Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

Troubled Children/Troubled Parents An Authors Guild BackInPrint Edition Originally published by Atheneum (New York)

Sound advice and stories to aid and comfort parents

All children undergo natural periods of stress when they may feel troubled. And when their children are troubled, parents experience anxiety and uncertainty about the best way to help them. This book defines those natural periods of stress in a child's life; describes the ways in which a temporarily troubled child might manifest their problems; and teaches parents how to overcome their own fears so that they can deal most effectively with their children at these times. It advises parents how to determine when their children's problems are, as in most cases, temporary and a natural result of their development, and when they are persistent and deep-seated, requiring professional help, and how to determine whether this is effective. This is both a practical guide for all parents concerned with their children's natural, healthy development and a lyrical, personal odyssey during which the reader is introduced to memorable children, including some who did not receive the help they needed until it was nearly too late.

Table of Contents

1 Of Unhappy Children and Uneasy Parents
Introduction: Troubled Children, Troubled Parents: The way out 3
Of some unlikely encounters "My seven-year-old daughter's being expelled from school!" The boy who chastised his stuffed animal
My purpose in writing this book
Understanding: the antidote to anxiety
The "psychologist" within each of us
Could a psychologist tolerate living with the children he treats?
Are all children likable? Of the boy who was accused of murdering his father
Join me!
1 And the Suffering Goes Unnoticed ... 10
Do children feel as deeply as adults?
The woman's collection: a razor and pills and rope
Of Tom and the strangler: emotions experienced by a child when he is troubled
The nine Signals for Concern: indicators of distress in a child
2 When Your Child Must Be Unhappy: The Periods of Natural Childhood Stress 25
Knowledge I gained about the psychological needs of healthy children from my treatment of Robert, an autistic boy
Essential elements of a care-taking ("mothering") experience
The four natural periods of stress for a child and his parents
How parents can survive their child's periods of infancy and early training
How to help your child through his early peer and school experiences
Surviving your child's adolescence or It does end!
The middle ground in parent behavior between intervening and "doing nothing"
When should parents not help their child with a difficult situation in his life?
3 Of Children's Minds and Parents' Myths 56
The needless stress between children and their parents
Children think differently than adults!
The self-centered nature of a child's thought
The "magic" present in a child's thought
The role of truth in a child's speech
Your child is not brain-damaged or Why a child repeats his behavior (seemingly interminably)
Your child does not possess a criminal nature (although he may seem to)
Your child's concept of time
"My child thinks I'm an idiot!"
How to be a logical parent to your illogical child: do's and don'ts
4 Of the Sadness and Tasks of Parents 71
Emotions experienced by parents when their child is troubled
What is a symptom?
Those diagnoses which parents must make
A parent's three necessary questions
How to help your child when he is troubled
Why your child becomes unhappy
5 Key Techniques for Successful Parental Intervention 84
How to intervene successfully in your child's life
Should your child "fight his own battles"?
The errors of professionals are never acceptable
The rules for successful parent intervention
Questions every parent should ask himself before intervening in his child's life
Do's and don'ts when:
Your child comes home after a fight!
Your child doesn't want to go to school!
Your child has nightmares!
Your child is using drugs!
Your child's grades do not reflect his ability!
Other problems!
Helping yourself relax when your child is troubled: the method of self-hypnosis
6 When Parents Are Not Enough: Of Professional and Unprofessional Treatment 111
The Lost Pleiad
When do your child's difficulties require professional attention?
Psychotherapy: the treatment of the mind
The origin and classification of children's psychological disorders
Parents of emotionally disturbed children: guilty or not guilty?
The dying father
The four basic ways a psychotherapist interacts with his patient
Choosing your child's psychotherapist
Characteristics of effective psychotherapy
Honest answers you thought you'd never receive to some intimate questions about psychotherapy you thought you'd never dare ask
2 Of Children and Their Doctors at The Hospital
Introduction to Part II 151
7 Robert: The gentle, frightened Jewish Boy Who Believed in Jesus and Beat the Devil 153
8 John: The Boy Who Could Not Curse 169
9 Jim: The Psychotherapist Who Sought Love and Met Death 180
10 Farewell to the Hospital 189
The boy who predicted his father's death
The girl who feared love but gave me a wedding ring
The boy who shot himself in the leg
Paula
The mobster's daughter who studied psychology
An attempted murder
Farewell to The Hospital: of Stanley and Robert and John and Jim
Appendix Confessions of Mrs. Malaprop: an informal glossary of selected psychological terms often used incorrectly 202

Copyright 1979. 2000 by Stanley Goldstein. All Rights Reserved.

