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Childhood is terrifying: one can't make decisions about one's life. It's difficult to articulate one's experiences, if one has no language, because the experiences are all for the first time, so one has no reference point. Even if one can express one's needs and desires, and if one could make good decisions for one's self, adults, far too frequently, see themselves as in control of every aspect of one's life, rarely listen to what one is expressing and are frequent to anger, intimidation, threats and violence if contradicted with one's facts.
Now, add to this problem high intelligence, clear perceptions of the adults around them that those adults don't want to see and mix in a behavioral health challenge. At first, the adults don't notice that one is, perhaps, different, so one can cover up, more out of fear of adults' reactions than any guilt or shame for one's difference. Then, the difference becomes noticeable: first, to other children, who may taunt and tease or outright assault, attack isolate and shun -- but then, too, to those terrifying adults who have power over one's life. Adults can and do punish, refuse to hear, apply "punishments" (which are actually tortures, since one cannot change one's behavior and, ostensibly, "punishment" ought to be behavior modification, although it doesn't effectively work that way).
Now, one is totally alone: feared, hated and condemned by one's child peers and by the terrifying adults. Nobody can be trusted, especially one's self.
I would normally dismiss a "Lifetime" movie as sentimental garbage of no real substance. In this case, I would have been wrong.
This is the most powerful depiction I've yet seen on childhood behavioral health challenges. Anybody who knows a child, or just knows of a child, needs to see this.
It doesn't patronize children. The child's point of view is primary in the movie, yet it isn't a portrayal of a grown up mind in children's clothing.
It is not idealistic and it does not stereotype.
I just hope our little hero, Phoebe, comes to adulthood uninhibited by mind altering drugs and other useless "treatments." I hope the people around her can accept and love her as their equal, as she deserves.
Love heals. Respect heals. Dignity heals. Compassion heals.
I think the real Wonderland is out here, where people threaten executions and babble all manner of gibberish in the name of "Mental Health" and leave millions of sensitive, creative, delicate minds to wander in isolation and terror because we're just too stubborn, selfish and prejudiced to accept each other as we are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_in_Wonderland
