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Submitted by scargle on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 11:36
 by Cathy Gilson, 7/16/2010Share | I have a dear friend with three troubled kids -- young adults really. The eldest is a young man who is struggling with a vicodin addiction that he won't admit to. The middle child is a single mother who is not capable of providing a good home for her four year old son and the youngest is 21 and struggling to find himself. She was a fully-involved mom -- worked with the school to address each child’s individual needs, attended all their activities, and engaged a large extended family in their upbringing. Why are they struggling so? Why is she suffering the regret of all parents with tough kids? That question is posed by Dr. Richard Friedman in the New York Times in his article Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds.
For years, mental health professionals were trained to see children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good until influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behavior, there must be a bad parent behind it. More...
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 06/17/2010 - 10:03
Image by alancleaver_2000 via Flickr By Cathy Gilson, 6/15/10Share | It’s a good thing I don’t have friends who are therapists, treating adolescents with serious problems in their home communities. I would irk them big-time. I have come to believe that weekly therapy sessions are fruitless, as opposed to residential treatment.
Why? Any teenager worth her salt can run circles around the brightest therapist.
Submitted by scargle on Thu, 05/13/2010 - 12:46
by Cathy Gilson, 5/14/2010Share | 
Image by Getty Images via Daylife When my child was in wilderness the staff had a phrase they would repeat, mantra like, with the kids. And that was, “No F-I”. I heard this expression often before I thought to ask what it meant. It means “no future information.” That is, they didn’t want the child in wilderness to be focusing on life after the hiking, sleeping bags, mosquitoes, beans and rice and non-stop therapy were over. The idea was to encourage the kids to concentrate on the lessons of the here and now. |
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