Problem Children: It's Not Always the Parent's Fault

By Dr George Tucker PhD ABPP

Parents are often blamed for causing their children's problems, regardless of the age of the child or the number of "good children" that the parents have raised in addition to the "problem child." As a result of this bias against parents, especially when the bias is propagated by those in the so-called helping professions, efforts to help problem children often fail.

Even worse, parents sometimes choose not to seek treatment because they can predict that, regardless of their choice of helping professional, their bad parenting will likely be the professional's explanation for what went wrong.

In Part I of Problem Children: It's Not Always the Parents' Fault, Dr. Tucker shares his clinical findings from thirty years of practice, along with data from psychological testing, research on children's thinking patterns, and ways that well-meaning legal changes of the past thirty years sometimes undermine parental authority and community efforts to help problem children, as proof that children's problems are not always due to bad parenting.

In Part II, How to Help, Dr. Tucker details how a thorough assessment of the problem child's learning challenges, hereditary factors, structured programs, and resolution of parental grieving can be utilized to help problem children succeed and become something other than problem adults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr George Tucker PhD ABPP
• Release date: Jun 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781604143874

Dr George Tucker PhD ABPP

George H. Tucker earned his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi in 1979 and was awarded a diplomat with specialty certification in Behavioral Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology in 2003. He lives with his wife, Tami, daughter, Ralston, and son Sutton, in San Juan Capistrano, CA, where he maintains a private practice devoted to problem children, adolescents, young adults, and their families. He enjoys swimming occasionally, but his main recreational interests still lie in other sports.

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Problem Children:

It’s Not Always The Parents’ Fault

George H. Tucker, Ph.D., ABPP

Child and Adolescent Psychologist

Disorders of Learning, Development, and Behavior

Telephone [phone]

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© Copyright 2011, George H. Tucker, Ph.D., ABPP

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ISBN: 978-1-60414-387-4

Introduction

This book is about my experiences in working with difficult children and adolescents over the past thirty years. In doing this work, I have probably seen more adolescents than children, but I use the terms interchangeably most of the time in the book, as I have found that the differences between strong-willed and defiant children and their adolescent counterparts are negligible. Therefore, except where exceptions to this rule are noted, you may substitute child for adolescent, and vice-versa.

I have also treated more boys than girls in the past thirty years, but, again, you may substitute girl for boy and boy for girl, except where the exception to the rule is noted, as the data I have accumulated over the years indicate little difference between boys and girls, in terms of the academic and social learning challenges that are discussed.

I have received encouraging feedback from many of my former patients and their families about the book, and it is dedicated to them and the generations of problem children and their families a-coming.

Part I — What Went Wrong?

Chapter One — The Problem Children

Today more children and adolescents are having social adjustment problems, getting into trouble earlier, and taking their troubles to drastic ends such as addiction, assault, murder, and suicide than at any time in history. Educators, legal authorities, those in the helping professions, parents, and the children themselves have theories about what has gone wrong, as well as what needs to be done about it.

Unfortunately, the answers that are given by all of the above-mentioned groups usually involve only parts of the problem and pose untenable solutions. The parents claim that the schools need to take more responsibility for the social development of students. However, after increased state and federal spending to upgrade the schools and their social programs, including a massive self-esteem movement, the problems have remained and/or worsened. The dismal results of increased spending and the failure of governmental programs to stem the tide of adolescent suicide, substance abuse, and truancy have been reported elsewhere (see Suggestions for Further Reading). It is clear that new techniques, as well as new ways of looking at these problems, are needed.

Parents and children often blame teachers or the school system. Likewise, the school officials often blame the parents. If a child is truant from school, it is expected that the school's merely notifying the parents about the truancy fulfills the school's responsibility. The teamwork usually ends there. School officials assume that notifying the parents about the truancy will result in immediate and lasting school attendance. If the child continues to be truant, then the schools tend to assume that it is the parents' fault. The fact that the entirety of society used to send a message to children to go to school or face detention in Juvenile Hall is neglected (see Chapter Six). We now send children a very different message when they are truant.

