Apparent miracle in progress

by ANABEL DONALD
HRISTMAS is an ap propriate time for miracles. It is the season of hope and of hoping against hope. Parents of brain-damaged children often spend years hoping against hope— that something can be done for their child, that some doctor will find a wonder drug to make a braindamaged child normal. Thames Television's hourlong documentary (Monday, 8 p.m.), about Bunny Cvitanovich, showed an apparent miracle in progress. Bunny. severely 'brain-damaged at b'oh, was given up as a hopeless case by British doctors. Then his parents took him to the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia.
The film chronicles his amazing development, from a child who had no apparent contact with the outside world and who spent much of his time lying on his back staring at nothing, to a child who is obviously trying to talk, gazing in fascination at the tape recorder on which his own voice is recorded.
He is seen switching , the machine on and off, talking to it; climbing up and down stairs, and — most moving of all — laughing in delight at himself, at the world round him.
How is this done? Not by miracle drugs, certainly. The main factor in the treatment is the institute's belief that braindamaged children need more sensory stimulation than normal children, not less.
The programme for each child is different, but it is a crash course in sound, in movement, in brain stimulation. "Patterning" is the name they give to the strenuous imitation of a baby's crawling which the children go through, often for hours every day, either crawling themselves or having their limbs and head moved by other people, parents and helpers.
Each child is marked on a scale of development, and Bunny's improvement on this scale was startling. Evidently the scale is an important part of the treatment, psychologically; it gives the parents something to look forward to, an aim to work towards with their children.
As Glenn Doman, one of the directors of the institute, pointed out "we give parents Ie e:iance to enjoy their children again."
So many questions rose in my mind after watching this programme. that it seemed a
positive delight that ITV devoted Smnething to Say
( Thursday, 11 p.m.) to a discussion of Bunny's case and the institute's methods.
Glenn Doman was there to put the institute's case; David Krech, an American Professor of Psychology, James Loring, Director of the Spastic Society of Great Britain and an eminent paediatric neurologist, made up the group.
Alun Owen is a playwright always worth watching. His latest offering, The Piano
Player (rrv, Sunday, 10.15)
was funny as ever, and had some shrewd observations on our still class-ridden society.
Most of the characters in the play were snobs of one kind or another, and it was the conflict of the different snobberies which made the play.
A gang of upper-class louts threatened a piano-playing virtuoso with a peasant Irish background because he had spoken roughly (with justification) to a girl they are escorting. He escapes their violence by walking away with the girl as hostage.
They call the police and accuse him of abduction. He is taken to the station, the girl explains that she went willingly, and he threatens to sue the police for wrongful arrest and the louts for malicious libel.
From this simple structure Owen made a thorough and witty examination of people's strong conviction of their own superiority. The piano-player believed his genius made him always right; the girl relied on her prettiness and charm; the louts, the public school they had been to; the policemen. their position as the nannies of It was not a cruel play, however, but a sympathetic and hopeful one. The snobbery was a product of stupidity and unenlightenment; the girl realised her own empty values, the piano-player saw that a vindictive pursuit of revenge was a waste of his talent. A cheerful and intelligently optimistic look at life in Britain.
I won't tell you anything about Christmas programming; the networks are doing that quite fully enough as it is. So in wishing you a joyful Christmas I'd just like to leave you with one thought; the best thing to do with television at this time of year is — turn it off.