Category Archives: Marriage & Family

Surprise! Today is mostly the same as yesterday…

Surprise! For most of us, today is mostly the same as yesterday!

Huh?

Well, maybe I am letting a pinch of my grew-up-in-Jersey show, with an unhealthy indulgence in sarcasm…but I have a point.

Why are so many people surprised when every day, so much is the same?

Why do some sources tell us the “average American woman” tries on four or five outfits before leaving for work? Is it really possible this hypothetical average woman is perpetually surprised by the obligation to wear something besides yoga pants and a slept-in t-shirt? Imagine: “D’oh! Get dressed again???? What the…?” It’s much more likely that what-to-wear becomes, under pressure, an emotional decision (what do I feel like wearing) instead of a practical one. The cool, calm decision on Sunday (what makes sense based on the demands of each day of the week) turns into a workday morning emotion-fest for people who get caught up in “I feel fat” or “I look terrible.”

It’s not just about prepping for the non-surprising workday.

Why is anyone over the age of twelve stymied by the multiplication of dishes in the sink, the need to do laundry, or the fact that garbage cans get full? Worse yet, why are so many couples arguing, night after night, about “what to do about dinner,” as if the need to eat sometime between finishing lunch and going to bed caught them unawares?

I try not to be surprised by the every-day. Maybe I am flattering myself by mincing words here: I am dismayed that Darcy the twelve-year-old cat has once again thrown up in the middle of a wood floor. I am, regrettably, not surprised.

The school year is beginning here in West-Central Florida, and so families all over are waking up to unpleasant (non)surprises: pack lunches? Matching socks? Complying with uniform rules? What??? I am right there with you, folks, amazed that it is once again time to get into the autumn routine.

For me, that includes packing a week’s worth of lunches and ironing a week’s worth of clothes on the weekend. Crazy, right? Until you imagine it taking two minutes to get dressed for work and a few seconds to grab a lunch out of the fridge, instead of trying to figure out what to wear, heat up the iron or touch up shoes, wash fruit and veggies, etc., while the work day morning clock’s ticking. I have it figured out: less than 30 minutes total for all clothes- and lunch-prep on Sunday or cope with 15 minutes or more five times a week. I am saving myself, at minimum, 45 minutes

Emotions are what get in the way for families bickering about “what to do about dinner,” or “how are we going to get the laundry/kitchen/pet duties done.” People are tired, they are hungry, they are stressed out from the day. Tired, hungry, stressed people are not as good at negotiating and decision-making, whether at home or work. Instead of wishing you could come home, magically downshift to a Zen-like mindful state and engage in creative cookery and Pinterest-worthy home maintenance, why not just plan to deal with reality?

The reality is, you will be tired, you will be stressed, and you will wish you had something easy, tasty and nutritious. You will not want to spend a half-week’s worth of grocery money on takeout because the dinner hour caught you by surprise.

The 1990s bestsellers by Elaine St. James (Simplify Your Life, Living the Simple Life, etc.) included very down-to-earth, helpful tips: have a weekly menu that rarely varies. It keeps life simple. That doesn’t mean you can’t have wonderful, complicated meals, but it does mean that you can also plan for: Ugh, it’s been a 14-hour day door-to-door and that homemade soup from the freezer/half a lasagna/whatever ready to go and bag of salad are going to taste really, really good…in about five minutes, instead of spending a half-hour bickering, grumbling, and absent-mindedly eating a half-bag of chips while you try to figure out what to do.

Slices of the culture are having a virtual love affair with simplifying, decluttering, etc. How about decluttering and simplifying the routines of life, the predictable little tasks that are the same each day, so you have more time and mental energy for the things you’d rather do?

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Reports, Commands and Rules

Many years ago, on the first day of class in the graduate-level course on Abnormal Psychology, our instructor held up the then-current version of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and said,

“Always remember…you never know what flick is playing in someone else’s head.”

Words of wisdom: much goes awry because we forget that simple fact.

Honestly, don’t you ever wonder if some people are actually going out of their way to deliberately misinterpret what is said?

Have you never sat in slack-jawed wonder at the psychological gymnastics required to wrest a particular interpretation from something that meant nothing of the kind, as you witnessed someone gallop away, flush with a gross (and possibly deliberate) misunderstanding?

