Is he Retarded – Little Edouard Tales 

At age seven, Edouard’s school principal told his parents something was wrong with their little awkward boy.

“Eduard needs to be tested,”  they said. “We think he has a below-average IQ and learning disability.” 

Edouard knew he was not stupid but different, and he wondered why people did not understand him and why school was so wrong. He was just being himself.

At seven years old, Edouard was admitted to hospital for what he was told would be a simple operation to remove tonsils.

But what was supposed to be a routine stay covertly turned into a few weeks of cognitive assessments and then tonsil surgery.

His parents never explained why all the weird tests. Confused, he wondered what wires glued to his skull and being shoved into a machine had to do with a sore throat.

Edouard found the eccentric-looking doctors in white coats amusing. He turned everything into a game, aced the answers and giggled at all the attention.

It is commonly accepted in clinical neuropsychology that assessing cognitive strengths and weaknesses is helpful for children with perceived learning and attention developmental disorders.

This labelling was the doing of his impatient teachers, and his parents bought into it ‘hook, line, and sinker.’  Ma and Pa had no idea of Edouard’s hell at school or how his brain worked.  

The labelling adults in the room wanted to identify if Edouard’s brain functions were contributing to his problems at school and in other areas of adaptation. 

They aimed to match his strengths and weaknesses to some treatment and identify (if at all) whether he had neurological and psychiatric problems or a learning disability.  — what a load of crap! 

“Did Edouard” really have a learning disability?” his loving parents asked.

In retrospect, no one thought to ask if the lousy learning environment, bullying, allergies, or high intelligence contributed to Edouard’s problems.