“Where’s Mommy?’ the boy yelled when he came into the room.
“She’s sleeping.”
“What?? That F@#$%$% B#$*(!”
He dashed out of the room. The next sound is the crashing of the bedroom door.
“)*(&)&* )(*)(*&)&* #$%$% ()&)&!!”
His Mom struggles bleary eyed downstairs.
What happens now? Of course timeouts and loss of privileges result from his actions. In fact, some parents will also spank their children. Eventually these kids learn several things from incidences like this:
- Swearing is not allowed
- Smashing doors and running are not allowed
- Screaming is not allowed
- Patience
These are the “regular” kids. But what about children that have Bipolar Disorder, PDD, Asperger’s, or some other neurological disorder?
There is an area in our brains that is known as the “frontal lobe”. This is where the executive functions live. These coordinate “higher functioning processes” such as speech, problem solving, self control, and attention. Every human being accesses them constantly as they resolve problems that arise.
When a child is born and through their early years their executive functions are taught how to work by their parents, teachers, and other adults. This is where a child learns not to swear or have tantrums and to learn patience. But in a child that has a disorder some of these processes may be damaged or even missing. As a result they cannot go through the normal learning procedure.
These kids may not be able to control their language. They may not have empathy for others because they cannot read the cues in people’s body language. They may not be capable of learning patience or self control. The timeouts, loss of privileges, and spanking won’t be enough because they cannot learn from these actions.
So what do we do? One of the fall back methods is to commit them to a psychiatric hospital. Another is to keep them medicated so that there will be little or no violence, screaming, or tantrums.
But aren’t we selling our kids short when we do this? Isn’t there some other way to help our children through these rough areas?
Dr. Paul Schottland, a cognitive psychologist quoted in “The Bipolar Child Newsletter“, suggests that parents look at this as a computer problem. Usually the software is included in the package; that is, the child is born with it. But if it isn’t then parents need to “install the software that isn’t there on the hard drive” by hand or reinstall it if it is damaged and then train it to act properly.
He goes on to talk about “cognitive mediators”. These are thoughts that can be used to replace the rigid unpleasant thoughts that these kids have in their heads. Tools such as these can help our children overcome their cognitive weaknesses.
Do these take the place of medicine? Any parent that is raising a child like this knows that using some meds to help calm their child’s mind goes along way in introducing and working with these tools.
The bottom line is we can just give up and put our kids into hospitals. We can drug them to keep them docile. Or we can “install the software” our children will need to survive in life.
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