Sometimes, there may be bad intentions, or at least the intention, all along, to make some point, whether or not it makes any sense in context. We see this often in every level of politics. Commentator Smith had a well-rehearsed point to be made during the allotted few minutes on-air and by golly, Smith is going to find a way to interject it even if it makes no sense in context. Smith hopes that the point thus calculatingly made is so clever, so memorable, that it will be the “take-away” point for most listeners, even though, within the transcript, it seems arbitrary at best.

Among the well-intentioned, the problem may sometimes be a lack of clarity…more often, I think, it is a lack of clarification.

In family therapy and family systems theory, we refer to a metacommunication concept called “Report and Command.” The “report” is what someone actually says. The “command” is the meaning of that statement to them. It is the hidden expectation. In a final exam question for a family therapy course, I give the following example:

Matthew states, “Susan never makes my favorite meal anymore.” From a metacommunication perspective, “Susan never makes my favorite meal anymore,” is the report. The command portion might be:

  1. “I feel hurt because she doesn’t care to do this for me anymore.”
  2. “…And she should make my favorite meal.”
  3. “because she knows I’m supposed to watch my cholesterol.”
  4. There is no command in this communication

Students are expected to pick an answer and defend it briefly. There are multiple “right” answers. It is telling that, given the statement, “Susan never makes my favorite meal anymore,” more than half the students regularly assume that the command – the hidden meaning – is b, “And she should…” rather than the plaintive option, a, or even the matter-of-fact and somewhat complimentary c. The choice of b, of going negative, tells them, and me, a lot about how they make assumptions about what people might mean, and points out the risk of assuming rather than clarifying the deeper meaning of even seemingly mundane remarks. Here, then, if Matthew is passively expressing hurt at his wife’s apparent disinterest in nurturing him, and Susan instead “hears” a chauvinistic, boorish demand that she slave over a hot stove, well, I may have an appointment open, week from Tuesday, at 6 PM.

Another recent example: a friend observed a parent telling a child engrossed in a video game that the child’s sporting event was to begin in 10 minutes. To only the parent’s surprise, this barely nudged a response from the child. The parent actually said, “Hey, your race starts in 10 minutes.” The parent believes he communicated, “Hey, dude, we gotta get going NOW so you can be in position for the race in less than 10 minutes.” Dad made a vague observation about time that meant nothing to a child and the child took it literally: Dad is updating me on the passage of time. I leave to your imagination the subsequent exercise in frustration for Daddy and his swimmer.

Some people claim they don’t have a lot of expectations. Nonsense. Of course they do. They expect the lights to go on when they flip a switch, though for the most part they know not how it happens. They expect politicians to magically create more jobs and higher wages. They expect their spouse to read their mind when they make that little throat-clearing noise and bulge their eyeballs at dinner with extended family or friends. They expect their loved ones to know what they might want for their birthday. We all have lots of other day-to-day subtle expectations, without which we couldn’t get through the business of living. There really isn’t time in a day to treat every iota of experience as a new and undiscovered country. Some things have to be on autopilot (which implies expectations, however buried they may be).

If you are happily married, you expect your spouse to come home; you expect compassion; you expect at least well-feigned interest in much of what you say. You probably have a reasonable expectation that certain tasks will be done and that you will be warned before in-laws or ne’er-do-well friends, down on their luck, take up residence on the couch. If, to your surprise, perpetually unreliable Cousin Pete has been invited for an extended and slovenly stay, you might reasonably say to your spouse, through gritted teeth in a whisper in the kitchen, “I had no idea your Cousin Peter was coming to visit,” (report) with the unsaid (command), “…and I am perfectly right to expect that you would have asked before letting him set foot in our house.” “But honey,” your spouse might say, “Pete’s family.”

Ah, the family card. Now we move from Reports and Commands to Rules.

Everyone has rules. Some rules are overt: my husband has asserted that I am not permitted to give up chocolate for Lent. This is one of a few rules in our house. Have I mentioned his strong survival instinct?

Most rules are not even verbalized; they are taken for granted, as if a law of nature. In the example of your spouse’s unwelcome cousin Pete, “family are allowed to be here without either of us consulting the other,” is apparently the inviter’s rule. You might be thinking, “Yeah, well, maybe a nice family member but not stinky, rude, mooching Cousin Pete,” or, “for dinner, maybe, but to sleep on my couch for some indefinite period of time, no!,” but, you see, that is an entirely different rule.

