I present to you (over a period of time) one of the finest old
books I have read on the subject of Christian Child-Rearing and
Personality Development, by Paul D. Meier (Keith Hunt, June 2007).
CHAPTER ONE
THE CHILD'S SELF-CONCEPT
We have all been told in many ways, throughout our lives,
that we are inferior. This includes both verbal and non-verbal
messages. Some of these messages have been intentional, while
many have been unintentional. I will discuss some of the ways
that we can minimize the development of inferiority feelings in
our children. I believe very firmly that our first and most
important calling from God, if we are, parents, is to be the kind
of parents to our children that God would have us to be. I don't
care if you're a doctor, pastor, businessman, or travelling
salesman-your family comes first! Whatever time you have left
over from being the right kind of parent-that's the time you can
use to accomplish whatever other callings God has given you! And
one of the most important things we can do for our children is to
develop within them an emotionally healthy and Scripturally
accurate self-concept. Without self-worth, our children will not
only have a miserable life, but they will also be unable to reach
the potential God has called them to reach. I firmly believe that
all emotional pain ultimately comes from three root sources: (1)
lack of self-worth, (2) lack of intimacy with others, and (3)
lack of intimacy with God. A poor self-concept can significantly
hamper us in all three of these essential areas.
One of the most important facts I have learned in my psy-
chiatric training is that approximately 85 percent of a person's
ultimate personality is formed by the time he is six years old.
This fact alone has given me great insights into people and their
problems. During those first six years of life, children really
are inferior in many ways to the other persons in their
environment. They are much smaller physically, more clumsy, more
ignorant of the facts, and more concrete and naive in their
interpretation of the meager facts they have accumulated. And on
top of all that, they are inferior in authority, with parents
ruling over them and older siblings bossing them around. That's
what goes on the first six years. Then they go off to school at
age five or six, and what happens there? They may get all 80 and
90 percents on their papers and tests, but what does this mean to
them? It means that they got 10 or 20 percent wrong, and all they
see and hear about are the parts of their work that the teacher
marked with red ink! Instead of the emphasis being on what they
have learned and accomplished, the emphasis in American schools
today is usually a negative one-on what they have done wrong!
(William Glasser, "Schools Without Failure.")
Another serious influence on the development of self-worth
in our children is the influence of our parental value systems.
What do we as parents place the most value upon in our own
everyday life? I'm not talking about the values we tell our
children they should have, but the values they see us actually
living by when they analyze why we do the things we do and say
the things we say. Is our focus on materialism? Athletics?
Sinless perfection? Good looks? Intelligence? Humanitarianism? Or
godly character? Perhaps your own parents went through the
depression of the 1930s, and have reacted by overemphasizing
material gain in their daily life experiences and conversations.
Now you have grown up in that home, and, as an adult, have become
very successful at a very worthwhile profession that only pays
average wages. You will probably have conscious (or unconscious)
inferiority feelings because you have not lived up to the
materialistic expectations that were built into your way of
thinking. At this point your own children detect your inner
dissatisfaction and frustrations about not having more money and
material possessions. They see these frustrations eat away at
your own self-worth, and, step by step, they learn from you to
measure their own self-worth in terms of their own material
possessions - motorcycles, mod clothes, tenspeed racing bikes,
and spending money. If they don't have these things, they feet
worthless. And even if they do have these things, they will
compare themselves with others their age who have more, and they
will still feel inferior. That's human nature. From this example
I hope you can understand how faulty value systems can be passed
on from generation to generation.
I want to make it clear that I am in no way condemning being
rich. It is not a sin to be rich. But it is a sin to base our
self-worth on our riches. Some of the godliest men in the Bible
were also the richest men on earth in material terms-Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, and many others. But
their self-worth was based on their faith in Gods wisdom, and
godly character traits. God simply chose to bless them
tremendously with material possessions.
Other great men of God had similar virtues but God chose for
them to live in financial poverty. Take, for example, the
disciples and the Apostle Paul. Paul said he had experienced both
riches and poverty, both popularity and abasement; but Paul based
his self-worth on godly character traits, and could therefore.
say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be
content" (Phil.4:11). Paul's sense of values is reflected in his
counsel to early Christians:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took
upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross. Wherefore God also bath highly exalted him, and
given him a name which is above every name: That at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and
things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of. God the Father. - Phil.2:5-11
Christ Himself told us, "But seek ye first the kingdom of
God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added
unto you" (Matt.6:98). If God has blessed you financially, I
think that's great! But be aware of the fact that your life here
on this earth is a temporary pilgrimage and a mission, and that
developing godly character in children who will live forever is
millions of times more important than devoting yourself to
business opportunities so you can provide them with so-called
financial security. I'd rather have eternal security than
financial security any day. Of course, there's nothing immoral
about having both, if God so blesses.
The proverbial Jewish mother puts a lot of emphasis on good
grades, 100 percents on test papers, and things like that when
she praises her children. This is in contrast to the average
American mother who praises her children for hanging their
clothing up or being quiet in the restaurant. My own parents,
even though they weren't Jewish, rewarded me for good grades and
punished me for poor grades when I was in elementary school.
After I got to junior high, they continued to reward me for good
grades and would frown at occasional not so good grades. They
also rewarded me for reading Spurgeon's sermons and drawing
architectural designs of houses. My father, who is a retired home
builder, even built one of the houses I designed and moved our
family into it, an event which I'm sure contributed to my own
self worth. My parents also attended all the elementary school
open houses to see and praise the good work their children had
done. But mixed with all this were regular church and Sunday
School attendance, and daily devotions around the supper table.
At these devotions, we would sing a hymn, read a chapter or so
from the Bible, and then get down on our knees beside our chairs
and pray for each other's needs. It was this background that
influenced me to continue my education for twenty-five years
(thirteen before high school graduation, counting kindergarten,
and twelve after), and become a Christian psychiatrist whose
desire is to design spiritual homes rather than physical ones.
But I have seen this emphasis on education get out of hand
in some of the families I have dealt with. I had a patient with a
Ph.D. from Duke University who frequently felt like a failure
because he didn't go after an M.D. degree, as his parents had
wished. I know another man with a doctorate in economics from
Harvard, who is very successful professionally and a brilliant
scholar. But he still carries around bad feelings about the one
course in which he didn't get an "A" as an undergraduate in
college. His parents had taught him that anything less than an
"A" is a dishonor to the entire family. His uncle even flew in
from out of state to talk to him about it when it happened. If we
as parents have unrealistic expectations for our children, they
will feel like failures, no matter how much they succeed in the
world's eyes.
Some parents go to the other extreme too, caring nothing
about the accomplishments of their children. I know of many
doctors and preachers who were so busy serving humanity or
furthering the cause of Christ that their children developed
terrible feelings of worthlessness, feelings from which they ran
by taking drugs or committing suicide. The Bible tells us that
the only men who should be ministers, elders, or deacons in a
local church are those who have "faithful children not accused of
riot or unruly" (Titus 1:6). There was a time when one of my
sisters was going through a temporary rebellious stage, so my
father resigned as deacon and did not assume his duties as deacon
again. until she had passed through it. Now that same sister is a
godly woman who is happily married to a fine Christian, has two
beautiful children, conducts Bible studies in her home, and is a
real prayer warrior for God. She has the highest regard for the
father she rebelled against earlier. He admits now, when he looks
back, that he was spending too much time doing church work and
not enough time with his family. He was holding several church
offices at the same time.
It's interesting to note that my sister now attends church
where the minister will not allow any individual to hold more
than one position in that church. He says he would rather have
each individual do one job well and devote the rest of his time
to his family. I think that's a great idea. One of the most
important abilities I have learned is the ability to say no to
well-intentioned people who ask me to do things when I know my
time is already stretched as far as I want it to be. A minister
who can't say no sometimes for the sake of his family should
serve the Lord in some other profession. As church members, we
can also be of assistance to our pastors by such little things as
not calling him at night, hiring people to relieve him of mundane
chores, and participating in the evangelistic work of the church
ourselves, as was the case in the early church.
Let's discuss our value systems regarding athletics for a
moment. Overall, I think athletics are a great tradition for a
number of reasons. A school-age child's self-worth is influenced
a great deal by how he is regarded and valued by his peers. And
being average or better than average in athletic skills is one
good way to gain the respect of his peers. Sports will teach the
child teamwork, enthusiasm, how to compete with himself, how to
compete with others, how to win graciously, and how to accept
defeat and frustrations. He will see himself improving with
practice, and apply this concept to other areas of his life. He
will learn to play by the rules, and he'll learn the consequences
of disobeying rules. It is to be hoped that he will apply these
concepts to the "game of life." Sports can help your child gain
self-confidence as his ability increases, and he can use athletic
teams to develop close friendships and to learn to relate to
others.
But before you decide that athletics is a cure-all, I feel
that it is my duty as a Christian psychiatrist to show you the
other side of the coin too. Athletics, if misapplied, can be used
to destroy a child's self-worth, or even to teach him sociopathic
values. When you play baseball with your children, do you praise
them when they do something right, or do you remain silent when
they hit or catch the ball and criticize them when they miss it?
Are you continually correcting and showing them how they should
have done it? To become good athletes what they really need is
your acceptance, your companionship, repetition, repetition, and
repetition, mixed with some genuine praise for what they do
right. Then there is the problem of coaches. There are good
coaches and there are bad coaches. There are coaches who are
emotionally healthy, who help develop character in youngsters;
and there are emotionally disturbed or spiritually depraved
coaches who need to win so badly that they teach their athletes
to cheat, to injure other players, and to do whatever else is
necessary to win. This is the "win at any cost" philosophy. If
your child accepts this "win at any cost" philosophy in sports,
he will apply it to other areas of his life as well. An intense
desire to win is quite healthy, but not if it is at any cost. I
want my children to be assertive and competitive, but not
sociopathic.
Another thing to watch for is expecting too much of your
children in athletics. Don't forget that much of athletic ability
is inherited, and your child may be getting social benefits from
simply warming up the bench- If you're proud of him for making
the team, or for having the courage even to try out, he'll have
selfworth. If you express disappointment that he is not the
quarterback or shortstop, he'll lose some self-worth. I am 6'4",
but I don't have very much natural athletic ability. I'm good at
some sports and poor at others. I had a basketball backboard on
the garage when I was growing up, and spent hundreds of hours
there shooting baskets-but I never made a single basketball team.
I didn't even make my fraternity basketball team in college.
Basketball is definitely not my spiritual gift! I'm fairly good
at tug-of-war and arm-wrestling, and I was a fairly good goalie
in soccer, but definitely not basketball. For that reason, there
is nothing that would build my self-worth more than to have my
son become a professional basketball player. I could build his
whole life around basketball and place all sorts of demands upon
him if he wants to be accepted by me. And this is exactly what a
multitude of parents do-expect their children to succeed in areas
that they were weak in when they were growing up. So if my sons
inherited my basketball-playing ability, I ought to. give God the
freedom to develop the talents He chose for them to have. I would
rather have my children meet the needs of the Kingdom of God, and
their own personal needs, than to feel obligated to make up for
my own personal deficiencies.
I don't believe sports are the exclusive possession of the
male gender either. Girls can benefit from them just as boys can,
but I would not advise you to encourage in any way your daughter
to be a boy or to try out for left tackle on the high school
football team! Some fathers prefer sons so much that their
daughters become boys to gain their acceptance. This can result
in a wide variety of emotional conflicts, including difficulty
relating sexually in marriage. But this is only if the problem is
severe, and most girls go through somewhat of a tomboy stage in
pre- and early adolescence.
