Dave Comments On “De-Coding Temper Tantrums”
Dave: I have to take a moment to applaud my good friend and muse, Amy Begel, who has a splendid capacity to wrap complex experiences in words. I am a […]
De-Coding A Child’s Temper Tantrums: It’s A Message For The Family
Parenting advice often describes ways to “manage” a child’s temper tantrums. But temper tantrums, or defiant behavior in kids contain important messages for the parents. Often, without meaning to, kids are responding to underlying tensions in the family. They react in the only way they know how: through their behavior. The message: HELP!
ADHD Medications: Good For Big Pharma, Not For Kids
We’re revisiting a past article by Dr. Allen Frances, a prominent psychiatric “insider” who now spends his time railing against the overprescribing of psychiatric medications. Here he talks about the New York Times article which connected the proliferation of “ADHD” in kids to the profiteering by the drug companies. This is a wake up call to parents and professionals alike. Frances says, “as it stands now, we are doing an uncontrolled experiment on our kids with no clue about the long term effects of the meds on their brains and behavior.”
Psychological Symptoms As A Sign Of Health
“Chemical Imbalance” has become a generally accepted way to think about psychological conditions like depression and anxiety. But David Keith offers another perspective: In fact, emotional problems may be a sign of mental health.
A New Medication For ADHD: The Family
These days kids are reflexively and routinely given stimulants like Ritalin if they are designated as having ADHD. Dave Keith offers an alternative perspective: He works with the family relationship patterns in order to treat the child. The side effects are good.
ADHD Diagnosis Conceals the Family Story
Good physicians take a clinical history in the interest of arriving at a diagnosis. While the clinical history is a review of ‘facts’, there are in fact, few ‘facts’ about human experience. Different examiners will get different histories depending upon what they ask about. Different family members give different reports of the same set of events. In my view clinical histories are a form of fiction pretending to be ‘objective’.
A Sorceress Consultant
Kids instinctively “worry”, that is, feel responsible for their families. Don’t forget that. Children worry about their families. They are trying to help the parents become not only better parents but better people. But their therapeutic methods get diagnosed as mental illness.
What “Crazy” Kids Can Teach Us
For Amy and Dave, common psychiatric “disorders” are part of relational patterns, usually embedded in the dynamics of the family. You just have to know how to look.
Treating ADHD Without Drugs: Entering The Family Labyrinth
Understanding and changing family relationship patterns can make a huge difference for kids diagnosed with ADHD.
THE “DUMBING DOWN” OF OUR CULTURE AND OTHER EVENTS
Lack of curiosity is a dangerous thing–in medicine, therapy, culture. Trump’s manner of speaking certainly promotes “not knowing what you don’t want to know”. He is a disturbing model for over-simplified explanations and sneering at complexity or any level of sophistication or subtlety.
The Dumbing Down of Our Culture
In many professions now, so-called “quality measurement” is the dominant language, reducing, quantifying, and eventually, side-lining the importance of human interaction. This can not be good for us as living, breathing, multi-dimensional beings.
Disrupting a Unified Family Story
Here’s a first session with a “misbehaving” boy that reflects the corrosive effect of “enforced unity” in families
The Many (Hidden) Faces of A Family
ADHD in Kids: Our family therapy view of behavior problems in kids looks at some of the hidden pattern in parenting that can contribute to these problems. Good to know. Then change is possible.
A Child’s Defiance: Looking Beneath The Surface
Dave: In an earlier post, Defiance in the Family: A Rebellion in the Name of Health, I described our idea that Defiance occurs as a result of a collapse of […]
The Symbolic Meaning Of A Child’s Symptoms: What’s in the Shadows?
Dave: The birth of the baby represents a quantum jump in intimacy and the complexity of living. There is a deep mutuality in the relationship between a parent and an […]
Defiance in Families: Rebellion in the Name of Health
Defiant kids, angry kids, crazy kids, are a byproduct of family interactions, and simultaneously a byproduct of the family’s interaction with the culture.