A lot of clashes arise because people have not clarified their expectations and their rules, both to themselves and to others; and because they speak in terms that they believe are perfectly clear when actually they are not clear at all. Next time you find yourself in a gross misunderstanding with someone you love, perhaps it would be worth revisiting whether you actually communicated what you thought in the privacy of your head…and to ask more questions about what someone means before you assume that what you heard is what they intended you to understand.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

 

Why is your child so unreasonable?

Kids! They’re so irrational! Unreasonable! They’re…well, kids.

Toddlers are usually not able to understand that the ideas in your head are different than the ideas in their head. Learning that other people don’t know/see/hear/think all the things you do is called developing a “theory of mind.” Before this, kids think everyone knows what they know. If you hide a toy with Joey while Sarah is out of the room, and invite Sarah back in, 3-year-old Joey will not understand how Sarah can not know where the toy is. Joey is still developing a theory of mind. You will know when your child has developed a theory of mind when he or she tries to lie. This usually happens relatively late in the preschool years. Until then, if they know what they want (and are regrettably incoherent) and you fail to understand and comply, they can only reasonably assume (from their perspective) that you are being mean on purpose. They know what they want – how can you NOT?

As children develop a theory of mind, they also develop other signs of brain maturity. One is the ability to “conserve.” This doesn’t mean the Greenpeace/Sierra Club type of conserving. It means that they understand that, whether you break it into four pieces or leave it whole, it’s the same puny graham cracker for snack. The golden days of breaking it in two so they think that there is now “more” are behind you.

As they develop their theory of mind and the ability to understand a bit more about the physical world, they stay very literal for a while, or what cognitive scientists call “concrete.” They are in the real world. This makes it difficult for them to consider multiple aspects of a problem at one time, and makes abstract concepts – like algebra – just about impossible. They might fixate on one aspect of a project or task despite your efforts to get them to consider other aspects. They might memorize things to make you happy, but until their brain reaches a certain point of development (and sooner doesn’t necessarily mean smarter, it just means sooner) algebra and other abstract concepts don’t really “click.”

While, for example, a 15-year-old can be on a debating team and argue in favor of a point with which he or she personally disagrees, a bright 7 or 8 year old would have a great deal of difficulty doing so. This is a function of brain maturation – a process that continues into the early 20s.

So…that’s why your child seems so unreasonable. It’s because their brain is a child’s brain – growing, amazing, absorbing information at lightning speeds. It’s our job to meet them where they are and go with them as they grow.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Too busy!

People brag about the strangest things.

Not getting enough sleep is one; are Americans in some sort of dysfunctional competition to see who can get by on the least possible sleep – regardless of the effect on their mental and physical health?

Another is being busy – so very, very busy – that one could not possibly do anything healthy, or creative, or refreshing in any way.

Is it real busy-ness? It’s hard to say, but I have my suspicions that it often comprises some combination of underestimating how much time is frittered away on time-wasters, taking on a lot of extra and unnecessary tasks, and, sometimes, more than a hint of pride. You know, the people who find out you actually read books in the evening or squeeze in a date night with your spouse and give that little smile and a hint of a sniff when they say, “Well, it must be nice…” Well, yes, actually, it is. Very nice.

Pride, or arrogance, aren’t necessarily obvious. Healthy humans have a normal, natural need to feel needed and wanted. This is a good, but the fear that somehow your absence will cause all of creation – or at least your workplace or the kitchen at home – to immediately crumble into dust is not good. Even Jesus and Moses sometimes sneaked off for some very necessary R&R, either to be alone with God or also with some of their most loved, trusted friends.

Some people are going through a stage of life that is very busy. People with school-aged kids who each  participate in one extra activity will indeed be temporarily overly busy, driving to practice or lessons. They check homework, look under the sofa for shin guards, and use their vacation time for pediatric appointments for yet another ear infection. This stage is transient. Even too-busy parents, though, often hide time-wasters into their day.

When someone asserts always being “too busy” to do things they claim they really want to do, then I suspect that perhaps they don’t actually want to do those things. It would be better to say, “Oh, no – last thing I want to do is be stuck in a gym five mornings a week,” then to dodge exercise by pretending they are just too, too busy. Once they are honest about the issue (apparently they would rather do something else than spend hours on the human version of a hamster wheel) they are free to figure out how to meet the essential need (enough exercise to stay healthy) and stop dodging reality with brag-worthy busy-ness.