In 2004, extreme truancy was usually dealt with by arranging a conference among school officials, the child, and the parents to discuss ways of dealing with their child's truancy problem. We should, at a minimum, have an opportunity for teamwork between the parents and the school. We often do not get it. More frequently, the aid of school counselors or outside helping professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists, or family counselors is recommended. The ensuing discussions usually conclude with the idea that everyone except the child or the system is to blame for the child's choosing not to attend school.

This current state of affairs is not working and is often demeaning for all of the parties involved. In my years of working with children who have substance abuse problems, excessive anger and/or physical aggression, and who have often gotten themselves into minor or major difficulties with various authority figures, including the legal system, I have all-too-often witnessed the following scenarios when counseling or psychotherapy are recommended as a result of these meetings.

In the first scenario, Dr. Lamb, a local specialist in children's adjustment problems, is recommended. The parents telephone Dr. Lamb and make an appointment. They are told that they will need to attend the first session in order to give parental consent for treatment of their daughter, but only their daughter need be present thereafter. They comply with this request, mostly because Dr. Lamb has been highly recommended and much of our belief about what happens in therapy is based on the idea that one is to go there, bare one's soul in private, and eventually gain some magical insight such as, I was only skipping school to get back at my parents for divorcing and ruining my life is achieved. At this time therapy can then be ended, our theoretically now trouble-free child returns home to make her concerned family blissful, truancy is never again a problem, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Why do we still fall for this magical thinking? Books and movies contribute significantly to this mythical world of therapy where insight is the key to permanent change and trouble-free living. Unfortunately, this fairy tale example is generally just that — more fiction than fact! Books featuring such examples are usually based mostly on individual case studies, and the rigor of controlled double-blind outcome studies is not possible. This means that the reports are thus nothing more than anecdotal data, and most scientists frown upon this as proof of anything other than the good storytelling ability of the person relating the story.

In reality, the above meeting where only the problem child attends the therapy session is more likely to go something like this:

Dr. Lamb: How are you doing, Sally?

Sally: Fine.

Dr. Lamb: Do you have any idea why your parents want you to see me?

Sally: No.

Dr. Lamb: Do you have any problems or anything you want to talk about?

Sally: No.

Dr. Lamb: Well, then, why don't we begin by your telling me about your family?

Sally: What do you want to know?

Let's say for the sake of argument that Sally has been referred to Dr. Lamb because of truancy, increasing social withdrawal, especially from her parents, suspected drug or alcohol abuse, failing grades, and feelings of depression with occasional thoughts of suicide. If Dr. Lamb were to continue in the above vein, then these problems will probably come into focus in six to eight months, assuming, of course, that the Sally does not terminate therapy or commit suicide first.

Therapists such as Dr. Lamb have an interesting way of explaining the above session. If Sally's grades get worse, or if she becomes more socially withdrawn during the early weeks of therapy, then Dr. Lamb will report that the therapy sessions are working. After all, there can be no long-term gain without short-term pain, and we must give the therapy time to work. However, if Sally's school attendance or grades were to get better after a few weeks of therapy, then Dr. Lamb will probably attribute that to the positive relationship that she has established with Sally, and therapy will be the reason for the improvement in behavior. The point here is that Dr. Lamb does not have a valid explanation for Sally's behavioral change because he does not approach the problem in a more scientific fashion that would allow isolation of the important variables in Sally's truancy and other problems. Dr. Lamb also probably classifies behaviors such as truancy and school performance as symptoms of a deeper psychological or psychiatric problem. In reality, these behaviors are problems in their own right and provide sufficient evidence about what needs assessing.

In a second such scenario of what happens when a truant child is referred for treatment, the child is taken to Dr. Smith, who is on the staff of an inpatient residential treatment center. Again, the above initial interview is conducted, but Dr. Smith is much more action-oriented than Dr. Lamb. Dr. Smith realizes that Sally is seriously depressed and recommends that the family hospitalize her immediately for evaluation and possible eventual enrollment into a long-term residential treatment facility, where she can receive one to three years of intensive treatment in a protected setting. Dr. Smith does not offer other options to either Sally or her parents other than saying that, if action is not taken immediately, Sally will probably end up in Juvenile Hall or dead.

