Summary Of Genie Secret Of The Wild Child

Nova’s, Genie Secret of the Wild Child, is a forty-three-minute documentary that explains how being abandoned can affect one’s life and their learning capacity. Throughout the documentary, we take a look at the life of young teenage girl from California. She was locked in a room alone by her parents. When the girl was found she was thirteen years old and unable to walk, talk, or use the bathroom properly. Due to the fact that the young girl had no human contact she was called the “Wild Child.”

The beginning of the documentary shows how, Susan Curtis, a UCLA professor was chosen to work alongside the “wild child” to show her the foundation of language. Mrs. Curtis introduced “genie” to many psychologists and ran as many as test as possible. Jay Shirley, an isolation psychiatrist, examined the “wild child’s” brain waves to see how long she was abandoned. After four nights of studying her brain’s electrical activity an abnormal brain wave pattern, sleep spindles, were the results the psychiatrist came up with. This is when scientist began to wonder if the “wild child” was retarted from birth or being isolated affected her greatly.

Each scientist felt they could each impact her in many different ways that will allow her to learn to talk as well as her emotional development. During this time, she began to made a significant change, she moved into a foster home. Sadly, the foster mother kicked Mrs. Curtis out of the house causing the “wild child” to have no proper practices with language. This is when the adoption was not approved for full guardianship. She was then adopted by, David Rigler, from the Children’s hospital. Rigler only thought he would have Genie for three months, but she ended up staying for four years. Mr. and Mrs. Rigler doubled as the “wild child’s” new adoptive parents and