We have touched on a few of the faulty value systems that we
parents frequently have: overemphasis on materialism, education,
or athletics. There are dozens of others we could discuss, but
there is one more that I feel I must cover. It is the one I have
probably seen misused more than any other in my experience as a
psychiatrist, with materialism taking a close second. That faulty
value system is the overemphasis in American society today on
physical appearance ( Bill Gothard, Seminar: Institute in Basic
Youth Conflicts).
A great deal of the inferiority feelings experienced by
millions of Americans today comes from comparing various physical
defects with the physical attributes of others. I have seen this
commonly in both men and women. I'll describe briefly how it is
developed in girls, and some of the consequences of it, but
remember that this occurs in boys too in a very similar way. This
particular faulty value system usually develops when a pretty
little girl is born into a family that overemphasizes physical
appearance, so they praise her over and over again for how pretty
she is, but never praise her for anything else. There is nothing
wrong with praising your children occasionally for how nice they
look-I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about praising good
looks at the expense of other more important things, like godly
character traits. These parents are also constantly bragging to
others about their child's good looks in the child's presence.
The parents certainly mean no harm, but if this is overdone (and
it frequently is in today's society), the child will learn to
measure her own self-worth for the rest of her life on the basis
of her physical attractiveness or sex appeal. As she grows older,
especially during her teens, she will always find somebody who
has a prettier face, a better figure, less knobby knees, or
whatever else she considers her main physical defect. It is
interesting to note that it is nearly always her physical defects
that she will compare with others, not the physical attributes
that are satisfactory. In many cases, the more attractive the
girl, the more inferior she may feel deep down, partially because
her parents naturally tended to place more emphasis on her looks
than they would have had she been an average-looking girl. What a
difference it would make if parents would primarily praise their
child's good character and behavior! Character and behavior
defects are correctable! Physical defects usually are not. A
child whose parents value and praise good character and behavior
will strive to improve his or her character and behavioral
weaknesses in order to gain both parental approval and feelings
of self-worth, which are vital to good mental health.
Many of us fail to recognize the hidden bitterness and
resentment we carry toward God for not designing us the way we
would have designed ourselves. We don't realize that God designed
us the way He did because He loves us and wants to develop within
each of us a Christlike character, so that we can experience the
abundant life. How foolish we sometimes are, thinking that we are
wiser than God Lets take a dose look at what God inspired David
to write about this subject:
For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in
my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, and
my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from
Thee, when I was made in secret, and skill. fully wrought in
the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed
substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days
that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of
them. - Ps.189:18-16, NASV
I especially appreciate this beautiful portion of Holy
Scripture from my point of view as a physician. David, under
God's divine inspiration, does a fantastic job of describing
medical embryology. David knew nothing about DNA and RNA, but he
knew that before we were even born, God designed us! While our
bodies were being skilfully differentiated within our mothers'
wombs, each of our "inward parts" was designed exactly as God
intended. This includes the strengths and weaknesses of each of
us. It includes areas of special talent, and areas where the
talent just isn't there. It includes basic intelligence
potential, some basic personality characteristics, and hereditary
predispositions to certain physical and mental illnesses. Manic
depression, for example, is primarily a genetically predetermined
mental illness (Merrill T. Eaton and Margaret H. Peterson,
Psychiatry, P. 199).
Psychiatrists put patients suffering from mania on lithium
salts and they frequently are back to normal within ten days.
Other examples will be discussed later. In contrast, many people,
probably all of us, have changeable defects, such as being
overweight, overanxious, or overly dependent upon others. These
are things that we are responsible for ourselves, and I believe
we should make every effort to correct our correctable defects.
This will improve our self-worth as well as our usefulness to God
as far as our testimony is concerned.
Let's take a brief look at the Apostle Paul. Paul was
probably the greatest missionary of all time. Why did Paul make
himself so totally available to God while so many other
Christians make themselves available to God only a portion of the
time, thinking that they can run their own lives better than God
can? Note what Paul had to say about this:
And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,
for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was
given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Saran to
buffet me - to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this
I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from
me. And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient jar you,
for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore,
I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of
Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with
weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with
persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when
I am weak, then I am strong. - 2 Cor.12:7.10, NASV
God gave Paul the gift of healing, and with that gift Paul
healed all kinds of illnesses in others. But God said no to Paul
when he requested the power to heal himself. God said no for a
reason. I believe God answers every one of our prayers, but to
expect God to always answer them affirmatively is not only naive,
it is an attempt to take over the omniscience and omnipotence of
Almighty God. God gave the Apostle Paul an uncorrectable defect
for Paul's own good and for the glory of God, and He may do the
same for some of us, like it or not. True Biblical Christianity
is extremely practical. It works! Living according to God's wise
concepts, as outlined in His Holy Word, will result in the
abundant life of love, joy, peace, and the other fruits of the
Spirit.
It doesn't surprise me that many non-Christian psychiatrists
think that all religion is hocus-pocus magical thinking, since so
many of their mentally disturbed patients are hysterical and try-
ing to play God, telling Him what to do and how to do it. The
more inferior a person feels, the more superior he will probably
act; this is to compensate for his feelings of inadequacy. If his
inferiority reaches psychotic proportions, he will likely make
up, and actually believe, grandiose delusions about himself.
These are frequently paranoid delusions which make him feel more
important.
I have had several patients (including one woman) who
actually thought they were Jesus Christ. I interviewed one such
patient in a locked room, and when I asked him if he knew why he
was there in the mental hospital, he told me God had sent him
there to take me home to heaven. At that point I began sweating
profusely! I was afraid that he might get up right then and there
and try to send me home to heaven! He asked me for a sip of my
coke, and I told him I didn't share my cokes for fear of
spreading germs. He responded that if I would give him a sip of
coke, he would give me eternal life. So I said, "Here, take the
whole thing!" With proper medication, he improved from his acute
paranoid schizophrenic episode in a few weeks. I found out later
that he had lived a very wicked life, but had accepted the Lord a
couple of years prior to this illness and joined a very
negativistic local church. He already had an abundance. of
inferiority and inadequacy feelings because of his past. To make
matters worse, this church kept pounding negative and legalistic
thoughts into him right and left. His self-worth finally reached
such a low ebb that he convinced himself he was Christ, so he
could bear the severe pain of his low self concept. I encouraged
him when he was sane again to dwell on God's grace and his
importance to God, and God's total forgiveness for his entire
past. I wanted to tell him to quit his church and get into a
healthier assembly of believers. In fact 1 hinted at this to him,
although I don't believe it is my place as a psychiatrist to tell
people what church to go to-just what type of churches I think
are health-producing.
The local church you choose for your children to grow up in
will become one of the major influences on their self concepts.
If you're in a negativistic, legalistic church that neglects
God's grace, you're in the wrong boat! It will permanently damage
your child's self-worth. Or if you are in a liberal church,
supposing it to be a sinking ship you can save, your children
will probably sink with it. I would recommend that you get your
family into a church where the Bible is accepted as the errorless
Word of God, where souls are being saved, where genuine Christian
love is practiced, where God's grace, love, acceptance, and
forgiveness are preached (as well as God's justice), and where
healthy entertainment and youth activities are available for your
children? (For a goad description of a and psychologically
healthy church, read Gene A.Getz's book, "The Measure of a
Church"). I am genuinely grieved in my heart when I see the
potential so many children have to live the abundant life and to
further the cause of Christ, and then realize that thousands of
them will never reach that potential because they are being
ruined by rigid churches that stand for the wrong things or
liberal churches that don't stand for anything!
Solomon said, "Take away the dross from the silver, and
there shall come forth a vessel for the finer" (Prov.25:4). As
Christians, each of us is a silver vessel, made according to
God's divine plan. Each of us also is covered, to various
extents, by the dross of human error. And each of our children is
covered to some extent by the dross of our errors as parents.
Underneath that dross, each of us (and each of our children) is a
unique silver vessel. Not a single one of us is inferior to any
other, though we may each have a different, unique design. We
must all strive for spiritual and emotional maturity, placing
ourselves and our children in God's hands, so He can remove that
dross and use our children and ourselves as vessels of honor
rather than vessels of dishonor.
Each human being is extremely important to God. Christ said,
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall
not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of
your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of
more value than many sparrows" (Matt.10:29-31).
Christ also showed us how important we are to Him when He
said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me: And I give unto them eternal life: and they shall never
perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My
Father, which gave them to me, is greater than all; and no man is
able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are
one" (John 10:27-30). What security that brings! So many
unhealthy churches believe that God is a mean old man holding a
whip, just waiting for us to dare to break one of His rules, so
He can snap us with the whip or take us out of His hand and flick
us off. When these churches read John 3:3 and John 3:7, they
stutter, so that it comes out, "Ye must be born again, and again,
and again, and again." But the God of the Bible is a God of
perfect love and perfect justice, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ,
to die on a real cross in order to save us from a real hell. He
is a God who loves us so much that He gave us His love letter,
the Holy Bible, which contains the principles He wishes us to
live by if we want the abundant life. And Christ says He takes
those who put their faith in Him and puts them in the palm of His
hand, giving them eternal life. And the Father puts His loving
hand around Christ's hand, and neither of them will let us out of
that secure position that we have in Him by His grace. "For by
grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of ourselves: it
is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast"
(Eph.2:8-9).
We may have a long way to go as far as emotional and
spiritual maturity is concerned, but we are definitely not
inferior, and neither are our children. Several years ago, a
friend of mine wore on his coat a button with the letters
BPGIFWMY. I asked him what it meant, and he told me, "Be patient,
God isn't finished with me yet!" There is a real lesson to be
learned from that. We should be as patient with ourselves and
with each other as God is.
O LORD, Thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up;
Thou dost understand my thought from afar.
Thou cost scrutinize nay path and my lying down,
And art intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all.
Thou hast enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Thy hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it....
How precious also are Thy thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with Thee.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way. - Ps. 139:1-6,17-18,
28-24, NASV
.......................
To be continued with "The Importance of Genuine Love Between
Parents."
Christian Parenting #2
Love Between Parents
Chapter Two
The Importance
of Genuine Love Between Parents
I want to begin this second chapter of my book with a few
comments on love itself - its meaning, its development, and the
importance of a healthy husband-wife love relationship in the
development of their children's self concepts. A definite
majority of the neurotic children I have treated come from homes
in which there are a weak, passive father and a domineering,
smothering, overprotecting mother. Also, in preparation for this
book, I have sat for many days in the library of Duke University
Medical School pouring over research findings on parent-child
relationships - what types of parents produce what types of
children. The research literature describes hundreds of
syndromes, and in a majority of them, there are a weak, passive
father and a domineering, smothering, overprotecting mother. In
the bibliography I have listed several hundred of the research
articles I have studied and used as primary sources for this
book. I have studied these articles with a view to the findings
of objective research. I have discarded the non-Christian
philosophies and interpretations that clearly disagree with
Scripture. In the process I did not have to discard the results
of any objective, documented research. I believe the Bible is the
totally inspired Word of God, and that it contains no errors
whatsoever in its original manuscripts. As a Christian
psychiatrist, I use the Bible as the foundation for all my
beliefs and practices. I consider my Bible to be God's revealed
truth to me. But there are many things that the Bible does not
talk about. The Bible doesn't tell us how to treat bedwetting, or
stuttering, what to do with Mongoloid children, (this dates this
book from away back, as such children are no longer called
"Mongoloid" - Keith Hunt) or how to treat childhood
schizophrenia. These are things that we learn from experience and
research.