As you might have already guessed, Dr. Smith's approach is as extremely hasty as Dr. Lamb's approach is slow. Both Dr. Lamb and Dr. Smith are operating on insufficient data for making decisions that will probably affect Sally's life in a highly significant way, and that may be the difference between life and death.

The third illustrative scenario would seem to cover many of the problems presented in the first two examples. This time Dr. Jones is the recommended therapist. Dr. Jones insists that all of the family members, sometimes even including the pets, must come to the session because, no matter how wonderful the other children in the family might be, and no matter how saintly the parents might be, if a child in a family is not doing well, the family structure or ways of relating to each other is assumed to be the source of Sally's problems. Sally, who is referred to by Dr. Jones as the identified patient to stress the idea that she is exposing the pathological aspects of her family rather than being the problem herself, is seen as a litmus test of the family's acidity, so to speak. In the eyes of Dr. Jones, early childhood conditioning or current ways of parental disciplining could bring about emotional problems that cause the identified patient to act out. Parents who were seen by therapists as being overly strict or controlling were blamed by these therapists for serious psychiatric disturbances such as anorexia nervosa, a disorder in which the patient may starve themselves to death. Permissive parents were blamed for everything from delinquent behavior to obesity. However, when asked to explain why many people who had controlling parents did not develop anorexia nervosa, Dr. Jones became very quiet and could not explain such behavior. These types of therapists often work from a pathology model that does not have a working definition of functional. These therapists also tend to rely on the old standard of insight as the ultimate goal of therapy, as was talked about earlier.

A therapist's making connections between events that are not easily connected by the non-therapist can be dramatic and, unfortunately, believable. It can give the therapist a sense of awe-inspiring power to provide patients with such insights. However, as I said, such brilliant insights rarely lead to permanent behavioral change or stable amelioration of symptoms, especially in the case of serious diagnoses such as those mentioned above.

At this point I must mention that the major flaw with all of us who practice therapy or counseling is that we tend to base all of our theories and inferences about human behavior on the patients whom we see in our practice. For example, a therapist might determine that I consume large quantities of alcohol to block out my feelings of anger toward my mother, whom I perceive as having been verbally abusive to me during my youth — twenty (thirty, forty, or fifty) years ago. The problem is that they have no good explanation for the thousands and/or millions of people who do not drink in spite of having experienced verbally abusive mothers.

I recently heard an excellent anecdote that illustrates the above point well. During a conference in which the need to include homosexuality as a mental disorder in the psychiatric handbook and diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association was being discussed, an attendee argued vehemently that in his 40 years of private practice, with all kinds of patients, he had yet to see a well-adjusted homosexual. A second conference attendee then stood and retorted, In my 40 years of private practice, with all types of patients, I have yet to see a well-adjusted heterosexual. Should we also make heterosexuality a mental disorder? The second attendee's point is clear. If we therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists are only reasoning on the basis of the people and problems we see in our office, then we are inevitably going to be wrong in our assumptions, and thus our conclusions, about human behavior.

As an example, consider the emotionally laden topic of child abuse. Many counselors or therapists argue that only via therapy may one work through the rage felt by an abused child and resolve it without resorting to maladaptive behavior as a direct result of the abuse. They discount the unfortunate thousands of people who were able to bear such abuse in silence and lead relatively normal lives in the times prior to the child abuse reporting legislation mandated during the 1970' and 1980's. Conversely, this type of logic implies that a child who is not displaying maladaptive behavior has probably not been abused. We must face the fact that some children tolerate terribly abusive parents and/or events and maintain good school performance and social adjustment. Child abuse, per se, does leave emotional scars, but to assume that child abuse invariably causes failing grades in school or other difficulties, by itself and without taking other factors into consideration, is absurd. In fact, many adult survivors of child abuse have reported that they made good grades in school because they feared more beatings or abuse if their grades were poor. Human behavior can be tremendously complex, variable, and idiosyncratic in this regard.

These three scenarios are intended to show that people in the counseling and helping professions approach problems with a particular style of working that often makes them overlook or disregard important facts. Drs. Lamb and Smith downplay the importance of the family's influences in children's problems, and Dr. Jones downplays the unique way that