"How To Win" Rosellen Brown

The 1970's were a barbaric time if you suffered from a mental disability, shock treatment, lobotomy, Thorazine, and lifetime lockups in underfunded, understaffed mental wards were common.  In "How To Win" Rosellen Brown writes about a family with a deeply troubled six year old boy named Christopher.  Christophers's mother Margaret is at her wits end, she simply cannot control her son's violent outbursts and his overall lack of reasoning.  In 2010 this boy would probably be labeled autistic, in the 1970's, in Magaret's world there is no definition.  Christopher's father deals with his family's circumstance by down-playing the boy's troubles and dismissing them as acts performed by a normal rambunctious little boy.  Margaret feels guilty about her children, which I believe is shared by every good mother who has ever lived, she fantasizes about life without Chris about a different loving normal six year old.  The 1970's saw the design of Individualized Education Programs (IEP's) which are designed to give kids like Chris the support they need to one day succeed in their lives.  Christopher is hand-cuffed by a now outdated drug Thorazine which slows people to a snail's pace and gives Chris the appearance of moving "underwater."  There are two points in Rosellen Brown's biography that lends clues to her writing this piece, the first is the story revolves around a disaster that could have been found in any American family, the second is the way Brown investigates these "ordinary" parents reactions to circumstances of fate.