It’s hard to give up the busy excuse to oneself. It might be a polite dodge to other people (but remember that “let your yes mean yes and your no mean no” admonition?) but it’s just pointless to lie to oneself.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

The Cancellation

Another day, another call or email: a couple whose first appointment was scheduled for later this week has cancelled. They have “found a doctor who takes our insurance.” That would be fine but for one detail: the appointment was for marriage counseling.

This could create a dilemma for the doctor who “takes our insurance,” if the clients turn out to be shopping for marriage/relationship counseling. This is because unless one member of the couple is diagnosed with a mental disorder, and the treatment rendered in those conjoint appointments comprise empirically supported treatments for that disorder, it is probably not covered by their insurance, whether the doctor “takes it” or not. No doubt this will be part of the discussion during their first appointment, when they inform the doctor that the problem is not helping Partner A cope with depression or anxiety (or some other mental disorder diagnosis), but rather some sort of relationship problem. Now, if Partner A is depressed, and the treatment involves communication skills combined with cognitive-behavioral therapy, or another empirically supported form of therapy that can involve the spouse as a coach/partner in healing, that’s excellent and ethical practice; not so for relationship problems.

At least I found out in advance, sparing the mutual aggravation of patients who imagined somehow that their marriage counseling needs are someone else’s financial responsibility and of a psychotherapist who expects to be paid for services.

This sort of retraction prior to a first appointment happens sometimes in my practice. “I found someone who takes my insurance.” This, despite my spending 10-15 minutes on the phone before setting that appointment and providing this information about my practice. I don’t contract with health insurance companies: it’s clearly stated on my website, and I tell people during that first, free, fifteen-minute consult.

Why bother mentioning it? There are ethical issues at hand.

To be perfectly frank: health insurance is for health problems.

It ought not to be used to get a discounted rate, subsidized by every other person paying premiums to that health insurance company, for marriage counseling, or premarital counseling, or vocational counseling, or any other normal, problem-of-living, life phase process.

My website clearly states my position on health insurance: I don’t contract with insurers because the bulk of what I do is not billable. I do not want my work with couples to be tainted by ethically questionable gymnastics in which we justify treating the relationship because it will indirectly help with a mental disorder. I will not label children with a brain disease because their grownups are getting divorced and upsetting the children, resulting in a custody evaluator referring the children to me. I will not participate in diagnosing people when I am concerned it is not in their best interest – a position supported, as it happens, by the American Counseling Association.

So, no, I don’t “take” insurance. Insurance cards are not debit or credit cards, anyhow: there’s no “taking.” There’s submitting paperwork and hoping one is eventually paid, or being denied payment and then having to bill the client, who may have been discharged months ago.

I don’t diagnose people for the sake of billing. If a client meets criteria for a diagnosis, what we’re doing is aimed at treating the symptoms of that diagnosis and, after being provided information about the process, the client chooses to submit the information to his/her insurance company, I will provide the appropriate form for the client to try to be reimbursed.

I work with human beings who are having problems in their lives (provided they are in Florida, where I am dually licensed for mental health counseling, and marriage and family therapy), and who want life to be better. They want better relationships and a hopeful outlook; they wish to live with purpose and meaning.

Those are not mental disorders. They are signs of health and hope.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

A little out of sync…

Intellectually gifted children are a challenge for grownups.

Their ability to learn and apply information may be far ahead of their peers but their emotional and motor skills may be completely normal (read: average and right on schedule). So your highly gifted six-year-old, who can visualize Johnny Depp’s pirate ship but whose little fingers can only manage 5-year-old’s motor skills, will be angry and frustrated to the point of tears over a boat that looks perfectly fine to you. Your gifted twelve year old will, with the emotional fragility of a middle-school-aged heart, grapple with the existential questions peers more often face in college.

This kind of asynchronous development is hard for the child, too…and will continue to be so, until adulthood. It’s easier for adults to find a few intellectual peers with whom to deeply connect. The more gifted the child, the harder this will be, simply because of the mathematical odds. Intellectual giftedness comprises only 2% of the population. Highly gifted persons are less than 1/1000 of the population; for them, the odds of finding someone on par, or, an even happier event, encountering someone sharper in intellectual terms, is slim. It’s important for grownups to be aware of the interior struggles gifted children face and provide opportunities for support, encouragement and sometimes some careful education on why they feel so different from other kids.