Foreword & Introduction

Some years before I would have regarded her mother's description of Joan's behavior as improbable. But that day I accepted the report as accurate. My psychotherapeutic experience with countless children and adolescents had taught me never to dismiss any description of a child's behavior, no matter how unbelievable it might initially seem. Over the years, through contact with my patients, my concept of children, their capacities and emotions, had broadened. I had, for example, met Kathy, a precocious 4 1/​2-year-old girl who was more seductive than any adult woman I had ever encountered. And I had met Robert, an intelligent adolescent boy who as a young child had been diagnosed as "autistic" and who, ten years later, spent his days speaking of clocks and watches and electric motors. So when I met Joan, I believed her mother's story.

Joan was a tall, thin, seven-year-old. Her mother had brought her to my office in desperation: Joan was about to be expelled from school! Her behavior in class was so defiant and difficult to contain that most of her school days were spent in the principal's office. He had even joked that a special annex should be constructed next to his office for Joan, so rarely was she in class. Within two months of her initial appointment with me, Joan's behavior had changed radically. Now she was sent to the principal so rarely that, one day, he made a special visit to Joan's classroom to see if she was still attending school.

How had I helped Joan? How had my actions been so "catalytic" that she was set free from her unhappiness and could participate with interest and pleasure in her academic and social school experiences? I used no arcane or highly specialized technique; nor could my interaction with Joan be considered "behavior modification," in the strictest sense, even though a modification in her behavior was certainly the result. Instead I observed and I listened for certain behavior and speech, and I spoke in a particular manner.

Several years later I spoke with Carla, the divorced mother of two young children. She was concerned over the recent behavior of her younger (six-year-old) son. After spending a rare afternoon with his father (who lived 1500 miles away from his children), the boy locked himself in his room and refused to allow his mother admittance. She stood outside the door, listerning, as he berated and slapped his favorite stuffed animal. He condemned the animal for its behavior, and vowed to have no more to do with it. Carla's anxiety rose as she listened to her son's angry voice. She again requested that he open the door, and again she was ignored. Her son's loud condemnation of his animal continued for some time. Then there was silence. The door opened and her son, wordlessly, walked out of the room clutching his animal. He would not explain the behavior which had so puzzled and troubled his mother. His behavior during the remainder of the week was unexceptional. When I spoke with Carla I explained the frightening incident as I understood it. I said that her son was very angry. Having no direct contact with the boy, I would not presume to state the source of his anger. It may have reflected his discontent over a specific event which had occurred that afternoon. I could not be sure. But in those moments when he was alone in his room berating his stuffed animal, he was resolving his unhappiness. The anger he was verbalizing was analogous to the pus pouring out of a physical wound: he was healing himself. When he opened th door of his room he had no need to discuss this incident with his mother: the "wound" was healed and so he could go on about his life.

Carla was greatly relieved by my explanation. She had been concerned for days that her son's behavior reflected both the child's serious psychopathology and her own inadequacy as a mother; she thought that such troubles might be an unavoidable consequence of her attempt to function as both parents in her single-parent family. How had I succeeded in comforting Carla? My information gave her no additional "facts" about her son: indeed, it was she who had provided me with such "facts" as there were. What I had done was to provide her with a perspective on child development and child behavior different from her own. It was this perspective--not any required change in her child--which comforted her.

Through my years of experience as a psychologist, in my work with both seriously troubled and essentially healthy children, I have shared this perspective with many parents. It is because of the comfort and understanding which my professional knowledge has provided these parents that I write this book. My purpose is to enable parents to interact with their child when he is troubled in such a way as to provide him with understanding, comfort, and healing.

