Reason #64 Not to Trust Your Child to Psychiatry

A new study reports what most psychiatric survivors and mental health critics have known for decades: children on neuroleptics (also labeled “antipsychotics”) gain weight at an alarming and dangerous rate.

Many children and adolescent pack on almost two pounds per week on drugs like Ability, Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa. The last two drugs are not approved for children. That’s right, the FDA has not approved them for children because they are known to elevate cholesterol and other blood fats to dangerous levels, which scientists know makes children more prone to heart problems later in life.

These drugs are some of the most toxic substances used by psychiatry. They are tranquilizers that are extremely sedating; they do their “work” by essentially shutting off the emotional center of the brain. They do not rewire or rebalance brain chemicals; any commercials or professional who tells you that is either ignorant or a big fat liar.

One of the ways children gain weight on these drugs is by disturbing normal digestion of sugars. Essentially, these drugs cause diabetes.

Just an aside: guess who makes money when the children develop diabetes?

Psychiatrists, along with the marketing departments of the drug companies, defend the use of these toxins by suggesting that these newer drugs are safer than the older anti-psychotics like Haldol and Mellaril. This is arguable. All of the newer anti-psychotics also cause permanent, debilitating neurological disorders like Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome and several dystonias.

Second, they suggest that the drugs can reduce severe psychiatric symptoms in troubled children. On the surface, this is true. When you drug a child with major tranquilizers to the point where their brain is essentially dimmed, of course you won’t see behavioral symptoms. But you could get the same effect with a baseball bat—with less damage to the brain!

Another problem with antipsychotics: the vast majority of adolescents and adults who take them HATE taking them. Children loathe the oppressive feeling, they hate being sedated, they can't stand the side effects, and are often disturbed by the fundamental change in their personality that inevitably follows. Also, many adolescents and adults begin smoking--often chainsmoking--in order to counteract the sedating effects of the drugs. This helps explain the woeful compliance rate with neuroleptics.

The more important point is that there are far better, far more effective, far safer, far more humane methods and treatments for children than hardcore psychiatric drugs. But of course most psychiatrists would not admit this; a huge chunk of their business would evaporate if people knew about that. Now you know.

Baby Einstein Ain't Rocket Science

For those of you who have not heard, Disney is offering refunds to parents who have purchased the Baby Einstein videos. Of course, this was not done willingly or even out of the goodness of Disney's heart. They were threatened with a lawsuit by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, who cited studies connecting early childhood television watching with later attention problems.

I hope the refunds can help parents acquire something important, like books, puzzles, or a healthy snack.

I hope that parents begin to acknowledge how early childhood exposure to stimuli affects later sensitivity, comprehension and integration of stimuli. It isn't rocket science, but some parents don't get it. If you expose the developing brain to too much visual stimuli--especially highly engaging, long-lasting stimuli--the brain will become "addicted" to this type and intensity of stimuli. It will become the minimum threshold for achieving and maintaining the child's attention. This spells disaster for the child when he or she is supposed to begin reading, listening to adults, or writing on a blank piece of paper. The duller stimuli simply cannot compete.

Same thing with video games. Leapfrogs. Computer games that teach reading and math. Children learned how to read and write and do arithmetic quite well without any of these accoutrements; why in the world would we think that children need them today?

The short answer is: children do not need them at all. What they need is a cardboard box, some dirt, a stick, a ball, pots and pans, pillows, and fresh air. Let them figure out what to do with it all; that will increase their intelligence far more than any videos or computer games ever could. It will also help your child's brain develop the attention and concentration skills necessary to succeed in school and the workplace.

It’s “Dear Diary”, not “Dear Mom”!

Clients and other professionals ask me from time to time about children’s diaries and journals. Should parents consider privacy inviolable and the contents of a diary sacrosanct? Or rather, are parents entitled to discover their child’s secret thoughts?

The question, which I discuss more fully in Desperately Seeking Parents, does not allow as black and white an answer as other parenting challenges. But there are some guiding principles that I believe parents would be wise to consider.

