“His heart is two sizes too small”

“His heart is two sizes too small” is a comparison to the Grinch used to summarize observations about Jacob’s empathy, impulse control, and occasional cruelty. Its force comes from the gap between a vivid moral image and the clinician’s later effort to describe Jacob in less absolute, developmental terms.

Origin and Meaning

During testimony, a witness reads from an evaluation that groups Jacob’s behavior and expressed thoughts with possible diagnoses, including reactive attachment disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. The evaluation then offers the Grinch comparison as a summary of a constellation of observations: lack of empathy, difficulties with impulse control, and occasional cruelty. The phrase condenses clinical concerns into a familiar image that sounds less like a diagnosis than a verdict on character.

That compression makes the line especially striking in court. A complex set of observations becomes a picture of an undersized heart, inviting the jury to understand Jacob through an emotionally charged cultural shorthand. When the witness reacts to Neal Logiudice’s questioning with visible distress, the exchange also exposes the personal cost of having the phrase repeated in public.

Laurie Challenges the Comparison

The phrase returns in a conversation between Laurie and the evaluator. Laurie asks whether the evaluator’s father-in-law has the same condition, then recalls the earlier comparison and presses on its substance: she wants to know whether the evaluator still believes her son’s heart is too small. The question distinguishes an apology for wording from a withdrawal of the underlying judgment.

The evaluator acknowledges that the phrasing was foolish and apologizes, but does not reaffirm the metaphor. Instead, the response shifts to Jacob’s emotional vocabulary and maturity, arguing that his emotional development does not match that of his peers. Asked what level it does match, the evaluator says Jacob presents some characteristics of a boy half his age. The scene thus replaces a fixed image of deficient feeling with a claim about developmental difference, while leaving the severity of the original observations unresolved.

Narrative Significance

The phrase’s recurrence shows how language from a clinical evaluation can escape its original context and become an argument over who Jacob is. In court, it serves as a concise and damaging characterization; in Laurie’s conversation, it becomes something she tests directly, refusing to let an apology settle whether the evaluator still believes the claim.

The contrast between “heart” and “emotional maturity” matters: the first suggests an enduring moral lack, while the second describes a developmental level. The book does not make the comparison a definitive diagnosis. Instead, it exposes the interpretive risk of making a troubling pattern of behavior legible through a memorable metaphor that can sound like a judgment of the whole person.