I have emphasized the first six years the most, because 85
percent of the child's eventual personality will be formed by the
time he is six years old. After age six, all we can do is to try
to modify the other 15 percent of his personality development.
Dr. Gary Collins has stated:
Developmental psychologists have conducted literally
thousands of studies and the results of these investigations
have substantially increased our knowledge and understanding
of the nature of childhood. A survey of some of these
psychological conclusions could be of value to church
leaders and Christian parents as they seek to "train up a
child in the way he should go" (Prov. 22:6) [Gary Collins,
"Man in Transition"]
I have attempted to follow this suggestion by Dr.Collins, a
dedicated Christian psychologist and seminary professor. The
reader may be asking how this relates to the importance and
meaning of love. I have mentioned the commonness of the weak
father/smothering mother syndrome in the families of neurotic
children. One of the main reasons that neurotic parent-child
relationships develop is that there already exists a neurotic
husband-wife relationship. I don't know how many times I have had
a mother bring her neurotic child to me, and I have put the
mother on tranquilizers and the child got better!
The treatment for most child psychiatry problems almost
always involves helping the parents learn better ways to live and
love. If the husband and wife are not getting their love needs
met by their mates, they will look elsewhere for satisfaction.
The husband traditionally gets involved in an outside affair, and
the wife develops a neurotic need for her child to love her. So
desperate is she for her child to love her that she is afraid to
spank him when he needs it - spanking would cause him to stop
loving her for a few minutes or hours. Many of these mothers
sleep in separate bedrooms, or even sleep with their children,
rather than with their husbands. They don t want the child to
grow up because of their intense fear of the child leaving them
eventually and taking away the only relationship they have.
That's why they smother the child, spoil him, make all his
decisions for him, and discourage independence. When these
children are six, they're afraid and unable to go to school
because they are so neurotically involved with their mothers. In
their teens, they realize their inadequacies, turn to drugs or
alcohol, hate their mothers, and seldom mature. When they
eventually marry and have children of their own, the mother
extends her attempts to dominate into the new home, smothering
the grandchildren and dividing their parents. Generations can be
affected by a husband and wife who do not love each other as they
should. [Paul D. Meier, "Self-Acceptance to Mate-Acceptance"]
What is love, anyway? This is an ancient question the
answers to which usua y ring the satisfaction. Is it a feeling?
Is it an action? Or is it just a figment of our imagination? I
believe true love is real, even though the love people THINK they
have is frequently imagined. Many people mistakenly think that
love is an automatic sensation that comes and stays forever when
a person performs some magical ritual, like saying, "I do." Love
is more than a mere emotion, even though it has a large emotional
component. Love involves an individual's entire spirit, soul, and
body. By "spirit," I refer to the part of us that yearns to know
God's love and also longs for the love of others. By "soul," I
refer to the mind, emotions, and will. Thus emotions are a large
component of love, but true love is more than just an emotion. By
"body," I refer to the various practical and sometimes physical
ways in which we express true love and concern for others whom,
over a period of time, we have learned to love on the levels of
spirit and soul.
I believe strongly that God has designed us to share our
love with others on all three planes: the spiritual plan,
emotional plane, and physical plane. It is also important to
develop our love relationships in that order. In today's society,
the trend is to "love" physically first, which is really not love
at all. It's just old-fashioned lust. Unfortunately, our society
has cheapened sexual relationships. Sexual communion is a
beautiful thing, created by God for the dual role of procreation
and the godly person's enjoyment. It provides tremendous relief
from sexual tensions. But God intended this physical, sexual
communion to be a regular part of married life, warning
specifically against fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. He
warned that those who commit these sins, just like those who
commit any other sin, will suffer the natural consequences. As a
psychiatrist, I have seen many patients whose psychological
problems were influenced greatly by these specific sins. And as a
psychiatrist, I have also seen numerous Christian patients who
had sexual hang-ups because of Victorian misconceptions about
what the Bible really says concerning the sexual relationship in
marriage. And what is really sad is the effect of the Victorian
ethic on the children of these husbands and wives. Many
Christians are shocked to find out that the Apostle Paul warned
husbands and wives never to turn each other down for sexual
relations, except during prayer:
Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise
also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have
authority over her own body, but the husband does; and
likewise also the husband does not have authority over his
own body, but the wife does. Slop depriving one another,
except by agreement for a time that you may devote
yourselves to prayer, and come together again lest Satan
tempt you because of your lack of self control.
1 Cor. 7:3-5, NASV
It is obvious that when marriage partners turn each other
down for sexual relations, and don't seek fulfillment in this
area of their lives, they will have less resistance to the
temptations offered by Satan to meet those needs in unscriptural
and neurotic ways. In a Christian marriage, anything the couple
mutually enjoys, in a physical way, that is not harmful to either
partner, is beautiful in the eyes of a Holy God who created them
for each other. It is the physical expression of the true love
that exists on a spiritual and emotional level. It promotes good
mental health in the entire family. Very few people ever reach
their true love potential in the marriage relationship.
Love is not something that is restricted to the marriage re-
lationship. As Christians, we are to love God with all our heart,
soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as much as we love
ourselves (see Mark 12:30-31). True healthy love of God, self,
and others is essential for good mental health.
True love is not a natural thing. It is learned. It requires
emotional and spiritual maturity. A newborn babe, though loved by
his mother, does not yet know how to love in return. Warmth,
stimulation, and food are his concerns. For the infant, "I love
you" really means "I possess you." And yet, an infant's love is a
beautiful thing, as primitive as it may be. It feels good to want
to be possessed by someone so young. As the infant becomes a
young child, his primitive love also grows. He strives to please
his parents - most of the time, anyway. The son identifies with
his father, and the daughter with her mother, taking on their
personality characteristics. But this immature love is still
quite selfish, and frequently a technique to manipulate and to
avoid punishment. When I saw this one time in one of my sons, I
wrote a brief poem about it:
Who taught my child to love so selfishly? "Surely not I!" I
quickly say, But then when I face reality, Part is from
Adam, and much is from me.
An adolescent's new-found puppy love, when described in
honest terms, frequently means something like, "I want to use you
to prove what I am, and to satisfy my physical and ego needs." A
naive person feels flattered by this adolescent form of love; an
emotionally mature and realistic person may feel physically flat-
tered, but knows that this type of love won't satisfy his or her
soul and spirit. Mature love is patient. Mature love is kind.
Mature love seeks the other persons benefit, expecting nothing in
return, though appreciative when true love is returned. That's
true love! Most individuals, families, groups, and even nations
have learned (and chosen) to love only on the infantile,
childish, or adolescent level. Mature, intimate love is found in
a minority of adults, some adolescents, and a few exceptionally
mature children. These individuals have sought, and acquired; the
help of the God of love in reaching this blissful state. God gave
the Apostle John the following words to pen for us: "Beloved, let
us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that
loveth is born ("begotten" really is the correct understanding
and should have been translated as such - Keith Hunt) of God, and
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love"
(I John 4:7-8).
Dr.O.Quentin Hyder, a Christian psychiatrist from New York City,
has aptly stated:
It is not surprising that, as they get older, children from
Christian homes tend to rebel and fall away from the faith
of their parents. They can see the hypocrisy, the
inconsistency, and the prejudice in their parents' lives.
Unhappily, they then tend to equate these with the church,
and in rejecting their parents' faith they also reject
Christ in their own lives. By contrast those Christian homes
in which love is paramount produce sons and daughters who
themselves devoutly propagate the faith to their own
children. Christian Love is unselfish and unprejudiced. It
is patient and humble, tolerant and understanding. It is
giving and giving again. It is the opposite of hostility,
resentment, and jealousy. It is the gift above all others
which fills lives with happiness, satisfaction, security,
and inner peace. It is given by God to all who desire that
their time in this world should be spent in a higher
dimension. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love
one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one
another. By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:34,
35).3
[O.Quentin Hyder, "The Christian's Handbook of Psychiatry,"
p.96].
..................
To be continued with "How to Teach Your Child to Love Himself in
a Healthy Way."
Healthy Self-Love
How to teach your children to have it
We continue with the old but fine book on "Child-Rearing and
Personality Development," by Paul Meier, M.D.
How to Teach Your Child
to Love Himself in a Healthy Way
The title of this section may sound alien to many Christians
who have, unfortunately, been brought up in churches where they
were taught that self-hatred is a virtue rather than a sin. Many
were taught that salvation is acquired by obeying denominational
rules and regulations, self-punishment, tithing, hiding all
emotions, attending all church services, and by constantly
reminding yourself of how worthless you really are. These
Christians become chronically depressed, and that's why I see so
many of them in my office. Dr.O Quentin Hyder talks about
perfectionism, legalistic Christians, and forgiveness when he
states:
Perfection in this life is categorically impossible. If it
were possible, we would need no redemption in Christ. But
striving toward perfection in the sense of trying to live a
life in conformity with the will of God is not only possible
but our aim as a Christian.... We cannot attain perfection
but we must strive toward it, not in the sense of trying to
earn our salvation by good works, but as an act of gratitude
to Christ for having already saved us by His atoning death.
Unhappily, legalistic Christians cannot see this. They have
heard it a hundred times from the pulpit, but they have
great difficulty accepting forgiveness. They are often
people whose parents were very demanding, never satisfied
with their efforts, and unforgiving of their failures. These
emotional pressures, especially on impressionable,
sensitive, and vulnerable children, lead to an inability in
adult life to believe that it is possible to be forgiven.
They think that forgiveness is something for nothing. This
is erroneous. Indeed it costs nothing to become a Christian
initially, but it costs everything to be a Christian and
live up to the pledge made at the moment of commitment to
Christ. It costs absolute surrender of the will to God to
live the sort of life, albeit imperfect, which God intended
for us in this present world. Paul specifically admonished
the Galatians against legalism and perfectionism in his
letter to them. They were teaching the heresy that good
works were necessary to supplement the redemptive work of
Christ in salvation. Paul wrote: "Received ye the Spirit by
works of law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish?
having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the
flesh?" (Galatimes 3:2-3). To the Romans he wrote: " .. by
the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his
sight" (Romans 8:20) and to the Colossians: "... ye are
complete in him, which is the head of all principality and
power" (Colossians 2:10).
A majority of all the depressive neurotics I have treated
personally have been Christians from legalistic, negativistic
churches. They have the basic position in life that transactional
analysts call the "I'm not O.K. and you're not O.K." position, or
else the "I'm not O.K., but you're O.K." position, the latter
being somewhat less severe than the former. "I'm not O.K. and
you're not O.K." is the most emotionally harmful position a
person can have. Christians who have been taught (and believe)
this position withdraw from others and have neither self-worth
nor genuine love relationships with others, the two main
requirements of mental health. Many of them have a nervous
breakdown and become psychotic because reality - or at least
reality as they see it - is too painful to bear. If they don't
obey all the laws of the denomination, they are told that they
will lose their salvation. What an unbearable, frustrating life
that must be - to gain and lose one's salvation and never know
for sure if heaven or hell is waiting at death's door.