The most potent factor in the reduction of anxiety is understanding. Through a proper understanding of the difficulties which children naturally experience in the course of their development, much of the anxiety experienced by both children and parents can be reduced. But it is not only for the normally experienced, "typical" problems of youth that helpful, anxiety-reducing parental intervention can be useful. There are ways of understanding and relating to even the most severely disturbed child that can do much to comfort both parent and child. To be able to help children when they are troubled one must acquire certain facts and techniques and forget other largely inaccurate information about ways of relating to children. Each person--parent and child--may be considered to be a psychologist of sorts, for every individual in the course of his life has studied his own behavior and that of others, and from this study has derived certain conclusions about human development. Indeed, one noted psychologist, Fritz Heider, has spent much of his career compiling a "naive psychology," the term he coined for the conclusions about human behavior which a person naturally acquires in the course of his life. For example, one "fact" of this naive psychology is that children differ from adults because they possess less factual information than adults. As we will see in Chapter 3, however, this conclusion, while accurate, is far and away the least important distinction between the intellectual capacities of children and adults (or a child and his parents). Another "rule" derived from naive psychology, and used frequently by both children and adults, is that decisions (and therefore behavior) are based upon information derived from the environment. For example, if we believe that one's primary source of information is visual, then our desire to remain inconspicuous--to hide--when unpleasant chores are being handed out becomes easily understandable.

The task of a psychologist, I think, is far easier than that of a parent. I have often reflected, in my work with parents, on the severe emotional demands which parenting even a "normal" child presents, although these demands are far less than those one encounters when attempting to interact with a child who is troubled. There are few children with whom I work in my clinical practice that I could tolerate living with on a permanent basis. Yet I have feelings of compassion and warmth for all these children and a sense of optimism about the possibility of positive change in their lives.

Some years ago I spoke with a divorced woman in her late thirties and her ten-year-old son. Her son had very serious emotional difficulties: although his physical and intellectual capabilities were equal to those of his peers, his emotional development lagged far behind. He was most immature: a four-year-old child would be ashamed to behave in such a nagging, overdependent fashion. But no four-year-old would have knowledge of the obscenities with which this child continually expressed himself. His mother said that, at times, she hated her son. But her psychotherapist had admonished her that her duty as a mother was to like her child, that her anger toward him was "immature." I told her that while I would feel compassion toward her son, I could see nothing likable in his behavior. I told her that, in my opinion, her therapist's criticism reflected his lack of knowledge (for he treated only adults) of the great discomfort which the behavior of a severely troubled child could cause a family.

I once treated, in a hospital, a severely disturbed adolescent: some evidence existed that he had been involved, at the age of four, in the death of his father. Whether or not this accusation was valid, he had been accused of it by his mother for many years. At the age of seven he hanged the family dog. In later years he removed the steps from the staircase of his home, stole money, and destroyed property. When I began treating him he was extraordinarily provocative and controlling. Often he would push his way into my office and refuse to leave. At times he would grab my telephone and make random calls. At other times he would steal papers from my desk, returning them several hours later. His great height and weight made it very difficult to set appropriate limits, and I became so angry at his behavior that I began having daydreams about hanging him. The significant change in him (and our intense treatment relationship) began when one day, having reached the limits of my patience, I grabbed him and threw him out of my office (something he actually allowed me to do: had he wanted to resist, his size would have overwhelmed me). Three and one-half years later this boy was greatly changed. He was functioning superbly in a vocational training program where his friendly attitude and outstanding sense of responsibility made him an excellent worker. Had I a business, I would not have hesitated to hire him.

I cannot imagine any advice more destructive than to tell parents to be continually accepting toward their child's behavior regardless of its measure of civility.

I ask you, the reader, to join with me in a mutual exploration of how one can most helpfully relate to the behavior of children when they are troubled. I have found that only rarely do the goals of those children and adolescents with whom I work professionally differ from the goals desired for them by their parents. These are, generally, the capacity to be independent, the capacities for friendship, emotional warmth, and love, and the capacity to feel comfortable with oneself. Surely few can disagree with goals such as these. Thus our task here will be to consider certain facts and to explore certain techniques that will make you as parents better able to help your children achieve these goals. And as you gain this increased ability to interact with them, it is inevitable that, in the process, you will also learn more about yourselves and thereby be better able to help your children achieve those goals.

Copyright 1979, 2000 by Stanley Goldstein. All Rights Reserved.