Add to this gifted kids’ tendency to need a little less sleep, be a little more bouncy, be in a hurry to learn and do, ask a lot of questions…or, conversely, be very quiet, observant and introverted, and the challenge for parents and teachers becomes clear.

Interested in learning more? There are a lot of resources out there: American Mensa and SENG are two excellent sources of information and support for the gifted child (or grownup) in your life.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

What can it be, besides ADHD?

Your child is bouncy. He doesn’t seem to pay attention; she forgets to follow through on tasks. The book bag is a disaster area; necessary books never seem to make it home; and you regularly have to turn around and go home to pick up shin guards or ballet shoes.

Well, what can it be, besides ADHD – the psychiatric diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, diagnosed off a checklist and sometimes suspected of being over-diagnosed?

The symptoms associated with ADHD can be due to a wide variety of issues; here are a few:

  1. Stress at home or in the environment. If you are having marital or other family difficulties, your child is stressed – whether you know it or not. Research indicates that a, adults are pretty lousy of telling when children are anxious or worried and b, the children of adults with marital problems, when tested in research studies, have high levels of stress chemistry metabolites in their urine.
  2. Maybe it’s not at home; maybe it’s the environment. Live in a noisy and/or high crime neighborhood? Is your child bullied or afraid of being bullied at school? Sources of ongoing stress will interfere with the parts of the brain that are important to focus, attention and memory.
  3. Insufficient sleep. Is your school-age child getting 9 or 10 hours of quality rest per night? Falling sleep by television, computer, or with a cell phone close at hand? These will all interfere with quality and quantity of sleep.
  4. What are overtired kids like? You know what you do when you’re driving late at night and you are too tired to be driving – so you bounce in the seat, sing too loudly and pretend having the windows open will magically keep you alert? Yeah, well…meet the 3rd grade kid who is up too late because of football or soccer practice a few times a week and fidgets around looking dazed in class.
  5. Insufficient exercise. The recommendation for children is two hours of physical activity a day – real activity, not standing-around-hoping-coach-lets-me-play-this time activity.
  6. Boredom. Brains + boredom = either shutting down and not trying at all OR driving grownups and other kids bonkers. Look out for the introverted or shy child who may shut down and go into dreamland; a lot of gifted children are very introverted and self-contained, and unlikely to be overtly disruptive. They simply tune out.
  7. Frustration. A child who is having difficulty – perhaps an undiagnosed or insufficiently supported learning disability – will often give up and stop trying. Remember that children personalize things; if they are struggling and the grownups act like they “should” be able to “get it,” the child assumes the adults know best and that the child must be flawed/”stupid” etc.
  8. Your (or some other involved grownup’s) inconsistency. If you flipflop on rules, fail to follow through, and run an unpredictable life for yourself and your child, it’s not fair to look at the child who seems scattered or (more likely) is gambling on this being one of those times when you are too stressed or preoccupied and let things slide, and blame the child.

You’ll notice that none of these issues can be blamed on the child. These are all grownups-need-to-pay-attention flags, not “naughty kid” flags. So, before you assume your child has a brain disorder, rule out the many factors that we grownups often unwittingly inflict on children and see if, with a few months of more consistent attention to these risk factors, your child’s behavior and morale improve.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

 

What are you waiting for?

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy asserts that the typical couple coming in for counseling has had difficulties for over five years…which makes me wonder, what are they waiting for?

There are a lot of seemingly perfectly sensible reasons to postpone counseling when things start to go awry:

“It’s expensive.” This is true; counseling does cost money and relationship counseling is an out-of-pocket expense. Still, most therapists are cheaper than two retainers, two divorce attorneys, a mediator, a parent coordinator, etc…

“I don’t want to be told what to do.” Well, a good therapist isn’t just going to tell you what to do. A therapist is going to be asking a lot of questions, having you fill out a lot of questionnaires, and trying to develop a very clear picture of your relationship’s specific strengths and the particular types of problems each of you identify. That way, research-recommended approaches can be matched to the problem(s) of the particular couple.

Fear. Don’t a lot of people fear that it’s going to be like that old Simpsons episode, where, after Marge vents for hours, the therapist turns to Homer and says something to the effect of, “I’ve never said this before, but it really is all your fault.” That’s not what happens in real life.