The Apostle John told us, "And this is the record, that God
hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He
that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son hath
not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on
the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal
fife, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God" (I
John 5:11-13). The Apostle Paul told us, "For by grace are ye
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph.2:8-9). He
also said, "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not
expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be
brought under the power of any" (I Cor.6:12). And so I would like
to ask legalistic churches the same question Paul asked the
church at Galatia, "Have ye suffered so many things in vain?"
(Gal.8:4).
I know a Christian physician who suffered more than a year
of mental anguish and depression in spite of my best attempts to
help him, until he finally accepted the principle of God's grace.
What a difference in him now, as he continues life as a confident
Christian physician, eager to serve God out of love rather than
obligation.
Is it really God's plan for us to love ourselves, and our
children to love themselves? If by love of self you mean vanity
and pride, the answer is, "Definitely Not." When God lists the
seven sins He hates the most, [actually it does not say "hate the
most" - it says "hate" and "abomination" but God has many more
sins He hates and are an abomination to Him - see Strong's
Corncordance under "hate" and "abomination" - Keith Hunt] He
leaves off such sins as adultery and divorce; but number one on
his "top seven" [ they are not dogmatically His "top seven" -
Keith Hunt] list is the sin of having "a proud look" (see
Prov.6:16-19). This is referring to a "better than thou"
attitude. It is the "I'm O.K., but you're not O.K." position of
sociopathic criminals and drug pushers? No, I am not referring to
sinful pride and vanity when I talk about the importance of
self-worth. I'm talking about loving ourselves in a healthy way -
in a way that pleases God because it makes us more useful in His
service, and because He loves us and wants us to experience the
abundant life.
Mark 12:28-84 tells of a legal expert - a scribe - who came
to Jesus and asked Him which of the commandments is the most
important. Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel; The
LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God
with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your
strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these"
(Mark 12:29-S1, NASV). The Apostle Paul tells us, "So husbands
ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who
loves his own wife loves himself" (Eph.5:28, NASV). A person who
has a negative attitude toward himself will also be quite
critical of others. A person who doesn't love himself in a
healthy way will find it impossible to develop genuine love
relationships with others. Two of the most important concepts I
learned from my psychiatric training, both of which agree totally
with Scripture, are: (1) You cannot truly love others until you
learn to love yourself in a healthy may; (2) Lack of self-worth
is the basis of most psychological problems.
One important aspect of loving yourself in a way that will
please God involves taking care of your body. If you want your
children to take proper care of their bodies, you need to take
care of your own. The Apostle Paul asked, "Know ye not that ye
are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in
you?" (I Cor.3:16). And further, "What? know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye
have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit,
which are God's" (I Cao.6:19-20). Paul called our bodies "the
temple of the living God" (2 Cor.6:16). These passages of
Scripture make it quite plain that our bodies are very important
to God. In fact, "the very hairs of your head are all numbered"
(Matt. 1:30).
The fact that our bodies are God's temples has some serious
implications. It implies that out families, including ourselves,
should have healthy eating and sleeping habits, as well as
adequate exercise and recreation. When a person becomes more and
more irritable and gets angry over seemingly trite circumstances,
his personal physician knows that he is probably either anemic or
psychologically depressed - or both. Anemia is especially common
in females, because of their monthly menstrual cycles. Iron
supplements are frequently all that is needed. If your teenager
starts fad-eating or crash dieting, leaving protein out of his
diet, he may become anemic and more irritable and rebellious
although this is not the usual cause of adolescent rebellion.
Overeating can be just as detrimental to our physical and
emotional health. The incidence of heart attacks and other fatal
illnesses takes a sharp rise when we weigh about 20 percent more
than our recommended weight. If we overeat, we also have incresed
feelings of guilt and loss of self-esteem. It is somewhat
contradictory to tell our children to exercise self-control in
their lives while they watch us exercising poor self-control in
areas such as eating.
Taking care of God's "temple" also implies healthy sleeping
habits. I have seen many zealous Christians totally ignore their
need for sleep, only to find themselves burned out a little while
later. God made sleep for the healing of both our bodies and our
minds. Sleep is much more important for mental health than it is
for physical rest, although it serves both functions. The average
adult dreams approximately twenty minutes out of every ninety
minutes that he sleeps. Children spend an even higher percentage
of their sleep-time dreaming. We remember dreaming, however, only
when we happen to wake up during a dream. That's why it may seem
to us that we seldom dream, even though we do several times every
night. It has been theorized, and I think correctly, that in our
dreams, bizarre as they may be, we symbolically reduce emotional
tensions, satisfying our unconscious conflicts. Going without
sleep for two or three days, many normal people will begin to
exhibit psychotic tendencies, such as delusions and paranoid
ideation.
Our dreams are believed to be mediated by a chemical in the
brain known as serotonin. Before entering medical school, I was a
graduate student in human physiology at Michigan State
University, spending much of my time doing research on various
effects of serotonin. Among the things I learned about this
chemical which God created to help us stay mentally healthy is
that tryptophan - which our bodies use to make serotonin - is
found in high concentrations in milk, certain fruits (bananas,
for example), and certain meats (like liver), Through
electroencephalograms I learned that babies spend about nine of
their sleeping hours dreaming. Maybe that's one reason why babies
need so much milk. I also learned that LSD is a serotonin
antagonist - interfering with the serotonin in the brains of drug
users who are foolish enough to take it. I have seen a number of
psychiatric illnesses which were precipitated by LSD, including a
sharp, B+ average college student whose roommate talked him into
taking LSD just so he would know what it was like. He had a
normal response to it, so he tried it again sometime later. But
this time it disordered his brain chemistry to such an extent
that he had to drop out of college, and several months later,
when I saw him, he was still unable to concentrate long enough to
even enjoy reading a newspaper.
In graduate school, I also learned that the average adult
needs about eight hours of sleep a night, although some can get
by on six hours, while others require ten hours. Teenagers need
about nine hours a night, elementary school children about ten,
preschoolers about twelve hours, and babies about sixteen to
eighteen hours of sleep per twenty-four hours. If an individual,
at any age, continually gets less than his require amount of
sleep, he's headed for trouble. The best way to get straight A's
in school - if that happens to be one of your ambitions - is to
study every day in a quiet room, get some exercise and
recreation, eat the right foods, stay in trune spiritually, get
some fellowship with others, memorize Bible verses for mental
exercise (and for spiritual maturity as well), and get eight
hours of sleep every night, especially the night before a big
test.
Recreation is also important. Many Christians are
overly strict on themselves. They think watching a weekend
football game, hiking in the mountains, or even playing games
with friends, is a waste of time. They are very wrong. "All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy" applies to parents as well as
to children. If a person spent all of his time in recreation, he
would, of course, accomplish nothing for the Lord. But there
needs to be a happy balance, and God intended it that way. Christ
Himself spent a great percentage of His three-year ministry
camping out in the mountains, sometimes with His disciples
(especially Peter and John), and sometimes alone. There in the
mountains, Christ could get away from the demanding crowds,
relax, meditate, commune with the Father, enjoy the world that He
Himself had created, and share intimately with His chosen
disciples. Christ spent most of the first half of those three
years just selecting and building His disciples. That is how
Christ, who was God in the flesh, decided He would have the most
effective ministry.
I have studied the life of Christ carefully in order to plan
my own activities in accordance with Christ's teachings and the
example of His life. We can see from all this that even such
mundane things as being sure you and your children get enough
recreation, a proper diet, and adequate amounts of sleep are vi-
tally important to the development of self-worth. The kinds of
spiritual food you feed your children, of course, are even more
important than the kinds of physical food. The overall spiritual
atmosphere of the home, including family devotions, the music
played, the type of TV shows watched, the neatness and
cleanliness of the home environment, the regularity of bedtime
and meals, spiritual insights shared, scriptural plaques on the
walls, the parental attitudes - all enter into the development of
spiritual self-worth.
One extremely important area that we will discuss in some
detail at this point is how we, as parents, should handle sin in
the lives of our children. This includes some important concepts
we can pass on to our children about how they can handle
temptations in their own lives. In psychiatry, we learn that an
adult's attitudes toward God are influenced greatly by his
attitudes toward his own father while he was growing up. This
places a great deal of responsibility on those of us who are
fathers. For quite a while at Duke University I followed a
patient whose father was a dedicated cardiologist - so dedicated,
in fact, that he was away from home practically all the time
taking care of his medical practice. When he was home, he was
cold, indifferent, and tired. About the only comments my patient
ever received from his father were negative ones, correcting him
for being imperfect. My patient, a brilliant young Ph.D. now,
still went back home from time to time, wanting so badly for his
father to accept him, but he continued to receive primarily
criticism, that is, if his father was home at all. My patient
carried around tremendous guilt feelings all the time for not
being perfect. He falsely blamed himself for the lack of
acceptance by his father. Several times I shared my own personal
faith in the God of love, as well as God's offer of salvation and
forgiveness, but to no apparent avail. This patient was a devout
atheist. And I would have expected him to be, given the kind of
father image he grew up with. In general - and this is with some
exceptions, of course - my experience has been that patients
whose fathers were gone a lot, and negativistic when they were
home, or patients who had no father at all, tend to be atheists.
In their subconscious minds, they want to believe there is
no God because they resent the fact that they had no father, or
one who was nearly always absent and negativistic. Oftentimes
they would like to repress their fathers right out of their
minds. But since they can't totally repress the existence of
their earthly fathers, they fool themselves into thinking there
is no God, or heavenly Father.
Patients who had cold, passive, and frequently absent
fathers tend to believe that God is some cold, indifferent being
out in space somewhere. Their earthly fathers knew their children
existed, but were neither positive nor negative with their
children they more or less ignored them. And so these patients
believe there is a God who knows they exist, but doesn't really
care or even pay attention to mere earthlings. Patients who had
rigid, demanding, negativistic, overly punitive fathers have
tended to fall into two categories: some of these patients hated
their fathers so much that they became atheists as an unconscious
rebellion against the existence of their fathers; on the other
hand, most of them believe that there is a God, but that God is a
mean old man up there, holding a whip and just daring us to break
one of His rules so He can snap us with it! Many of the latter
group, surprisingly, are Christians. These are the Christians who
tend to migrate to legalistic, negativistic churches, where it
will be easier for them to live up to their unrealistic concept
of God's standards, based upon the standards of their earthly
fathers. These patients wanted their earthly fathers to accept
them, so they became rigidly perfectionistic in order to win
their fathers' approval, which they seldom won anyway. In the
same manner, they are afraid of God and His punishment, but they
want His acceptance and the only way they think they can get
it - deep down anyway - is by becoming rigidly perfectionistic
and denying their own natural feelings of anger and aggression.
They never really feel forgiven. They project their own anger
outward, convincing themselves that people are angry at them.
This is their usual way of lying to themselves about their own
anger. In psychiatry, this is called paranoid ideation. They
withdraw from all the people they imagine are so angry at them,
criticizing these other people excessively, to justify in their
own minds withdrawing from them. They have to believe they are
correct - probably because the real God of love is convincing
them that they are wrong - so they associate only with other
legalistic, negativistic people. Many of them join extremely
right-wing, semidelusional political organizations and
"religious" groups.
I know of thousands of Christians, whom I believe are
genuine, born-again believers, who are like ostriches with their
heads in the sand, thinking they are the only ones who are right,
or the only ones going to heaven. The pent-up anger they have
frequently causes them to become chronically depressed.
