Hey, remember those books with Imogene Herdman and her siblings? The Worst Halloween Ever, The Worst School Year Ever, and The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever? With the word Worst crossed out and replaced by Best in every title? By Barbara Robinson?
Those are probably some of my favorite representations of disability in children's media. Ever.
While it's never explicitly stated, it's very clear that the Herdman children have behavioral issues due to poverty, neglect, abandonment, and their community turning on them. They're also very neglected in their education. As a result, they're antisocial, violent, angry, they abuse substances and lash out, very clear examples of conduct disorder. Every book with start with the narrator, a child, going on for several pages about how "terrible" they are, listing things that clearly demonstrate these kids need more help than they're getting. At the beginning of the book, through that girl's eyes, they look like Satan incarnate.
And then you start learning more. Abandoned by their father, their mother never around and actively avoiding actually parenting her children, poverty, living in an abandoned house, dirty and underfed and left with only each other to rely on- absolutely horrendous circumstances for children to live in. Their community has turned against them because of their behavioral issues, which just further isolates them in this terrible environment. They're hostile, yes, because the world is hostile to them. And every book, the narrator grows to understand the Herdmans, in a way. Every book, she learns that they're not as evil as she thought, that they're children like her. She learns to see them as human. And through every book the Herdmans never really change since their circumstances don't change, but the narrator learns to understand them and sees them as a little more human every time. With every book, the reader is taught that despite how they lash out, they're just kids who don't have the help they need. The narrator slowly learns they're just kids, and the reader realizes this, too.
Despite everything, we are taught the Herdmans are sympathetic, that they're just lashing out, that they just need some help. And I think this is a great thing. Yes, the books are simplistic and dated and you don't really understand that complexity of the Herdmans until you're older, but it still does good because it shows kids that the "devil children" they may know are far less evil and more human than they might think. That's a good lesson for kids to learn. And it's good for kids who act like the Herdmans, because they see a sympathetic view, they are seeing characters like them being understood. It meant the world to me when I was little.
So yeah. The Herdmans are one of my favorite representations of conduct disorder. Pretty much ever
