The Child Who Spoke With her Eyes

This is the story of love overcoming tragedy, of a beautiful child who cannot speak but who communicates with her eyes. A ‘Call the Midwife’ story – Northern style!

When Sue and Sid Stern learn in July 1967 that their beautiful baby, Vanessa has cerebral palsy and will be profoundly disabled, they are stunned and heartbroken.

But even as she receives the devastating diagnosis from Doctor Ben Epstein, Sue has a deep certainty that this baby was destined to come to her, and she’s fired with a resolve to do everything in her power to enable Vanessa to grow and develop like any child.

This awareness and determination carry Sue through the difficulties of feeding a child with a tongue thrust, who cannot raise her head, who can neither use her hands nor sit in a chair, who speaks only with her eyes. Days, months and years devoted to teaching and helping Vanessa bring small but significant victories, for when Vanessa is four, a speech therapist tells Sue that she has the language development of a two-year-old although she is unable to utter a word.

And Vanessa is beautiful, with light gold hair, luminous blue eyes surrounded by a fringe of black lashes, a perfect little nose, an all-embracing smile, and she loves being the centre of attention.

In this memoir, a work of deep reflection and expert storytelling, Sue also invites readers into the world of other families with disabled children that she and Vanessa meet at physiotherapy sessions, and later in 1971, forced to spend many weeks in St Mary’s Maternity Hospital Manchester, awaiting her second child, she listens the stories of the pregnant women she meets, their heartbreak and their joys, and becomes a friend

Unique to this account is the depiction of life in a subnormality hospital – institutions for the severely subnormal or ‘ineducable’ that happily exist no longer.

In 1975, with two little boys in tow, the Sterns make the devastating decision to send their daughter, aged eight, into residential care, and only Cranage Hall Hospital for the Subnormal, in Cheshire, will accept such a disabled child. Sue is devastated, but over time, Vanessa settles, and makes astonishing progress in the wonderful Woodlands School, situated in the grounds.

Finally, this is an account of a spiritual journey Sue makes with Vanessa as she explores her Jewish roots and discovers extraordinary insights into their lives together.

Engrossing, compelling and uplifting, a gift for every reader (men and women!); for people fascinated by life in the 60s and 70s; for community physicians and social workers, for anyone with a family problem – all will find humour and comfort in The Child Who Spoke with Her Eyes.