On the other hand, patients who have had a father who loved
them, accepted them in spite of imperfections, spent time with
them, and punished them when they did things that he knew were
bad for them in the long run, generally have a healthy concept of
God.
They believe in the existence of a God who loves them,
accepts them, listens to them, and disciplines them out of love.
If they haven't already put their faith in Jesus Christ, they do
so readily when I show them God's simple plan of salvation.
I have also had a group of patients whose fathers were the
overly sweet type, who pampered them, bought them whatever they
pointed at in stores, seldom contradicted them, and hardly ever
punished them. These people tend to be religious liberals who are
quite idealistic, deny the sinful nature of man, and pretend that
there is no literal hell, in spite of the fact that Christ spent
more time (as recorded in the New Testament) warning people about
the reality of hell than He did discussing heaven. In Christ's
teachings, there are nearly twice as many verses about a literal
hell as there are verses telling us about heaven. These people
are a traveling salesman's delight, because they are so naive and
believe in the basic goodness of all mankind. Sociopaths and
alcoholics will get everything they can from these people,
including room, board, and financial support for their bad
habits. To be aware of the fact that someone is being blatantly
selfish and lying to them would ruin their deluded belief in
man's basic goodness, so they use a tremendous amount of denial
to lie to themselves about such situations.
I hope those of us who are fathers, or who someday will be
fathers, will grasp the heavenly responsibility th t God has
given us. I sometimes wake up at night, and go to my children's
bedrooms. I pull their covers up to be sure they're warm, and
bend over to give them a soft kiss. Then I frequently get down on
my knees beside their beds and rededicate myself to God, to be
the kind of father He wants me to be, because I know God loves
them even more than I ever could. And I thank God for trusting me
with that responsibility.
Let's look at some more right and wrong ways to respond
to guilt, temptations, and sin in the lives of our children.
First, I want to differentiate between true guilt and false
guilt. Freud seemed to think that all guilt is false guilt - that
guilt itself is a bad thing. Most of the psychiatrists I have
studied under and worked with agreed with the Freudian view -
that guilt is always an unhealthy thing, I disagree strongly.
True guilt, in my opinion, is the uncomfortable, inner awareness
that we have violated a moral law of God. It is produced
partially by the conviction of God's Holy Spirit, and partially
by our own conscience. Our conscience is what Freud called the
super-ego. Our conscience is molded by many influences in our
environment, such as what our parents taught was right or wrong,
what our parents practiced as being right or wrong (which isn't
always the same as what they taught), what our church taught was
right or wrong, what the people in our church practiced as being
right or wrong, what our friends thought was right or wrong, what
our teachers thought was right or wrong. If we studied the Bible,
our conscience would also be molded by what the Bible says is
right or wrong, but even that is influenced by our own
interpretations and sometimes misinterpretations. No two
consciences are exactly alike. God's Holy Spirit is always right,
but our consciences are frequently wrong. Someone with an
immature conscience can do something wrong and not know that it
is wrong, in which case his conscience will not bother him. Or we
can have an overgrown conscience if we have been taught that
everything is sin, and our conscience in that case will bother us
even when we do things that God Himself does not consider wrong.
This is what I call false guilt: feeling guilty for something
that God and His Word in no way condemn.
On the other hand, true guilt is valuable. God uses it to
influence us to change our minds about what we are doing. That's
what repentance is all about. Then when we do what is right,
instead of what is wrong, we will be in fellowship with God, and
we will like ourselves more too. Doing what is wrong lowers our
self-worth. Doing what is right greatly improves our self-worth.
In my experience as a psychiatrist, when people come to me
and tell me they feel guilty, it has usually been true guilt.
They feel guilty because they are guilty. And straightening out
what they were doing that is wrong sometimes is all that is
needed to straighten out their feelings of depression. But I have
also had many Christians come to me, especially from the
legalistic churches, to express feelings of guilt for things that
the Bible in no way condemns.
They may feel guilty for being tempted, for example. It's no
sin to be tempted. But it is a sin to dwell on that temptation
and yield to it. Christ Himself was tempted - "For we have not an
high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin" (Heb.4:15).
The Apostle Paul talked about Christians who believed it a
sin to eat meat that had been offered to idols (see I Cor.8).
Back in Paul's day, the people would bring sacrifices to the
pagan temples. Then the priests would cut up the meat and sell it
to earn some spending money. They would sell this meat at a
discount, compared to meat prices at the nearby butcher store. In
some towns Paul preached in, the Christians thought it was
immoral to buy that meat, since it had been offered to idols. I
can see why they would think that, and I admire them for wanting
to do what they thought was right. Christians in other towns
thought it was perfectly fine to buy meat that had been offered
to idols. It was much cheaper, and they could invest their money
in better wags than to waste it on the expensive meat at the
butcher shop. The Apostle Paul said that God Himself had revealed
to him that eating meat that had been offered to idols was all
right. God old him there was nothing immoral about it in His
eyes. But He told Paul not to show off his liberty in front of
Christians with weaker consciences (weaker in the sense of being
more easily offended), so whenever Paul was in a town where
Christians thought it was wrong, he wouldn't eat meat which had
been offered to idols. That was diplomacy, not hypocrisy, and I'm
sure Paul did it out of love and empathy. He had more important
things to teach them, and he didn't want to hurt his testimony.
That would diminish his effectiveness. He knew that when people
make up their minds something is wrong, not even a direct message
from God can change their minds!
Paul Tournier, the Christian psychiatrist from Switzerland, calls
true guilt "value guilt," and he calls false guilt, "functional
guilt." Tournier says:
A feeling of "functional guilt" is one which results from
social suggestion, fear of taboos or of losing the love of
others. A feeling of "value guilt" is the genuine
consciousness of having betrayed an authentic standard; it
is a free judgment of the self by the self. On this
assumption, there is a complete opposition between these two
guilt-producing mechanisms, the one acting by social
suggestion, the other by moral conviction...... "False
guilt" is that which comes as a result of the judgments and
suggestions of men. "True guilt" is that which results from
divine judgment.... Therefore real guilt is often something
quite different from that which constantly weights us down,
because of our fear of social judgment and the disapproval
of men. We become independent of them in proportion as we
depend on God .
Dr. O. Quentin Hyder states that:
The causes of false guilt stem back to childhood upbringing.
Too rigid a superego or conscience can only be developed by
too rigid expectations or standards imposed by parents. For
example, parents who excessively blame, condemn, judge, and
accuse their children when they fail to match up to their
expectations cause them to grow up with a warped idea of
what appropriate standards are. Unforgiving parents who pun-
ish excessively increase guilt.
Adequate and proper punishment given in love and with
explanation removes guilt. Some parents give too little
encouragement, praise, thanks, congratulations, or appreciation.
Instead they are never satisfied. However well the child performs
in any area of school, play, sports, or social behavior, the
parents make him feel they are dissatisfied because he did
not do even better. The child sees himself as a constant
failure, and he is made to feel guilty because he failed. He
does not realize at his young age what harm his parents are
doing to his future feelings of self-worth. He grows up
convinced that anything short of perfection is failure.
However hard he tries, and even if he actually performs to
the maximum that he is capable of, he grows up feeling
guilty and inferior.
As an adult he suffers from neurotic or false guilt, low
self esteem, insecurity, and a self-depreciatmy pessimistic
outlook on all his endeavors and ambitions. He then blames
himself and this leads to anger turned inward. He attempts
to inflict punishment upon himself because of his feelings
of unworthiness. His failures deserve to be judged and pun-
ished, and since no one else can do it for him, he punishes
himself. This intropunitive retribution, part anger and part
hostility, leads inevitably to depression. It can also cause
psychosomatic complaints and inappropriate sorts of actions.
Dr.Hyder says the only treatment for false guilt is
understanding it and evaluating it for what it really is.
Feelings of bitterness and pride need to be separated from what
the patient interprets as feelings of guilt. The patient needs to
understand that he has no right to condemn himself - only God has
that right, and Christians should leave judging and condemning to
God alone. Then he needs to set new goals for himself that are
realistically attainable, and no longer compare himself to others
who are more gifted than he is in specific areas. Instead, he
should compare his performance with what he believes God expects
of him. God doesn't expect us or our children to achieve sinless
perfection in this life. But He does want us to seek His will in
our lives to the best of our abilities.
The Apostle Paul compares entering the Christian life to
entering the Sabbath Day rest (see Heb.4:1-9). God wants us to
rest in Him, and in His power. Martin Luther struggled for years
with the legalistic expectations of his religion, until he
learned that "the just shall live by faith" (Rom.1:17), and that
"man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Rom.
3:28). Then he trusted God's grace rather than his own good works
to save him. In 1529, Luther penned the famous hymn, "A Mighty
Fortress Is Our God." In this hymn, Luther expresses his
appreciation of the fact that our God is an all-powerful God and
that we should let Him win our battles for us, resting in His
power rather than our own. In the second verse of that hymn,
Luther refers to God by the Old Testament name, Lord Sabaoth,
which in Hebrew means "Lord of Hosts," and refers to God's
omnipotence. Let's take a look at that second verse:
Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be
losing; Were not the right Man on our side, The Man of God's
own choosing. Dust ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is
He; Lord Sabbath His Name,
From age to age the same, And HE must win the battle.
We have already discussed the notion some Christians have
that God is a mean old man, holding a whip, who is just waiting
to crack us with that whip whenever we break one of His rigid
rules. But the God of the Bible is not like that at all. God is
perfect love, and perfect justice. God didn't make rules so He
could whip us when we break one. God gave us principles to live
by so we can enjoy the abundant life and the fruits of the
Spirit. God has set up natural laws for human nature just as for
physical nature. If we do not abide by God's principles, we will
suffer the natural consequences He has established. Sin is the
transgression of those laws or principles which God has set up
(see I John 3:4). All of us have sinned many times. Paul tells us
that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom.
8:28). He tells us that the ultimate reward for those sins is
eternal death in hell, but that in perfect love and grace, God
offers us the free gift of eternal life and forgiveness for all
of our sins - past, present, and future (see John 1:12; 8:16;
Rom. 6:28; 10:18; Eph.2:8-9).
When a person becomes a Christian, he is a new creation.
Paul tells us that "if any man be in Christ, hee is a new
creature:
old things are passed away; behold, all things are became
new" (2 Cor.5:17).
But this does not mean he has reached sinless perfection.
Far from it. Sanctification, which is the process of gradually
becoming more and more like Christ, now takes place in the
growing Christians life. Just as a newborn babe needs milk,
the newly reborn spiritual babe - the new Christian - needs a lot
of spiritual milk. The Apostle Peter said, "As newborn babes,
desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (I
Peter 2:2). The "word" means God's Word, of course - the Bible.
Daily devotions are a must for continued growth in spiritual and
emotional maturity. I began reading my Bible every day when I was
ten years old. There's no reason why our own children can't start
even sooner. We began using an illustrated Bible story book for
our oldest son when he was two years old, and when he turned
four, my wife started to teach him short Bible verses. Recall the
time Christ's disciples were getting ready to chase some children
away so He wouldn't have to bother with them, but Christ told His
disciples, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:14).
