Parenting: Story with a happy ending

Syndicated Columnist
Published Sunday, November 04, 2007

From the Happy Endings Department: A little over a month ago, the parents of a 6-year-old boy asked my advice concerning his daily, sometimes violent tantrums which had been ongoing since he was 3. They had removed nearly everything from his bedroom including his dresser and lamp because they were often the objects of his destructive rages. When he threw one of his fits, they confined him to his room for the day, but if he tried to hurt one of them when being escorted there (i.e. digging his nails into his mother's arm), or he kicked the walls or some article of furniture along the way (he had done considerable damage to his bedroom walls), they confined him to his room for a week other than church and school.

When his mom wrote me, by e-mail, she said he was "currently upstairs kicking his walls and screaming his head off." She asked if one week of confinement was unreasonable, adding, "I have put up with this for far too long."

Whether "reasonable" or not by whatever standard, one week of confinement in a Spartan but otherwise pleasant room was accomplishing nothing, obviously. More of the same was surely destined to accomplish more of the same. I told them to sit down with Demento (not his real name) at the first calm moment and tell him that "the Doctor" had said they were going about this all wrong (passing the disciplinary "buck" to an absent authority figure is often strategic).

He was old enough, the Doc said, to go to his room on his own. So, from then on, when he pitched one of his fits, that's what they were to do: simply tell him to go to his room. If he obeyed, right away, he only had to stay there until he'd gotten himself back under control. When he came out, however, he had to apologize to everyone who witnessed the outburst.

If, however, he refused to go to his room, requiring that one of his parents take him, he had to remain there the rest of the day and go to bed immediately after supper. If a tantrum occurred after supper, and he refused to go on his own to his room, then he had to go to bed immediately. The Doctor also told the parents that until they were able to fix spackle, paint all damage to Wild Thing's room they could not buy him anything other than what was absolutely necessary.

I recommended that they finish the conversation on a upbeat note, as in, "So, we promise to do what the Doctor says from now on!"

A month later, this update: "He has had three tantrums in the last month a huge change from one to three per day. He is more helpful at home, is reading to his little brother, and has a much sunnier attitude." The repairs to his room were almost finished, and the return of his dresser was imminent.

It's a fairly safe bet that Janice and Dimitri Papolos, the authors of "The Bipolar Child," would have said this child was in the throes of what they call early-onset bipolar disorder. The parents' description of his often erratic behavior fit the Papolos' description like hand-in-glove. According to them, EOBD is caused by as-yet-unknown physiological abnormalities, as in the still-theoretical (but widely thought to be established beyond question) "biochemical imbalance." I will deal with the Papolos' treatise in greater detail in an upcoming column, but suffice to say for the present that my general take on this latest childhood behavior disorder amounts to "bipolar, schmipolar."

I may someday be proven wrong, but until there is as much proof that things like wild tantrums at age 6 are caused by biochemical glitches as there is that bacterial pneumonia is caused by identifiable bacteria, I'll stick with schmipolar.

(By the way, I know that my comments in this paragraph and the next are going to cause controversy in the lay and professional communities. I am wide open to discussing the issues I raise with anyone who can discuss them without personalizing them and becoming emotional.)

At this time, I'll simply point out that physical anomalies capable of sustaining violent emotional upheavals and a generally surly attitude for three years cannot be cured by simply telling the child in question that when such an upheaval occurs, he can either go to his room on his own or be taken there, that his choice determines his length of stay, and that he must apologize afterwards.

Yet this "therapy" worked, so one can only conclude that this little boy's physiology is without defect. But his "symptoms" conformed to the Papolos' criteria for EOBD. He is, therefore, a schmipolar child.
