the fact that they have not had contact with human beings in a long time or that it has been aversive, these children have been removed against their will from the environment in which they grew up, and even on the occasions when they have been adopted by animals they have been able to see their savior die at the hands of humans.

Other known cases of wild children

In addition to the case of Victor, described above, there are a large number of examples. Below we will examine the history of two more of them.

Amala and Makala, the wolf girls of India

On October 9, 1920, two terrified and dirty girls looked in terror at an armed crowd gathered around them, being protected from the crowd by a she-wolf. The people around them, inhabitants of the village of Godamuri (in India), opened fire on the she-wolf, and had it not been for the intervention of a local reverend, Joseph Amrito Lal Singh, would have ended the lives of the girls believing that they were spirits.

Both girls were caught and taken with great resistance on their part to an orphanage managed by the reverend, where he and his family would try to re-educate them and reintroduce them into society.

The symptoms of isolation

From the beginning the girls showed a high level of aggressiveness towards human beings, biting and scratching those who tried to get close to them and allowed only their own mutual company and that of the dogs of the place. They ripped off the clothes that were put on them and showed difficulty in standing upright. Both girls walked on all fours, apparently without perceiving cold or heat. His interaction with others was limited to grunts, which made socialization very difficult to achieve. They both detested cooked food, eating only raw meat on the patio floor.

Like the wolves who had cared for them, both girls tended to sleep during the day and live at night. It was common to hear them howling at night and they seemed to have a somewhat more developed sense of smell and night vision than normal.

Unfortunately, a year after she entered the orphanage, the three-year-old Amala died of dysentery. Her sister had to be forcibly separated from her mortal remains, the latter reacting with tears and a great sadness. With the passage of time, Kamala would begin to make small advances in terms of socialization and language acquisition, acquiring about 30 words, and beginning to walk upright. Over time she was able to communicate with the reverend and his family through monosyllabic words, until finally the little girl she died of typhus at the age of 15.

Genie's case

Like that of Victor of Aveyron, the case of Genie she is one of the best known "wild child", this time located in the state of California. The girl in question, born in the 1950s with severe health problems (incompatible RH, congenital hip dislocation and possible intellectual disability), she was locked by her father in a small room and grew up tied to a chair during the day and she caged overnight from twenty months to thirteen years of age, on a forced diet based on baby food and other similar abuse.

It wasn't until she was thirteen years old that Genie's mother, along with her, managed to escape her husband. After a few weeks she went to the welfare office, and the police subsequently took the girl into her custody. The girl showed absence of speech, malnutrition and behavioral difficulties such as compulsive masturbation.

Re-educating Genie

As with Victor of Aveyron and the sisters Amala and Kamala, Genie went on to be treated by a group of doctors, linguists, and psychologists in order to re-educate her and integrate her into society. Genie's is the case of the wild child that has shown the most evolution, being this young woman capable of creating sentences and relating words, although with an incorrect sentence structure.

Although the intervention was somewhat successful, the Mental Health Association from the United States, she considered that progress was not enough and finally it was decided to suspend the budget for the girl, who would end up going through different adoptive families. Unfortunately, in some of them she also suffered abuse, as a result of which she regressed to her previous state and stopped speaking again.

Currently Genie lives in an adult care facility, without releasing more information about her due to ethical considerations about her privacy.

Brain plasticity and the critical period

Childhood is a stage of life in which we are especially sensitive to changes, to the marks that the environment leaves on us. This means, among other things, that what during the first years of our lives we have a unique ability to learn and to detect patterns in all those experiences that occur to us. This is reflected very well in the way in which we begin to learn and internalize a language, for example; a technically very complicated task that, however, we mastered with astonishing speed as children.

However, this learning ability, linked to a neurological phenomenon known as brain plasticity, it is double edged. As in our childhood we are very sensitive to what happens to us, we are also sensitive to what does not happen to us. Specifically, the fact of not having learned to master the language and to socialize with other human beings that dominate makes, at an age threshold, the so-called critical period, we become incapable of learning to use the language.

At that moment our brain no longer has the ability to change in such a profound way as to internalize such complex learning. In addition, this affects all our cognitive abilities, since in a way language influences the way we think. In the case of wild children, this is clear.

Final reflection

The circumstances that have surrounded this type of case have been the breeding ground for numerous investigations that tried to find out if someone grown in isolation could clarify the effect of education and the influence of society or if characteristics such as language are innate or acquired by exploring multiple facets of the lives of these children.

In any case, it is imperative to always take ethical considerations into account of exhaustive investigation of this phenomenon, since they can be a great detriment to children and their integrity.

Bibliographic references

  • Hutton, J. H. (1940): "Wolf-children". In: Folklore, transactions of the folk-lore society, vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 9-31, London: William Glaisher Ltd., 1940.
  • Itard, J. M. G. (1801). De l'education d'un homme sauvage ou des premiers developpemens physiques et moraux du jeuneççç sauvage de l'Aveyron. Goujon. Paris.
  • Lenneberg, E. H. and Lenneberg, E. (eds.) (1975): Fundamentals of language development, Alianza Editorial.
  • Rymer, Russ (1999). Genie: a Scientific Tragedy. Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 12, 1994).
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