Then Christ explained to His disciples that even adults have
to accept Him with the simple faith of a little child in order to
become a part of God's kingdom. Thus, we can be assured that God
desires to be in communion with our children, and that their
meditations on God and His Word will help them overcome
temptations. Devotions are especially important during those four
traumatic years between twelve and sixteen, when your sons and
daughters grow from being boys and girls into men and women, with
all the associated hormone changes, impulses, cravings, and
feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
The Apostle Paul said, "There hath no temptation taken you
but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not
suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with
the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to
bear it" (I Cor.10:13. This verse was a tremendous help to me
when I memorized it as a young teenager, and it continues to be.
Pan also said, "And my God shall supply all your needs according
to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil.4:19, NASV). The
human body, soul, and spirit have a multitude of needs. Satan
will usually tempt us through our natural physical and emotional
needs. These needs include the need for air, food, water,
stimulation, sex, love, self-worth, power, aggression, comfort,
security, and relief from psychic tensions. Many Christians have
been erroneously taught that living the Christian life means
totally denying many of these natural needs. The Christian may be
called upon by God to deny some of his wants, but God has already
promised to supply all of our needs. There's a difference. No
wonder so many people are afraid to become Christians. They have
been told that becoming a Christian means denying many natural
needs. What foolishness! God created these needs within us. He
can use all of the needs in our lives for His own glory. He
promised us in Philippians 4:19 that He would supply all our
needs, not deny them. But He wants to supply them in His way, and
according to His principles of love. Satan wants to supply these
same needs in his way, according to his principles of
selfishness, greed, and hate. Our needs are not temptations.
Satan's ways of meeting them are the temptations. Our natural
human tendency is to meet our needs in Satan's ways. It takes the
New Birth (technically it's not a birth, it's a begettal, or
converted from the old natural human way to the spiritual and
holy way of God through His Holy Spirit - Keith Hunt) and
spiritual insights to see how we can meet these natural needs in
God's ways, with much greater ultimate joy and satisfaction.
Take the need for sex, for instance. God made sex and God
made the need for sex. God made the male and female sex hormones
that influence our sexual drives. In males, they reach their peak
in the late teens. In females, they don't reach their peak until
the early thirties (I doubt the latter to be correct - Keith
Hunt) I don't know why God made it that way, but I'm sure He had
a reason. I imagine the temptations during the late teenage years
would be much greater than they already are if male and female
reached their peaks at the same time (I believe the very clear
facts today are that BOTH male and female a have pretty active
peak of sex hormones by their late teens - Keith Hunt). But God
has provided a way to satisfy those sexual needs - through an
intimate marriage. (And in the Jewish world of Christ's time,
most females and males were married by their late teens, that is
just one of the facts of Jewish recorded history - Keith Hunt).
God has also provided ways to relieve sexual tensions in
single males, such as "wet dreams" during sleep at night. That
serotonin really works overtime during the teenage years! I'm
sure that God uses these unconscious dreams in disguised symbolic
language to release sexual tensions in a way that will not
produce guilt feelings in the individual. I personally do not
recommend masturbation. The Bible never mentions it specifically,
but does warn us to "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war
against the soul" (I Peter 2:11). Teenage patients who talk to me
about masturbation almost always express guilt feelings about it,
and their guilt is usually about their thoughts rather than the
action itself. I usually inform them that my medical books say
that 99 percent of males masturbate and that the other 1 percent
are usually lying about it. Then I tell them my personal opinion,
that they would probably feel less guilt if they would stop and
allow God to relieve their sexual tensions through wet dreams.
Many of them are relieved to find out that they are not the only
ones who have ever done this, or that it is not the unpardonable
sin. I let them know that some godly men think there is nothing
wrong with it, but that my own opinion is that it stirs up
fleshly lusts which war against the soul. I highly recommend that
you fathers discuss this topic privately with your teenage sons,
and you mothers with your daughters, since 60 percent of females
practice it regularly also. I recommend that you approach it
matter-of-factly, with an accepting attitude. You would probably
be surprised how much things like this plague teenagers as well
as adults.
Frequent social contacts with spiritually mature members of
the opposite sex are also a healthy outlet. I personally will
never allow my sons or daughters to date anyone who is not a
growing Christian. When they are eighteen years old and go off to
college, they'll be on their own. But until then, they'll have my
conscience to live with as well as their own. But Christian
dating meets the sexual needs of their spirit and soul. I usually
recommend group dating at age fourteen, double dating at age
fifteen, and single dating at age sixteen, for teenagers of
average maturity. Allowing your teenagers to date ahead of this
schedule will usually subject them to more temptations than they
are able to handle. Their bodies mature more quickly than their
emotional levels. Those Christians who say that our sexual
needs - spiritual, emotional, or physical - are dirty or sinful
are saying that God made a mistake in creating them within us. In
fact, a portion of our brain (known as the limbic brain) was
specifically designed by God to handle, among other things, the
sexual drives in our life.
The conclusion of this discussion about temptations is that
we should not deny our natural needs. Nor should we meet them in
Satan's ways. Either of these methods of dealing with our needs
would only serve to create even more intense temptations. We
should meet all our needs in God's ways, including our sexual
needs, and thus take away Satan's power to tempt us. The
Christian life will be much easier if our needs are being met.
God wants them to be. If there are no unsatisfied needs, there
will be no temptations. So teach these concepts to your children,
and tell them that the next time they are tempted, they should
stop to think about which of their needs they have not been
meeting lately. Then recommend that they ask God to help them to
meet that need in a way that will be pleasing to Him rather than
Satan. This will do tremendous things for their self-worth. It
will relieve a lot of guilt. It will also constantly remind them
that God loves them and is concerned about their everyday needs.
And your accepting attitude will show them, at least on a
subconscious level, that God is also quite understanding and
accepting of the struggles and temptations they go through.
Self-worth comes from doing what we know is right, and not
doing those things that we believe are wrong. When we do things
that we know are selfish and sinful, we lose self-worth. There's
no way around it. And emotional problems are sure to follow as
our self-worth continues to depreciate in value. Its bad enough
to have our money depreciate. So let's invest in something that
can appreciate in value - our own selfworth and the self-worth of
our children. God admonishes us, "Cast not away therefore your
confidence, which hath great recompence of reward" (Heb.10:35).
If our children choose Satan's ways to meet their needs,
they will be casting away their confidence in their own good
character. Encourage them rather to enter the "Sabbath Rest"
described in Hebrews and simply to turn their lives over to God,
relying on His power to help them live by His principles, so they
can develop His way of thinking and thoroughly enjoy the abundant
life.
Even the vast complexity of our human bodies teaches us that
we are of great worth to the God who created us for His glory. In
an average day, the average human being will breathe over 28,000
times, inhaling about 436 cubic feet of air. His heart will beat
over 100,000 times and will pump over 250 pounds of blood per
hour. He will use over 450 major muscles and 9 billion brain
cells. His blood cells will travel thousands of miles. His body
is made up of about 60 trillion cells. Dividing them up, he could
give 15,000 cells to each man, woman, and child on the planet
earth. And each cell contains thousands of enzymes, ribosomes,
golgi apparatuses, endoplasmic reticula, DNA, RNA, and hundreds
of other minute structures that all work together like a complete
factory. The average human has about 20 billion brain cells and
nerve cells, and they are arranged with millions of
interconnections like a very complex computer. Scientists have
estimated that to build a computer with the capabilities and
circuitry of the human brain, they would need a building the size
of the Pentagon to house it. Surely we are fearfully and
wonderfully made, as the Bible tells us (see Ps.139:14). [of
course today the building needed would not be anywhere the size
of the Pentagon, such is modern technology in 2007 which did not
exist 30 years ago when Dr. Meier wrote this book - Keith Hunt]
If the blood cells of an average human were lined up in
single file, they would reach all the way to the moon and halfway
back.
Christ tells us that a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground
without the Father knowing about it - and we are much more important
than those sparrows - so much so that even the hairs of our head are
numbered (see Matt.10:29-33). God said of man, "For I have
created him for My glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made
him" (Isa.43:7). If any of you ever start believing Satan's lie
that you are inferior, or if your children ever express to you
the feeling that they are inferior, just turn to Psalm 139. Psalm
139 is God's prescription for feelings of inferiority.
I want to conclude this section on how to develop self-worth
in your children by again quoting portions of that psalm,
O LORD, YOU have examined my heart and know everything about
me. You know when I sit or stand. When far away you know my
every thought. You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me
where to stop and rest. Every moment, you know where I am.
You know what I am going to say before I even say it. You
both precede and follow me, and place your hand of blessing
on my head. This is too glorious, too wonderful to believe!
I can never be lost to your Spirit! I can never get away
from my Godl If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go
down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the
morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand
will guide me, your strength will support me. If I try to
hide in the darkness, the night becomes light around me. For
even darkness cannot hide from God; to you the night shines
as bright as day. Darkness and light are both alike to you.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit
them together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me
so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your
workmanship is marvelous - and how well I know it. You were
there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw
me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life
before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your
Book! How precious it is, Lord to realize that you are
thinking about me comtantlyl I can't even count how many
times a day your thoughts turn towards me. And when I waken
in the morning, you are still thinking of mel
.. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts.
Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and
lead me along the path of everlasting life.
- Psalm 189:1-18, 28-24, LB
.................
To be continued with "From Conception to Age Six: General
Principles"
Christian Childrearing #4
Conception to Age Six
We continue with Paul Meier,M.D. book "Christian Child-Rearing
and Personality Development."
THOSE FIRST SIX YEARS
Many psychiatrists estimate on the basis of their studies
that approximately 85 percent of the adult personality is already
formed by the time the individual is six years old. Imagine that!
A brand new baby, born in America today, will probably live to be
seventy-five years old, and with new scientific discoveries, that
may end up being extended to eighty-five or ninety. But how that
baby's parents train him or her during those crucial first six
years will determine how that individual will enjoy and succeed
in life during the other seventy or eighty years. God has given
us parents a tremendous responsibility! Dr. Gary Collins,
Professor of Pastoral Psychology and Counselling at Trinity
Evangelical Seminary, states:
Developmental psychologists have conducted literally
thousands of studies, and the results of these
investigations have substantially increased our knowledge
and understanding of the nature of childhood. A survey of
some of these psychological conclusions could be of value to
church leaders and Christian parents as they seek to "vain
up a child in the way he should go" (Proverbs 22:6).1
The Communist Party and the Roman Catholic Church have
emphasized the importance of those early years. I believe that
those of us in the evangelical community must also be aware of
the
[1. Gary Collins, "Man in Transition," p.82.]
important responsibility God has given those of us who have
children, especially if they are under six years of age.
God's concern for children is quite evident throughout
Scripture. Mark records, "And they brought young children to him,
that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that
brought them" (Mark 10:13). The disciples obviously thought
Christ was too busy talking to adults to waste His time with
children. They must have thought that "children should be seen
and not heard." Mark goes on to record that "when Jesus saw it,
he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the
kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter
therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon
them, and blessed them" (Mark 10:14-16). God's concern for
children was also made evident by Matthew:
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a
little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and
said, Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself
as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of
heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my
name receiveth me. But who,, shall offend one of these
little one, which believe in me, it were better for him that
a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because
of offences! - Matt.18:1-7
I would like to share with you one more warning God has
given us about children. It is a warning that changed my whole
outlook on the vast importance of child-rearing. It is a warning
that has given me more determination as I carry on my work in
family psychotherapy as a Christian psychiatrist. It is also a
warning that was influential in stirring up my desire to practice
some preventative psychiatry, especially among my fellow
Christians. That crucial warning front God is worded as follows:
"For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth
generations of those who hate me, but showing lovingkindness to
thousands of those who love me and keep my commandment" (Exod.