Parents need to comprehend how keenly a child treasures her privacy. In fact, privacy could be subsumed under any of the Four Rewards that children seek: Trust, Respect, Freedom, and Privileges. Because so much of a child’s life is subject to adult scrutiny—from teachers, parents, coaches, friends’ parents—a child’s diary resembles an oasis of thought and feeling. It represents the one place the child can express thoughts and feelings undiluted by fear of adult interference or judgment.

Of course, these are the very thoughts and feelings some parents are so eager to plunder. What parent doesn’t want to know the inner workings of his child’s mind and heart? The problem is that your child expects that her diary will be private. This changes what she enters. Some of the thoughts expressed in diaries and journals are not accurate. Many children and adolescents “try on” thoughts and ideas in their private writings as if to examine them or achieve some sort of catharsis. For example: “I hate Ginny. The next time I see her, I’m going to shove her head down the toilet.” Maybe these are true feelings; more likely, they are hyperbolic reflections of a fleeting, half-baked feeling. Parents can get the wrong idea about their child.

Privacy is one of those things that parents should consider as both a right and a privilege. On the one hand, certainly privacies (such as going to the bathroom unattended) should be afforded your child except in the most extreme cases. On the other hand, higher levels of privacy must be earned. You wouldn’t let your early adolescent alone in her room with the door closed with a boy she has a crush on, would you? But after years of trustworthy behavior, sound judgment, and solid evidence of assertiveness, you might easily allow your daughter that privacy.

I advise parents to discuss the limitations of a diary when the child first receives it. The boundaries should be clearly stated to the child: as long as Mom and Dad can reasonably trust your safety, there will be no reason to intrude on the privacy of your diary or journal. However, if Mom and Dad perceive a threat to your safety, then they reserve the right to look at your diary in order to learn anything they can to help make you safe. Discuss what those specific safety “triggers” might be. Let them know that you have specific concerns on your radar screen. If you are a paranoid parent, admit it. Laugh at yourself before your child does!

Parents possess the right to some reconnaissance, but breaking this sacred boundary should be reserved for only the most critical moments and challenges, such as suicidality, significant drug and alcohol use, or involvement in dangerous relationships. Be assured, you will pay a penalty for breaking this boundary; the damage to your perceived trustworthiness will be considerable. If the penalty proves too steep for you, it would be wise to maintain your child’s privacy.

Desperately Seeking Parents

I realize I have been woefully absent for a week. Just rest assured, I have been spending my time efficiently, mostly completing my book, Desperately Seeking Parents. I hope I have it complete by the end of October and have a decision regarding publication by the end of this year.
I can't wait to start getting it out there on talk radio, TV, internet and bookstores. In the meantime, I will attempt to maintain the blog twice per week: Mondays and Thursdays. There is a lot of good stuff to blog about: parenting advice, a constant flow of research to examine, and snippets of the book to tantalize my readers.
Until Thursday, have a great week!

Daddy’s Pants are On Fire!!!!

Perhaps you have read the study published just yesterday about parents lying to their children. The study, printed in the Journal of Moral Development, reported that a surprisingly high percentage of parents lie to their children. The spectrum of untruths was broad, ranging from outright lies about monsters in the closet eating children who don’t eat their vegetables to little white lies about tooth fairies and Easter bunnies.

It is ironic that my last post encourages parents to fib to their kids, so I want to address that apparent contradiction.

First, placebo requires an incomplete transmission of truth. If someone knows that a treatment is a placebo, it will usually diminish the power of the placebo (although oddly, not all of it). This is why researchers nefariously attempt to “break the blind” in research studies—in order to reduce the power of the placebo treatment compared to the experimental drug. So telling your child that The Miyagi Treatment is bogus would render it essentially useless.

Second, lying to children is a time-honored tradition. Think about the following: Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, teeth falling out if they are not brushed, “This is the Cubs year”, Mom getting her tattoo as a “contest prize”, and insisted that the squeaking bed the kids heard last night was “Dad was fixing it; everyone knows that late night is the best time to fix a bed”. Heck, my kids all think they were bought at Target (although we let our eldest change the story to Nordstrom; she has her reputation to maintain). Is there really any harm in these little whoppers when the truth is finally discovered?

