What is wrong with our child?

• Author: Gallup, Stephen

IN HIS FIRST months, our son Joseph became an extremely irritable child. This was just colic, the doctors and nurses said--out it grew worse, until he cried all day, every day, and most of every night. Unlike my wife Judy, who had given up her career, I had the distraction of working outside the home. My job was to develop proposals for launching satellites into orbit. Illustrators around me produced technical drawings and even spectacular oil renderings of space vehicles set against a starry black sky. Managers and engineers brought rough text for me to organize and rewrite and then more rough text to replace their previous attempts. Many iterations later, we would have an impressive pitch, just hours in advance of the customer's deadline.

I phoned home for updates and to see how Judy was coping. I remember once when she spoke in a monotone, giving one-word answers. A frantic shrieking in the background almost drowned her out.

"Is this not a good time to call?" I asked.

"It's never a good time," she muttered bitterly.

"Walt. Is something wrong?"

"Just go do your job. Bye."

Actually, the problem went beyond crying and new-parent jitters. Before discharging our newborn from the hospital, doctors had run a CAT scan that showed somewhat abnormal brain structure. No one knew if that surprise finding meant anything but, when pressed, the neonatologist supposed that functions such as memory and association might be affected.

Months later, I still had not confided that news to anyone. I have gathered since that many families alarmed about their babies' development at first seek to keep the matter private. Silence is a coping mechanism, but what could be the connection between crying and something that might later affect Joseph's memory and association? They were separate issues, right? My sister Lynn attributed the crying to cantankerous family genes. "We are a pretty ornery bunch," she kidded. I did not laugh.

Maybe all of this would turn out okay. At the hospital, the doctor had urged us to hope for the best. Judy and I did, but this crying was affecting our thinking.

"Well, my advice to you is to invest in some earplugs," my father finally said, speaking long-distance from Virginia. Could that be the right approach? I did not want to ignore Joseph. If my boy needed something, I wanted him to know he could count on us for it.

Arriving on the doorstep after a 14-hour day, I found my wife wide-eyed with terror and at the extreme limits of endurance. "Here--take this kid," she...