20:5-6).
This passage troubled me when I first read it. I knew that
the Bible is without error, and yet I simply could not understand
how a loving God would punish three or four generations of chil-
dren for the sins of their parents. It didn't seem consistent
with those passages about Christ's love for children as recorded
in the Gospels. But when I went into psychiatry and extensively
studied about healthy and unhealthy parent-child relationships,
and saw scores of mentally disturbed children and had to deal
with their parents and grandparents, the meaning of this passage
became quite obvious to me. It simply means that if we, as
parents, live sinful lives-meaning lives that are not in accord
with the health producing principles of God's Word - there will
be a profound effect upon our children, and our children's
children, to three or four generations. God is not punishing our
offspring for our sins, we are-by not living according to His
precepts.
In my review of the scientific literature on parent-child
relationships, and from my own experiences as a psychiatrist, I
have learned a great deal about which types of families produce
which types of mental illness in their children. During one full
year of research at Duke University, I also uncovered much
information on which types of religious backgrounds produce which
types of mental illness, and which types of religious experiences
produce good mental health. I think the best way I can
effectively share these findings with you, without using
psychiatric jargon and terminology, is to tell you how to produce
various types of mental illness in your children. It will be a
novel, more enjoyable way of learning some important principles.
I'll be teaching you how to produce various types of mental
illness in your children so you will know what not to do if you
want them to be emotionally and mentally healthy. I will share
with you some easy steps for producing ten common types of mental
illness or personality disorder. I will then discuss some of the
most recent psychiatric findings on emotionally healthy families
as well.
Before I begin, however, I want it understood that there are
exceptions to every rule. Some children have been brought up
under the most adverse circumstances, only to attain greatness as
adults. Others have been reared in relatively normal Christian
homes, but developed manic-depression, schizophrenia, or some
other mental illness because of a strong inherited predisposition
or some other transparent factors. The human brain, with its 20
billion cells, complicated biochemistry, interconnecting
circuits, and electrical activity, is far too complex for us to
be overly simplistic in our approach to mental illness. But at
the same time, there are definite trends that have been observed
over and over again in the families of various types of mentally
disturbed children. God wants us to know the truth. The Bible is
absolute truth. But God didn't print the entire body of truth in
the Scriptures. If He had, our Bibles would be bigger than ocean
liners, and it would be quite difficult to carry them around!
They would also be quite expensive! So I think God would have us,
as Christians, take a sceptical but open-minded look at the truth
man learns from scientific investigations. If we do, we will have
a definite advantage over non-Christians, who know many
scientific facts but don't have the absolute standard of
authority we have in the Scriptures. With these warnings, I will
now proceed to share with you some of these definite trends.
How to Develop
Emotionally Disturbed Children
A. Ten easy steps for developing your normal, healthy baby into a
drug addict or alcoholic.
These steps are the same for both drug addiction and
alcoholism, since a majority of cases of both drug addiction and
alcoholism stem from the same type of personality disorder.
l. Spoil him; give him everything lie wants if you can afford it.
2. When he does wrong, you may nag him, but never spank him
(unless he is showing signs of independence).
3. Foster his dependence on you, so drugs or alcohol can replace
you when he is older.
4. Protect him from your husband and from all those mean teachers
who threaten to spank him from time to time. Sue them if you
wish.
5. Make all of his decisions for him, since you are a lot older
and wiser than he is. He might make mistakes and learn from them
if you don't.
6. Criticize his father openly, so your son can lose his own
self-respect and confidence.
7. Always bail him out of trouble so he will like you. Besides,
he might harm your reputation if he gets a police record. Never
let him suffer the consequences of his own behavior.
8. Always step in and solve his problems for him, so he can
depend on you and run to you when the going gets tough. Then when
he is older and still hasn't learned how to solve his own
problems, he can continue to run from them through heroin or
alcohol.
9. Just to play it safe, be sure to dominate your husband and
drive him to drink too, if you can.
10. Take lots of prescription drugs yourself, so that taking non-
prescription drugs won't be a major step for him.
In my opinion - as a psychiatrist who has worked with scores
of drug addicts and alcoholics-drug addiction and alcoholism are
not "drug" or "alcohol" problems, as they are frequently
mislabelled. And they are not an inherited disorder, even though
in some cases there are some inherited tendencies. They are a
choice, and this choice is usually made by people with severe
dependent personality disorders. They generally come from
families where there were a weak fattier and an over-controlling
mother who spoiled them excessively. A disproportionate
percentage of the alcoholics and drug addicts I have worked with
have been the youngest or only boy in the family, a factor which
gave their mothers added temptations to spoil them. Many times,
they were the only alcoholic or drug addict in an otherwise
normal family, and considered themselves the black sheep of the
family.
The only cures I have seen have come about when the addict
himself has chosen to mature and work on his dependency problem,
preferably switching his dependency to God instead of alcohol or
drugs. When I work with them, I never mention drugs or alcohol,
and I refuse to listen to their stories about drugs or alcohol.
This would only encourage them to continue their habits, so they
could brag about them. I also refuse to become their "mother."
Most of them try very hard to get me to do things for them that
they ought to be doing for themselves. Then they try to make me
feel guilty when I refuse to do these favors for them. The best
way for me to show them genuine Christian love is to be
indifferent as to whether or not they like me, then to proceed to
do the things that I know will have the most beneficial effects
on them in the long run. Don't give them money. You'll just be
supporting their habit. Don't help them get out of trouble with
the law. They need desperately to suffer the consequences of
their behavior, since they never did when they were growing up.
The best thing you can do for them is to help them to become
aware of their severe dependent personality disorder and
encourage them to go out of their way to do things for
themselves. I think the ideal treatment for an alcoholic or drug
addict would be to send him out into a jungle somewhere for a
month or two with a Bible, a compass, and a jackknife, and nobody
around for several hundred miles-especially his mother. This
would produce independence, maturity, and increased
self-confidence, and I'm sure would cure many of them. The U.S.
government spends billions of dollars treating alcoholics in V.A.
hospitals, but about 95 percent never choose to quit drinking.
The hospital merely becomes a mother-substitute where they can
dry out and avoid responsibilities. The cure-rate for drug
addicts is even lower. 1 have never cured an addict, and I never
will. But some of the addicts I have worked with have matured and
decided to cure themselves-with God's help.
I never treat an alcoholic without treating his wife as
well. The reason for this is that when alcoholics are cured and
become responsible husbands and fathers, many of their wives have
nervous breakdowns. The wives are nearly always remarkably like
the alcoholic's mother-domineering, perfectionistic, and
masochistic. So the wives need help accepting their new role as
subservient wife instead of substitute-mother. Without such help
many of these wives would divorce their cured husbands and marry
another practicing alcoholic.
B. How to develop your normal child into a homosexual.
1. Start out by using the ten easy steps followed by the
alcoholic's mother, but this won't be enough.
2. Show your love for your son by protecting him very carefully.
Don't let him play football or baseball with the other boys - he
might get hurt! Don't let him be a newspaper boy or patrol boy;
he might catch pneumonia out in the bad weather.
3. Be sure he spends lots of time with you and very little with
his father (or any other adult males).
4. Teach him to sew and cook, and how to knit too. After all,
sexist attitudes about chores are out of dam nowadays. 2
5. Walk him to and from school so none of the bullies will beat
little Johnny up.
6. Let him play consistently with the little neighborhood girls
or his sisters and their friends. There just aren't any boys his
age in the neighborhood that you would want him to play with.
7. Joke with him about the feminine name you gave him, and tell
what a cute girl he would have been. Tell him that you really had
wanted a girl and dressed him in his big sister's clothes when he
was little. That was, when he reaches puberty and his
contemporaries start falling in love with the opposite sex, he
can too - with boys, since he thinks of himself basically as a
girls.
If your baby is a girl, just follow the same principles in
reverse: call her Jack, never make her wear a dress, and don't
spend much time with her, since she prefers playing football with
her father anyway. Homosexuality is on the rise in today's
society. And with the Women's Liberation Movement, more and more
weak men are feeling threatened by women and choosing homosexual
rather than heterosexual relationships. The practice of
homosexuality, just like drug addiction or alcoholism, is a
choice, not an inherited disorder. And it is a sinful choice at
that. God inspired Moses to write specific commandments about
homosexuality, labelling it a sin and calling on the Jewish
community to kill anyone caught practicing homosexual acts (see
Lev.18:22; 20:13). Even men dressing as women and women dressing
as men are declared to be acting contrary to the will of God (see
Dent.22:5).
[2. Actually, it is fine for our sons to share in any chores.
even feminine chores, from time to time. However, many of the
homosexual males I have treated grew up in homes where they did
feminine chores almost exclusively, while their brothers did the
chores most Americans would consider masculine. Their mothers
wanted a girl, so they created these boys like girls in many
ways, including giving them primarily feminine chores.]
God's attitudes toward homosexual acts are recorded in the
New Testament as well. Paul writes:
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or
give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and
their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they
became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God
for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and
four-footed animals and trawling creatures. Therefore God gave
them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their
bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the
truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
[secular humanitarianism] rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading
passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that
which is unnatural [lesbianism], and in the same way also the men
abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their
desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts
and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error
[homosexuality]. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge
God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do
those things which are not proper, being filled with all unright-
eousness, wickedness, greed, malice; full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit, malice [the desire to hurt others or get even];
they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant,
boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without
understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and, although
they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such
things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also
give hearty approval to those who practice them. - Rom. 1:21-82,
NASV
I have yet to see any psychiatry book that describes
homosexuality in such a unique way.
Paul also records, "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators,
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God" (I Cor.6:9-10,
NASV). Here God makes it quite plain that even being an
effeminate boy is a sin in His sight. Boys become effeminate when
they grow up identifying with their mothers instead of with their
fathers. At Duke University I had a teenage male patient who was
a Christian, but was struggling against strong desires to commit
homosexual acts.
When taking his psychiatric history, I noted that his
father, also a Christian, spent most of his free time playing
with his older son, leaving the younger boy home with his mother.
When my patient got to elementary school, he said he found
himself naturally wanting to play with the girls instead of with
the boys. When he turned thirteen and entered puberty, he started
to have crushes on boys, as did the girls with whom he played,
and to imagine homosexual acts with the boys he liked. His older
brother turned out normal. Fortunately, this boy is doing things
for himself to become more masculine and to change his way of
thinking, and is not allowing himself to commit such acts or even
to dwell on them in his mind. I'm sure he will marry some day,
raise a family, and live a relatively normal life-maybe even an
exceptional Christian life, but he will always carry around some
scars.
