I once had an almost excessively high opinion of experts.
This was particularly true in fields where I’d had personal ambitions, such as music and medicine. Abandoning both of those pursuits prematurely produced a tendency in me to put violinists and physicians on especially high pedestals. Perhaps I wanted to see them as more perfect versions of myself.
So when, at the age of 34, I found myself a first-time father, my impulse was to discount any claim I myself might have to knowing what a baby needs.
The child my wife Judy and I had turned out to need much more than the average baby. He cried all the time. He had trouble keeping his milk down. The doctors had wanted to keep him in the hospital for two weeks following the birth, for observation, and that had been fine with me. They were the experts! They were the ones in a position to help him.
But they didn’t help him—not in those first two weeks and not any time thereafter. Little Joseph not only continued to show signs of being in distress, but as time passed he also began missing all the usual developmental milestones, such as crawling and walking. When Judy and I insisted on a diagnosis and treatment, the doctors urged us to be patient. With any luck, the problem would resolve itself in due course. When that didn’t happen, they suggested counseling to help us cope with the disappointment.
A force within me that outweighed the respect I had for doctors was the sense of responsibility I felt toward my son. This wasn’t just a matter of my personal disappointment; this was his life! Then, too, I simply could not believe that it would be right to give up without trying. Fortunately, Judy shared these views. When we realized that professional help for Joseph was not forthcoming, we set out to find ways of helping him ourselves.
We did not seek to become credentialed experts. The only objective was to understand the issues involved in order to do whatever we could that might make a difference for him. In our case, this meant finding alternative providers who showed a better understanding of the situation, who could either treat Joseph directly or instruct us in what to do at home.
We took some wrong turns along the way, but our determination led to real answers in fairly short order. By the time Joseph was two years old, he was no longer in distress—no longer crying or vomiting—and had begun crawling on his hands and knees. Obviously, he still had a long way to go. By then, his peers had left him far behind. But the sense of momentum and accomplishment in our household made every day a new adventure.
That momentum carried us a long way. He walked independently at 39 months. He learned how to somersault and swing by his hands on playground equipment. He even made some progress on roller skates. On the other hand, he never learned how to talk, no matter how many new treatment approaches we attempted. Today, he’s 26 years old, and still disabled, for reasons that are still poorly understood. But he never lost those early gains.
My purpose in writing this is not to say we don’t need experts in general, or doctors specifically. Of course we do. And I will concede that perhaps I was predisposed to expect too much from them. I certainly cannot fault anyone for what he does not know.
On the other hand, the doctors we consulted for help with Joseph had other priorities. Their reputations, and perhaps fear of litigation, prevented them from even mentioning alternative treatments. When we found those treatments on our own, the doctors would say nothing good about them. And yet, those treatments undeniably helped our son. The doctors’ indifference to this fact bespoke a lack of intellectual curiosity that I found very disturbing.
I think our society may have a tendency to overvalue experts. Again, each of us has a specialty, and when a problem arises that is beyond our reach of course it’s natural to look for someone with a better understanding. However, when the problem merits more focus than an expert is giving to it, the baton comes back to us. Ultimately, we are the ones who must be satisfied that no stone was left unturned. We are the ones who will live with the consequences.