Third, of course some lies are not healthy for children. Lying to older children about important family facts is not usually a good idea, unless the truth would be too painful to comprehend or a confidence would be broken. As a child gets older, it is crucial that children perceive parents as truth-tellers; otherwise they will not earn the child’s trust. Minor white lies will not damage that trust.

I'm curious...what lies have you all told your children that you believe are justifiable and even healthy? Are there any you believe in retrospect were not worthwhile? I’m eager to hear your stories.

Now you’ll excuse me, I have to go fix my bed.

"The Miyagi Treatment"

Just about everyone knows something about the placebo effect. Essentially, it refers to any pretend treatment that has no direct effect, but somehow induces hope, which in turn produces positive results. For example, it is well-known that placebo (or sugar pill) performs just as well as antidepressants. It is also highly effective for many pain syndromes.

I use placebo all the time with my kids for minor injuries like scrapes, bumps, bruises, odd pains. One of my favorite is “The Miyagi Treatment”; I actually call it that, so it sounds important and even medical.

I don’t need to tell some of you exactly what it is—you remember the movie. But for any of you who never saw “The Karate Kid”…

All you have to do is calmly tell Junior that you know exactly what to do (you have to look serious and intent about it). Go ahead and tell him that you learned this treatment in Vietnam or something—he won’t know the difference. Carefully and powerfully clap your hands together—hard—and start to rub them together, hard and fast. Do this for about 20 seconds. You can do a meditative sounding “mmmm…”, but make it a bit guttural and very serious-sounding.

After 20 seconds, press your warm hands onto wherever the bump, bruise, or scrape is. Put a little pressure on it and ask your child to count to 20, slowly. After 10, tell him/her that after 20, you will let go and the injury will feel mostly better. As soon as you take your hand off, say “See?” Don’t show your amazement when your child says “Yeah, it’s almost all better.” Then pat Junior on the head and say that the rest of the pain will go away soon.

It works every time. Miyagi would be proud.

Study Skills 101: Multi-Tasking

OK, let’s see a show of hands: who thinks it is a good idea to multi-task while studying or completing homework? I’m talking about things like watching TV, listening to music, checking for chat responses on the computer, or texting friends.

Teenagers answering that question tend to give multi-tasking lukewarm support, although rather than insisting it is a good thing, they tend to defend multi-tasking as something less heinous than a mortal sin. Parents, on the other hand, instinctively know that multi-tasking is not such a good idea.

Part of the problem is that parents tend to be consummate multi-taskers. What stay-at-home mom isn’t juggling 20 different things: cooking, cleaning, coordinating rides, disciplining children, talking to friends, running errands, and answering the constant flow of inane questions that children seem to offer up when Mom is in the middle of everything?

Children aren’t coming out of left field when they ask, “If Mom does it all day, why in the world can’t I watch TV when I do my Math?”

The difference is that many of Mom’s tasks don’t require complex thinking—at least the kind of complex thinking that requires the deep, undivided attention involved in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’m not denigrating Mom’s work—believe me, it’s a lot more work than I want to do; it’s just a different kind of work.

A pretty good unbiased study performed at the National Academy of Sciences illustrates how students who multi-task often perceived themselves at skilled at performing complex cognitive tasks while watching TV and other potentially distracting stimuli, but in fact were quite poor at it.

Specifically, students were far less able to perform two crucial cognitive tasks. The first is filtering, which is focusing on a key task while ignoring or shutting out other stimuli. Students who attempted to multi-task had a horrible time filtering out both auditory and visual extraneous stimuli. The second is task-switching: shifting attention from one task to another. Multi-taskers were surprisingly very slow at going from the secondary task (watching TV, texting, etc.) back to the primary task (homework, studying).

In the end, students who multi-tasked comprehended far less material and were able to recall a great deal less of it the next day.

If you desire the greatest success for your child, initiate appropriate homework and studying rules in the earlier grades. Expect your child to turn off cell phones, the computer, TV, video games, and the radio. Set the expectation early and allow few exceptions.