The Explosive Child

My wife and I are taking a parenting class. My youngest boy has an attention deficit that we help control with medication. He's been doing really well, but occasionally he's hard to handle. My wife attended a workshop through my son's elementary school, and she signed us both up for the six-week parenting course. We're reading Ross Greene's, The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children. The class started last week and we're reading through chapter 4 for this week's meeting. I planned to write about this more later, but it turns out yesterday's Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story on childhood psychiatric disorders, "Just what is troubling my child?":

The final straw for Carolyn Alves came last fall when she tried to help her daughter Cecelia dress for kindergarten.

The volatile 6-year-old had worked herself into a frenzy as she tried on outfit after outfit, rejecting each as unacceptable. The tantrum at full bore, she scooped up a pile of clothes and hurled them at the front door of the family's Spanish-style bungalow in Glendale.

The clock ticked past the school's 8 a.m. bell. Alves pulled her wailing child into her arms and held her on the couch. After several minutes, Cecelia stopped, took a breath and announced that she was ready to go to school.

"It was like watching someone who was having a mental breakdown," Alves said. Then "a switch went off and she went back to being normal."

Alves and her husband, Marcos, have consulted five doctors and therapists in the last four years. Cecelia has been diagnosed with a smorgasbord of psychiatric disorders — including the controversial diagnosis of child bipolar disorder — in addition to being called a normal kid.

Experts in pediatric mental health readily acknowledge that their failure to pinpoint the problem with children like Cecelia makes a difficult situation worse. And some of them are pressing for an unconventional solution: a new diagnostic category called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, or DMDD.

Creating a diagnosis is considered a radical step in mental health circles, and the proposal has sparked much debate. The controversy underscores the fact that therapists simply don't know what to make of the estimated 3% of children in the U.S. who suffer from severe irritability and emotional outbursts.

"Everyone wishes we could have a genetic test or a blood test" to determine which disorder a child has, said Erik Parens, senior research scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, N.Y. "Unfortunately, nature doesn't work the way we wish."

As a result, parents may be told their children have conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, depression or bipolar disorder — if they get a diagnosis at all.

Continue reading.

My son wasn't diagnosed until he was almost in kidergarten, and it's taken a long time to reach a functioning routine that allows both him to do well and a little peace for mom and dad. And one thing I learned the other night at the class is that there's a social stigma attached to these disorders. And honestly, I didn't take them all that serious myself until I had to deal with these issues as a parent. And it must be hell for parents who aren't getting good medical advice. More on that at the Times.

Update: After Leiby Kletzky Murder

A follow-up to "Reassessment After Leiby Kletzky Murder."

From Neo-Neocon, at Pajamas Media, "In Kletzky Killing’s Wake, We Can’t Lock Up Our Kids."

Great essay. Very reasonable. But again, I'm not sure reason returns very quickly after something so shocking. I don't think folks need to "lock up" their kids. I think we should all be more careful. That mother in Pico Rivera let her child, 6-years-old, go the restroom alone in a public park. My wife spoke about it at the time as something we'd never do. Rape is unconscionable, but the child is alive. Eight-year-old Leiby's forever gone from this world. His mother is gripped with guilt. I feel bad for her. I don't think she made a mistake. She's the mother. She would know her own child's ability. But as I noted already, my youngest boy wouldn't be ready for a 7-block walk all alone. It's not like he'd have a problem walking home. It's that he'd be distracted somehow and lose focus on the mission. He'd dawdle perhaps. He'd get absent-minded. He's got attention deficits. I don't know. But we're not at the trusting stage yet. Call me overprotective. That's fine. My son's well-adjusted and safely snug in his bed. But each child is different. My older son has all kinds of autonomy. But we still worry sometimes.

God bless the Kletzky family. I hope they're coping well. It's so sad.

Pat Austin has some comments on the case as well.

See also New York Daily News, "Leiby Kletzky died fighting for life: Confessed killer Levi Aron has marks indicating a 'struggle'."

Reassessment After Leiby Kletzky Murder

I'm upset by the murder of Leiby Kletzky.

