Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds

“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” the patient told me.


She was an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 40s who came to see me for depression and anxiety. In discussing the stresses she faced, it was clear that her teenage son had been front and center for many years.


When he was growing up, she explained, he fought frequently with other children, had few close friends, and had a reputation for being mean. She always hoped he would change, but now that he was almost 17, she had a sinking feeling.


I asked her what she meant by mean. “I hate to admit it, but he is unkind and unsympathetic to people,” she said, as I recall. He was rude and defiant at home, and often verbally abusive to family members.


Along the way, she had him evaluated by many child psychiatrists, with several extensive neuropsychological tests. The results were always the same: he tested in the intellectually superior range, with no evidence of any learning disability or mental illness. Naturally, she wondered if she and her husband were somehow remiss as parents.


Here, it seems, they did not fare as well as their son under psychiatric scrutiny. One therapist noted that they were not entirely consistent around their son, especially when it came to discipline; she was generally more permissive than her husband. Another therapist suggested that the father was not around enough and hinted that he was not a strong role model for his son.


But there was one small problem with these explanations: this supposedly suboptimal couple had managed to raise two other well-adjusted and perfectly nice boys. How could they have pulled that off if they were such bad parents?


To be sure, they had a fundamentally different relationship with their difficult child. My patient would be the first to admit that she was often angry with him, something she rarely experienced with his brothers.


But that left open a fundamental question: If the young man did not suffer from any demonstrable psychiatric disorder, just what was his problem?


My answer may sound heretical, coming from a psychiatrist. After all, our bent is to see misbehavior as psychopathology that needs treatment; there is no such thing as a bad person, just a sick one.


But maybe this young man was just not a nice person.


More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13mind.html

"One therapist noted that they were not entirely consistent around their son, especially when it came to discipline; she was generally more permissive than her husband."


And therein lies the key. It is crucial to be consistent. One important element is to communicate frankly with each other about methods and issues. Lots of parents complain about the other parent, but they don't take steps to implement a common strategy.


"But there was one small problem with these explanations: this supposedly suboptimal couple had managed to raise two other well-adjusted and perfectly nice boys. How could they have pulled that off if they were such bad parents?"


All kids are different and some are more "work" than others.

"yes, BUT there are just some people that are "natural" at discipline and others find it excruciating."


Agreed. Consequently, it is the duty of those who are good at it to beat the rest of us over the head. Yes, I am often the one getting beaten up.