I was never a problem child but I could easily have become one reading this:
http://www.judson.org/images/Judson_House_13_Eleanor_Campbell.pdfTo many adults, the child is regarded as a "little grown-up," while he really lives in a complete world of his own, which an intelligent parent should attempt to learn about and appreciate. This can be done and when grasped gives an entirely different attitude on the part of the parent.
Ignorance of child care and need is appalling. Too many feel that the mother instinct is sufficient to make a person a good mother. Instinct may teach the lower animals care for their young, but it does not teach a human being to be a good parent. We must depend on education and scientific knowledge, too. Instinct does not teach us how to prevent rickets, to make our child immune to diphtheria, or to give him a chance to become a healthy, educated and emotionally balanced individual.
A second and more difficult cause for problem parents is the emotional difficulties which they are suffering. Too often the parent
is unadjusted, upset and distressed. Study of our delinquent children showed this. Often with parents afraid to let out their pent-up emotions on another "grown-up," the child becomes the recipient of these emotions, of unjust fault findings, scoldings or whippings. A mother comes saying: "My child, he hit me and slap at me." I ask: "How often do you slap your child?" Or "my child, he so nervous,
he kick and scream," and I ask, "are you nervous, and do you let out your emotions on him?" Often I get the answer: "I cannot help it, he makes me nervous." I answer: "Which is the older, and which must learn self-control first?"
A third, but less frequent and more hopeless cause is indifference. Here, in the mother, lacking the normal affection for the child, we
have a personality problem to be handled by the psychiatrist. The only hope for the child lies here, or in finding a new home for him.
The fourth, and worst, is the delinquent, the "criminal parent." We cannot go back the hundred years of Dr. Beecher, but let us anticipate the hundred years in the future. Here, where possible, children should be removed to foster homes with non-problem parents.
The depression of today has been a frequent cause of "problem parents." Anxious parents lead to troubled children who are unable
to meet life today without fear and tension. Unemployment, lack of regular income, the struggle to maintain one's family without going on relief, is not only taking its toll in physical health but in mental health. The parent who is habitually tense and fearful has had his fears and anxiety increased in the last few years. Children who, above all else, need security in the home day after day find parents
too preoccupied with worries over rent, discouragement over fruitless job hunting, to give them as much as a kind glance or a cheerful word. Most children are so sensitive that these experiences leave scars upon them. The Judson Health Center child guidance clinic works to prevent these deprivations from leaving too deep a mark.