Shame. So many people suffer with shame over the difficulties they are having. Marital difficulties feel like a failure. Yet, if marital problems were some rare, shameful thing, why are there so many marital therapists? We have our own doctoral programs, professional licensure, and organizations. Beyond that, other non-specialists in the mental health professions also offer couples counseling.   Shame can be overcome by getting help and feeling less alone in the suffering.

The Ostrich. Just try to ignore it and hope it goes away: the addiction, the affair, the endless disputes about parenting or money or values and ethics. Some things, ignored, will go away: a minor cold, a pimple, a minor aggravation of the day. Other things, though, just fester and turn into a nasty emotional infection: resentment, trauma, guilt, hurt.

If your relationship is suffering from feelings of distance and disconnect, or seems to be a vortex of repetitive arguments, counseling could be very effective. Often, five or six appointments, spread out over four to six months, can make a world of difference when both parties are willing to work at changing patterns of behavior and experimenting with new ways of interacting.

It’s important to find a counselor who is a good fit. Call a few of us; talk for a few minutes; get a sense of style and see who seems like a good fit for the two of you.

Be bold. Push past shame and fear; challenge your inner ostrich. Then start to feel happy again.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Letting Children be Children

Is having a healthy, happy childhood a good thing? Is it important to have that foundation in order to be a productive, healthy and happy adult? All of us would agree that, “Well, duh. Of course.” Well, of course…yet, around the world, it seems that the short-lived glorification of childhood as a separate, sacred stage of life (in many ways a 20th century movement) is crumbling away.

In some European nations, 14 year olds have attained the age of consent to sexual activity with adults. Here in the US, they aren’t expected to remember their homework and thus teachers must dutifully post assignments on a school website so parents can check. For the record: 14 year olds can remember homework. Try breaking a promise about a privilege and see how good their memory actually is. The same child, however, is not capable of informed consent. They are not equipped to really understand long-term consequences due to brain development.

In the Netherlands, a 12 year old who is seriously ill – and consider that here, an awful lot of parents don’t expect 12 year old children to do chores or remember their own shin guards for soccer – can petition a judge to be euthanized due to illness. Their parents get to choose whether to grant permission up until age 16. That means that a 17 year old can petition to be medically killed. The same child might not be able to follow through on a college admission essay, or otherwise exhibit normal responsibility, but somehow their request to die ought to be treated as a perfectly normal legal procedure.

In our own country, about 9% of children have been diagnosed with ADHD and are being treated with medications, most often powerful stimulant medications – a rate that dwarfs much of Europe’s less-than-1% rate for medicating children.

Psychologically and physically, children aren’t miniature adults, as was so often the view in the past, due to the physically challenging, dangerous life most humans lived over much of history. They need love, secure boundaries, and guidance in learning to make good choices as they mature. Where these needs are unmet, adult dysfunction, emotional distress and physical illnesses are apt to follow.

They definitely don’t need to make life-or-death decisions, or be exploited by bad adults, or otherwise be treated with an expectation that they are fully rational, insightful grownups.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

 

Review: The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

A friend recommended this book and this past weekend I read a large portion of it. It’s aimed at parents and others who are directly involved in raising children, and cites some pretty striking research about the negative outcomes of giving children more freedom and flexibility than they can handle. Children being given the control over their lives that ought to be reserved for responsible adults are far more likely to develop anxiety, depression and obesity; they have less attachment to their families and adults in general, and are more likely to turn to peers for advice. Their peers, of course, are not apt to know any more than them about making wise choices about life.

It’s a conundrum for some: after all, kids have to learn how to make choices, but they can’t handle the full variety of options that many parents want to give them. Learning how to present a narrow, fair range of choices is, apparently, a challenge for parents who are desperate to be liked. This craving for their children’s approval underlies a lot of dysfunctional, but seemingly well-intended, parenting. I described a parent’s style as a “democracy” (the children are school age) and the parent took it as a compliment…as if being democratic with children, where no one is really in charge and knows best, was a good plan.

Do kids need choices? Absolutely. Do they need – or can they even handle – the full range of options that an adult might handle? Absolutely not.

For parents, teachers, grandparents and others who work with children, this book is a friendly, accessible but thoroughly footnoted guide.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.