Category Archives: Parenting

When Media Lies Hurt: The Destructive Impact of Sloppy Journalism on Real People

(Originally published in USA Today Magazine, July 2016. A few updates were made for reposting to this blog)

It’s safe to say that most people have long since given up on the idea of unquestioning trust for the media. Walter Cronkite died in 2009. Despite vague mistrust, people are vulnerable to the effect that repeatedly hearing things has. Hearing something over and over engrains it in our brains, even if it’s not true. The repeated lie tends to rise to the top when a related topic comes up. This is one reason so many people believe that, for example, violent crime is up all over the country (it’s not) or that we know for sure exactly what schizophrenia is, or what it’s caused by (we don’t).

As a psychotherapist, I see the pain that sloppy journalism creates for real people on a regular basis. I don’t mean transient worry; I mean the possibility of a lifetime of unnecessary anguish inflicted upon people who believe that the information hurled at them by media must be based in truth.

Three examples will suffice to illustrate; you can no doubt generate plenty of examples of your own.

Media Misrepresentation: People considering suicide always give clues about their intention, and thus friends and family have an opportunity to see it coming and intervene.

According to A. Dadoly in the Harvard Health Newsletter (2011), professional estimates are that 30-80% of suicides are impulsive acts, with little or no planning beyond the immediacy of the moment. That means family members could usually not have read the signs, and could not possibly have intervened. Yet, most people believe, because they’ve been told repeatedly, that warning signs are just about always there and thus are tormented with guilt and self-reproach for failing to see something that was, tragically, probably not there.

Media Misrepresentation: Depression is a medical illness that is a lifelong condition. You’ll be on medication forever because there is something wrong with your brain.

The truth is, depression, or “major depressive disorder,” as it is currently labeled, is a construct. It is diagnosed off a checklist of symptoms. Meet enough of the symptoms for a two-week period of time and, bingo, you can be diagnosed, whether that sadness, poor sleep, lack of energy, poor concentration, etc., is due to grief because someone you love has died, or to some other life circumstance…or, perhaps, something medical. Some research indicates that most cases of depression will improve within 7 weeks whether you do anything to treat it or not. Plenty of evidence shows that lifestyle changes such as proper sleep, diet and exercise, plus social supports and a bit of emotional support via therapy, will create improvement in less time and leave you more resilient the next time life throws you a challenge (which, of course, it will). You can find a wealth of scientific research as well as specific steps to apply that research to real life in Stephen Ilardi, MD, Ph.D.’s wonderful 2009 book, The Depression Cure. There’s plenty of other research out there, of course, but for busy readers, Dr. Ilardi has done a masterful job of tying together many researchers’ work and working out a useful process.

Yet millions of people have been sold the lie that their symptoms are evidence of a brain disorder that requires lifelong medication. The medications change the brain, cause all sorts of unpleasant side effects, such as weight gain, loss of sexual interest and/or function, and general apathy towards others, and often cause terrible withdrawal symptoms. They also carry a risk for impulsive acts of self-harm, including suicide, and violence against others. Almost every adolescent and young adult mass killer in the US in the past couple of decades, with the exception of avowed Islamist terrorists, has been on one or more psychiatric drugs, including many antidepressants.

Do these medications help some people? Apparently so, according to them and their doctors. That does not, however, prove that everyone who is sad for more than two weeks has an incurable but manageable brain disease and is “mentally ill.”

Media Misrepresentation: Your gay son or daughter is going to burn in hell just because he/she is LGBT.

This lie is a criticism of many religions, and recently has been part of the background of a television show called “The Real O’Neals.” One part of the plot involves a gay young man whose supposedly Catholic mother is consumed with despair because “her religion teaches her that her son is going to burn in hell because he is gay.” That’s a paraphrase from interviews I’ve read with a star of the show. I have seen many families suffer under this belief. Parents are alienated from their children; children believe that their parents are condemning them; parents and children alike reject their faith. I will address this from my Catholic perspective; you can do the homework on your faith.

