Inspiration and Expert Information for Families & Children in Distress
David C Hall, MD, Child Adolescent and Family Psychiatry
Resources for Parents:
Brief Overview & Resources
Life is difficult. So say the Sufi monks and so said Dr. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled, which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. But that's not all.
Parenting is difficult. To expect otherwise is to set yourself up for escalating frustration. Under the best of circumstances parenting small children under school age is a continuous drain on your energy and a constant demand for vigilance. Small children, unlike cats, do not have nine lives. At this stage of family life your children have taken over your heart and your free time. You're lucky to use the bathroom alone. Privacy, spousal intimacy, and friends apart from childcare can be vanishingly rare. Double the trouble if you're single or divorced or in a conflicted parenting partnership.
Elementary age children can be great fun, but still need close supervision, especially if there are sibling rivalries or inborn tendencies to trouble. This is when we see the early signs of distractibility, moodiness beyond what seems usual, and independence morphing into defiance. Parental self-confidence and a sense of humor serve as shock absorbers. We can celebrate the strength that our children are showing in setting themselves apart from us through disobedience or defiance without giving up ultimate responsibility for their longterm safety and welfare and without completely losing our own capacity to step aside when it's not absolutely necessary to step into the warzone.
The teen years become more of a challenge when our means of parenting the earlier years relied on our authority more than earned cooperation. "Because I said so" is a bludgeon to use sparingly. Come-along strategies work better where we offer to work along side our children on tasks we need them to do. Think of it as together time that will become more and more limited the older they get. Time-outs just long enough to change to emotional direction of non-compliance come next. Model time-outs by timing yourself out before you lose your cool. Invite your children to time themselves out when they sense they are losing control. That way you don't have to be the heavy all the time and your children learn self-control.
High school years (and sometimes junior high school years) can be fraught with real danger for our children. Drugs, sex, guns, cars, bullying and gang-like conflict are common in my experience with the adolescents I see. Complicate this with a mood disorder, ADHD, or physical stigmata that invite comment and we have highly distressed and acting out youth who may or may not want our help. Occasionally families will send their defiant teenager to a treatment boarding school. Very expensive, but sometimes the best solution. More commonly the police will be called once or repeatedly for threatening or assaultive behavior. Most of these youth have either a history of abuse or abandonment or a diagnosable mood or learning problem that has undermined their self-esteem and precipitated failures in school, at home, and with healthy friends.
The normal place to intervene in a family crisis is with the parent(s). Parents, you need to stay in control of the emotional atmosphere within your family. If your children pre-empt your ability to keep the family space safe and loving, then you have work to do to reclaim your place at the head of your family. It is not healthy or safe for minor children to be in charge of the emotional atmosphere within their family, unless their parents are abusive or incompetent, and even then it is time for outside help...