We've had an empty nest all week. Our boys have been visiting relatives in Fresno. They'll be back today, but we've missed them. Sure, the downtime from the kids has been nice. The house is clean as a whistle. We had an open house on Sunday. My wife and I detailed everything. Here's the kitchen yesterday afternoon. A few items on the counter, but there's no usual mess from a full day of family cooking and hanging out, with clothes and toys strewn all about:

My wife hadn't heard of Leiby's death. I mentioned it to her when we went out last night to Yogurt Land. She reminded me of the report over the 4th of July weekend of the 6-year-old boy who was allegedly raped after his mother let him use the restroom alone at Rio Hondo Park in Pico Rivera. It looks like a nice park. No doubt the mom felt safe. In Brooklyn, families have to be asking questions, so many questions. As the New York Times reported earlier:

Suddenly, an Orthodox Jewish community that had blanketed streets and subway stations with missing-child posters, that had promised a six-figure reward, had to face the devastating reality: Leiby was dead, and the suspect was also Jewish, living not far away. His death also forced parents, not just in Borough Park but across the city, to wonder, to speculate, to second-guess themselves: Was it one of those headline-grabbing tragedies that could have been avoided? When is a child ready to go it alone, anyway?

My wife and I agree that our youngest son, who's almost 10, is nowhere near ready to "go it alone," so to speak. And my wife worries about our high-schooler, who walks by himself to and from school. We live in the Irvine Unified School District, and it's safe here. But no need to get a false sense of security. No one can predict when a crime might take place, and when one does people ask, "How could this have happened"? Well, yeah. How? But it's too late by then. The Wall Street Journal had something on this yesterday, "After Leiby Kletzky Murder, Urging Parents to Keep Calm." It's an interview with Hara Estroff Marano of Psychology Today. I can't imagine how this is reassuring:

The Wall Street Journal: Most parents’ first reaction to a story like this is to reassess–and in many cases, ratchet back–the independence they give their kids. What should be guiding their thinking right now?

Hara Estroff Marano: The very fact that this is such a rare event should get some consideration in their mind. One reason people are talking about it is because it’s so strikingly unusual. It’s within a particular community… this is a very insolated incident. I don’t know there are really lessons for outsiders here at all, because we don’t yet know all the details. So any reassessment should focus on the rarity of the event. This is just not something that’s likely to happen very often.

The first reaction is ‘oh my god I can’t let my kid walk down the street.’ No, look at the situation. Instead of saying ‘no you can’t cross the street,’ you say, ‘here, I’ll watch you cross the street’ and watch them a few times, then let them do it alone.

Keep reading.

It's sounds so logical and reasonable. Whereas fears and love aren't. I think parents need to go with their instincts, especially if they've got young kids. A couple more years of hovering ain't gonna harm a child. Frankly, in this day and age, I think families let kids off the leash a bit too early anyway.

Katy Perry Too Hot for 'Sesame Street'

Parents complained, apparently: "DUDE MY SON SAW THIS AND GOT A BONER WTTTTTTTTTF."

Kids Having Babies: Let's Be "Realistic"

A few nights ago, my wife and I talked to our oldest son about Alfie Patten, the British 13 year-old who is said to be the country's youngest father.

Our son's also 13, so the shock value of childhood parenting was particularly strong (the pictures of "baby" Alfie with his baby were particularly helpful). Actually, my son and I had the "birds and the bees" chat some time back, but with interest in girls on the rise around here, it never hurts to reiterate the basics.

So, with Bristol Palin's recent remark that abstinence was "not realistic at all," I'm even doubly convinced on the need for early and often parental intervention on these matters.

I'm not the only one. Robert Stacy McCain's taken a little friendly fire for his hasty "judgmentalism" on Ms. Bristol's teenage parenthood, and responds with a little pushback from his own fertile experience:

Look, I have three teenagers myself, a 19-year-old daughter and twin 16-year-old sons. Being judgmental is a full-time occupation, OK? I just put one of my 16-year-old boys onto a plane to visit relatives in Ohio, where he's also got a blonde girlfriend. When I called his cell phone before he boarded the plane, what was the last thing I told him? "Keep it in your britches, son."

Understand that sexy is a hereditary condition, so it's not like the boy won't encounter temptation. But something else is hereditary, too: Extreme fecundity.

My wife is one of seven children in her family, and we've got six kids, so there's really no such thing as "safe sex" with this crew. I've had to have this little talk with my daughter and her boyfriend, much to their embarrassment. It's about 100% certain they're not having sex, because if they were, there's a 99% chance I'd be a grandpa by now.

Well, as the father of two boys, "keep your britches on, son" might get some airtime around these parts in the years ahead.