The Catholic Church has an international apostolate (a fancy term for an approved special ministry) called Courage, focused entirely on providing spiritual, emotional and social support for LGBT Catholics. Its intention is not to “make them straight,” but to help them live Catholic lives with the orientation they experience. The official Catechism of the Catholic Church isn’t exactly politically correct: like the psychiatrists of just one generation ago, it considers homosexual behavior disordered – but you could say Catholicism (and all orthodox Christianity) says about the same about any sexual activity outside of marriage.

However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church also says: (paragraph 2358):

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible…They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter… (that “uniting to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross, is of course, what all Catholics do when, faced with challenges, we talk about “offering it up” – this is not a unique imposition upon GLBT persons).

Paragraph 2359 ends with, “They can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.” Hmmm. No ineluctable path to hell and damnation there.

One can, however, imagine the pain of a parent who imagines their child is immediately rejected by God. One wishes they were bold enough to seek right guidance.

Our Responsibility

It’s easy, of course, to blame the media. Journalists go to college and seem to take pride in getting the “real story,” or whatever they imagine they’re doing. So why don’t they do their homework? Why present the easy, available tale? Psychologically, they appear to indulge in confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out and focus on things that verify what they already “know.” We consumers of media need to check the facts.

Bad information creates pain and suffering. Don’t assume what you read is the whole truth. Do your research, and turn to people who might have access to information you don’t have. Someone’s peace of mind may be at stake.

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.

Internet Gaming Disorder? Is that a thing?

Yes, it’s a thing.

Are you (or someone you love) hooked on internet gaming?

An excellent recent article on parenting in Real Simple, “Parenting Against the Internet,” cited a statistic that the average adolescent male spends 20 hours a week playing internet games, and the average adolescent female spends 10 hours a week.

The internet can be great: I can look up all sorts of research, read the news, check the weather, contact family and friends around the world, find obscure used books in a mom-and-pop used book store somewhere across the country…

But for some people, the something good turns into a real problem. The American Psychiatric Association, in its 2013 update on diagnoses, the DSM-5, named Internet Gaming Disorder as a “condition for further study,” rather than an official diagnosis with its own billing code. Tune in within a few years; no doubt, that will change.

Twenty hours a week is a lot of time to spend doing something that teaches little, if any, useful knowledge; isolates a person from contact with real people and real life; is sedentary; and creates a world that is not real but full of very real gratification in terms of the brain’s dopamine system. That’s the average; that means for some people, there’s little or none and for some, it’s the equivalent of a full-time job, absorbing time, energy and mental space that could be dedicated to learning real-life skills, creativity, and other parts of life. Please don’t bother emailing me with examples of games where prosocial behavior is rewarded or you have to know useful stuff to be successful; I know. I also know that at some point it’s unhealthy to live in an artificial land of make-believe, instead of taking that pro-social behavior and useful knowledge and using it to make the world, and yourself, better.

What are the warning signs of this disorder that warrants further expert study? Persistent preoccupation; withdrawal symptoms such as irritability when the games are taken away; tolerance (more time playing games as time goes by); unsuccessful attempts to control the amount of time playing (for example, promising to cut back now that school has begun and sliding right back into excess); losing interest in other activities; continued excessive use of games in spite of problems in relationships, job, school, etc.; lying about how much time is spent playing; using games to deal with other problems (the game is a drug to feel better at this point); jeopardizing or already lost significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunities because of involvement in playing internet games (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Note that these are games – gambling on the internet is already an official diagnosis when carried too far.

Most people can easily see the degree to which these signs are awfully similar to what we would use to assess a problem with alcohol or drugs: preoccupied with drinking? Cranky or shaky when they can’t get their “fix?” Unable to cut back; getting behind in life in all sorts of areas; lying about how much is used…so why are parents apparently turning a blind eye to how much time their kids spend in this world?

Some theories:

  1. Some parents are as active in gaming as their children and have convinced themselves that those excessive hours are better than other things their child might do. Well, yeah; I suppose you could also argue that it’s better for your child to get drunk than to inject heroin, but that doesn’t make getting drunk a desirable behavior.
  2. Some parents are unaware. They do not realize what their kids are doing in their rooms, on their phones, half the night, or when they’re supposedly doing homework, or when they are in a college classroom, not paying attention.
  3. Some parents think it will be outgrown…although the social skills deficits these young addicts have will often interfere with their ability to successfully navigate college, trade schools and work.

Of course, it’s not just teens. There are adults who sometimes work full time, or part-time, and spent 30+ hours gaming each week. They tend to have marital problems, job problems, or both. Perhaps they have neither a relationship nor a job, but do have angry parents who want very much to be empty-nesters, any decade now.

Don’t think this applies to your child, or to you? Try cutting it off for a week. A week’s not that long. No exceptions. Notice what happens. If you’re afraid to even bring it up because you “don’t want to deal with it,” you have just told yourself something very powerful, and somewhat frightening, about your confidence as a parent and your child’s relationship with gaming.

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.

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.

 

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.

…and still more decisions!

Decisions, decisions!

Our nephew and his wife are considering relocating. Given their jobs, they are employable just about anywhere – so the choices are as vast as these United States. They’ve created a spreadsheet to rate the places they are considering on a variety of factors: climate, culture, length of commute, ease of accessing travel to family back home…we’re looking forward to seeing how they narrow their choices as they visit cities and rate them across variables.

It’s a useful way of making difficult choices where there isn’t an obvious “right” or “wrong” choice to make. Take the job that makes less money but is more satisfying and allows for more flexibility, or take the higher-paying job that provides better long-term financial security? Take a second job or scale back on expenses? Move far from family or stay close? The problem, of course, is even ranking how important the factors are, really, in the first place.

Maybe deciding on a job isn’t the right example for you. Perhaps you have to decide on whether to downsize or stay put, or which school to attend. Whenever there are multiple factors to compare, weighing the factors in importance to you can help narrow the choice. Writing it all down – in a chart, or listing – can help, because then it’s in front of you, not rattling around in your head, where it keeps butting into whatever else you’re trying to manage in life.

Then, too, sometimes making decisions is complicated by stress and fatigue. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed and too hungry to pick something to eat, you’ve been in this state. Likewise, trying to figure out what task to handle first, when everything seems overwhelming. Just doing something – even if you change your mind and revert to a different task – is better than paralysis.

Some people are able to make decisions quickly and easily; for others, the fear of making the wrong decision impacts even minor choices where “wrong” would be, at best, a minor disappointment. If you’re the kind of person who gets stuck in decision making, experiment with some other ways to organize the choices: a spreadsheet or simple paper and pencil chart or list, or focus on what is most important to you as a factor, or, for minor issues, take action and see if that is the better option or if starting in the wrong direction helped you discern, quickly, the right path to take.

Of course, if anxiety is interfering with basic decision-making, please consult a professional.

 

 

 

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.

Decisions, decisions!

Choices are good, right? Until they’re bad.

Too many choices becomes overwhelming. We can see the results of seemingly endless choices and information when we, or someone we know, gets lost in hours/days/weeks-long process of sorting through online reviews and information in the attempt to make a decision that might have been made over a dinner conversation twenty years ago. Grownups have problems with this, and yet so many parents inflict too many choices on their children.

It’s important for children to learn to make choices and endure the consequences in small, safe, age-appropriate doses. It’s also important for children to feel like the grownups are running the show. Offering opportunities to make choices – within defined parameters – and then sticking with those choices, are great learning experiences for children.

Consider asking a five-year-old:

“Would you like applesauce or yogurt for a snack?” versus, “What would you like for snack?”

What are the odds the child isn’t going to go for fruit or low-fat dairy and will instead choose something the parent wasn’t planning to provide? With so many modern parents afraid of upsetting their children and overly eager to have their children’s approval, children are left without anyone big and safe to place limits around their world. Temper tantrums, anxiety, and entitlement are often the results.

Children benefit from parameters and calm grownups being in charge. A calm, in-charge grownup can offer safe, appropriate opportunities to learn decision-making skills and learn to live with the consequences.

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.