Paul taught his spiritual son, Timothy:
But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous man,
but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the
ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those
who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral
men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers,
and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching. -
1 Tim.1:8.10, NASV
Homosexuality was rampant in the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Lot had to bar the doors of his house to keep the
homosexuals from raping his male visitors. The Book of Jude
refers to this:
And the angels that did not keep their own position but left
their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal
chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great
day; just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities,
which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural
lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of
eternal fire. - Jude 6-7, NASV
The United States is rapidly becoming more and more like
Sodom and Gomorrah, and I believe some portions of our major
cities already are like Sodom and Gomorrah. And the liberals are
running around telling everybody that its all right. I know a
godly man who recently served on a steering committee for one of
the largest denominations in America. He had to debate some of
his more liberal religious peers who argued that their denomi-
nation should accept homosexuality as a normal practice and not a
sin. Fortunately (and with God's help, I'm sure) , the liberals
were defeated this time. Moreover, many liberal psychiatrists are
asserting that homosexuality should no longer be considered
abnormal, although a majority of psychiatrists are probably still
against such a motion. But I think the day is coming when both
religious denominations and psychiatry will accept homosexuality
as normal and not a sin; and I would guess that the religious
groups will probably beat psychiatry to it, since psychiatrists
understand in greater depth the many other developmental
deviations that have occurred in the homosexuals they have had as
patients. I may be wrong about who will win this race, however.
When Christians feel homosexual temptations, and some do,
they should resist (just as they would resist the temptation to
other sins). The temptation itself is not a sin, but dwelling on
it or yielding to it is. And in spite of the temptation they can
choose to be heterosexuals and to practice heterosexuality
rather than to practice homosexuality. Every human being has both
male and female sex hormones. Accordingly, homosexuality might be
more of a temptation physiologically for those people who have a
nearly even balance of those hormones. At any rate it will be
more of a temptation for those who have not had a strong parent
of the same sex to identify with, especially during the first six
to ten years of life.
C. How to develop your normal child into a sociopathic criminal.
1. As usual, start with the ten easy steps the alcoholic's mother
uses, with the following exceptions and additions:
2. Never spank your child. Physical punishment is a thing of the
past. In fact, spanking is now considered immoral and is even
against the law in Sweden (which just happens to have the highest
teenage suicide rate in the entire world).4
3. Let your child express himself any way he feels like it. Hell
learn foam your example how to behave-he doesn't need any
discipline.
[4. Sweden, once a Christian stronghold and now a
twentieth-century model of permissiveness, is the only nation in
the world that I know of where Christians have to spank their
children in the privacy of their homes for fear that their
neighbors will turn them in to the police.]
4. Don't run his life; let him run yours. Let him manipulate you
and play on your guilt if be doesn't get his own way.
5. Don't enforce the household rules-if there are any. That way
he'll be able to choose which laws of society he will break when
lie is older, and lie won't fear the consequences, since he has
never suffered any.
6. Don't bother him with chores. Do all of his chores for him.
Then he can be irresponsible when he is older and always blame
others when his responsibilities don't get done right.
7. Be sure to give in when lie throws a temper tantrum. He might
hit you if you don't. Don't ever cross him when he is angry.
8. It will help if you choose to believe his lies. You may even
want to tell a few yourself. Cheat on your income taxes too.
9. Criticize others openly and routinely so he will realize that
lie is better than everyone else. Don't let him associate with
those overly religious Jones kids-he's too good for them.
10. Give him a big allowance and don't make him do anything for
it. He may get the idea that he'll have to work for a living
later on if you make him work for it. If he does do anything
worthwhile around the house, be sure to pay him richly for each
and every good deed. You wouldn't want him to think that a
feeling of responsibility is its own reward .5
Most of the sociopaths I have worked with-and I have worked
either directly or indirectly with hundreds of them-have come
from this type of home background. The first patient that comes
to my mind is a teenage boy whose mother followed every one of
these steps all his life. His parents both taught at a small
Christian college, where the boy's father was dean of men. I
remember the boy as being outstandingly handsome. This may have
been a contributing factor, since teachers, relatives, and
parents tend to especially spoil good-looking children. The
mother brought the boy to me because lie was getting into so much
trouble with the law, and she was running out of ways to bail him
out. She probably thought that if I had a few sessions with him,
I would write a
[5. For many extensive case studies of sociopaths, see H. M.
Cleckley, "Mask of Sanity"]
letter to the judge asking that he not suffer the consequences of
his illegal acts. Well, she brought him to the wrong psychiatrist
for that! She told me how she had tucked him in when he went to
bed a couple nights before. As she was leaving the room, he said
to her, "I didn't give you permission to leave the room, did I"
So she apologized to him and sat beside him until he gave her
permission to leave. Actually he never did give her permission
-she stealthily left when he finally fell asleep at 4 a.m. Almost
any child would turn out sociopathic with that kind of mother.
His father, the dean, was weak-kneed and apologetic, saying
strong things occasionally, and threatening the boy
occasionally,. but never following through. I recommended to the
mother and father that they set definite limits, discipline the
boy every single time he broke one of the limits without
listening to any of his excuses, give him a few chores, let him
earn his own spending money, and let him suffer the consequences
of any of society's laws that he chose to break. I told them that
if they couldn't do this, they should transfer the boy to a youth
home or foster home where someone would do this, for the boy's
sake; and 1 told them that I would make these recommendations to
the judge if he wanted my psychiatric opinion (which is the usual
case). I told them that if this program were not enforced
immediately, I saw no hope for the boy other than spending most
of his life in prison. The boy's parents then thanked me
politely, told me they would do this, set up another appointment
with me, and never returned. I have a good notion as to where
that boy is today. His parents loved themselves too much to do
what was right for their son, because doing what was right would
make him angry at them, and they weren't willing to tolerate his
anger.
Another comment I would like to make is that although most
of the sociopaths I have worked with come from this type of home,
many sociopaths come from homes where they were severely beaten
over and over, frequently by alcoholic fathers or by mothers
prone to child abuse. These children look down on their parents
and become so bitter toward them that they transfer these
feelings to society in general, hating society and thinking
themselves to be better than society, with a strong desire to
"get even." Some psychiatrists have reviewed prison records and
found this to be quite common. So either extreme is harmful to
the healthy development of a child. Another finding is that
sociopaths have a higher incidence of alcoholism and
homosexuality .6 This is easy to understand since in most cases
sociopaths are reared by parents similar to those of alcoholics
and homosexuals.
D. How to develop your normal child into a hysterical daughter.
In reviewing all the cases I have had as a psychiatrist,
approximately 25 percent have been hysterical females, meaning
that they either had a hysterical personality disorder or a
hysterical neurosis, the two of which are related. I have also
had a few hysterical males, although this particular type of
disorder is more common in females. Here are twelve easy steps
for producing one:
1. Use the same ten easy steps the alcoholic's mother used, point
by point; but in addition, do the following:
2. Spoil her; always let her get her way, especially if she pouts
or cries.
3. Marry an immature husband and never meet his natural sexual
needs. For warmth and affection lie will become very close (too
close, in fact) to his daughter instead.
4. Lie to yourself a lot, so she can learn to use the technique
of denial for herself.
5. Always praise her for her looks, never for her character. Put
a mirror on every wall, so she can continually admire herself.
(This is one of the most important rules for producing hysteria.)
6. Whenever she runs away-and she'll probably do this frequently
- be sure to run after her and apologize for not letting her have
her own way in the first place.
7. Whenever she pretends to be sad and feigns a suicide attempt
by swallowing a couple dozen aspirins or sleeping pills, be sure
to save her dramatically and show her how guilty you feel for not
letting her have her own way in the first place. This will be
easy, since she will never overdose unless you or her boyfriend
is nearby to rescue her. (Note: In the United States, less than
one out of every twenty suicide attempts by females
[6. In "Psychiatry," a standard textbook, Merrill T. Eaton and
Margaret H. Peterson rate that sociopaths usually prefer
heterosexual relationships, but that because they want immediate
gratification, "most histories include some homosexual
relationships and often relationships with animals' (p.251)].
that get recorded end in actual death. In my own experience, I
have seen and talked to some, of females in emergency rooms after
they have made a suicide gesture, and I have never yet seen one
of them die from it, even though they almost all claim they were
really trying to die. I even saw one lady from up in the
mountains who overdosed on four iron tablets after an argument
with her husband! Seven times as many women as men attempt
suicide in the United States, but twice as many men die of it.
The reason for this is that men usually use guns or other violent
means, and half of them die as a result of their attempt)7
8. Encourage her to become a movie star. By now she is so
dramatic that acting would be quite natural for her.
9. Get divorced and remarried two or three times, so she can
learn what you already know: that all men are good-for nothing,
but you might as well live with one anyway.
10. Encourage her to wear the most seductive clothing. Actually,
you won't need to encourage her much, because she will do this
naturally to please her father, who keeps on praising her for her
good looks rather than for her character. (Note: Over one-third
of the hysterical females I have treated have even had sexual
intercourse with their fathers or stepfathers. Frequently their
fathers or other adults in their environment took advantage of
them when they were young by some sort of sexual abuse. Five
percent of American women and 2 percent of American men have
experienced incest while growing up.)
11. When she comes home from a date two hours late, you and your
husband should scold her for such behavior. Then with a curious
smirk on your face ask her for all the titillating details and do
enjoy every minute of it. But try not to be aware of how much you
are enjoying her adventure, even though she can tell that you
are.
[7. Even though suicide attempts by females rarely end in death,
this sort of immature behavior should not be taken lightly.
Professional counselling should besought. Including both men and
women in die statistic,, 10 percent of Americans who survive a
suicide attempt die of suicide within ten years (see Thomas P.
Detrie and Henry G. Jarecki, "Modern Psychiatric Treatment," p.
58).]
12. Reward her whenever she plays sick. Then she can somatasize
all her future emotional conflicts rather than face up to them,
running from physician to physician but never finding out what's
wrong, and getting angrier and angrier at those male chauvinist
M.D.'s. (She continues to spend hundreds of dollars getting their
advice, however.)8
According to the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, which is the
bible of psychiatry throughout the world, individuals with
hysterical personality disorders are "characterized by
excitability, emotional instability, over-reactivity, and
self-dramatization. This self-dramatization is always
attention-getting and often seductive, whether or not the patient
is aware of its purpose. These personalities are also immature,
self-centered, often vain, and usually dependent on others."9
Hysterics also have a higher than normal incidence of what we
call passive-aggressive personality traits, which include
"obstructionism, pouting, procrastination, intentional
inefficiency, or stubbornness."10 These are ways of getting even
with the person they are dependent upon without being openly
hostile. Lest we become overly introspective, most of us have
behaved in some of these ways some of the time, but individuals
with true hysterical personalities behave in almost all of these
ways almost all of the time. Its a matter of degrees.
I would like to tell you briefly about one female hysteric I
treated for several years, and one male hysteric-a Roman Catholic
priest-whom I treated for a couple of months. Since I am sworn to
secrecy by my Hippocratic Oath as a physician, and for the good
of my patients, I will follow the usual procedure of changing
their names for my illustrations. Jane was a fourteen-year-old
girl when I inherited her as a patient. She had been admitted to
a psychiatric ward of a general hospital after repeatedly running
away, some minor drug abuse, and some bizarre behavior patterns.
For example, she cut up her back with a razor blade in the school
bathroom, then ran into her classroom, telling her female teacher
- whom she
[8. Most hysterics I have treated have also been hypochondriacs.
By the mere power of suggestion, I have 'cured" hysterics of
blindness, paralysis, seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, and
many other illnesses they thought they had. See bibliography
references 168, 175, 188, and 286 for research data on hysteria.
9. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, p.43.
10. Ibid., pp.48-44.]
had a crush on-that her sister had cut her. Jane would do almost
anything to get attention When we saw her talking to the juice
carts on the ward, we thought she must have been completely out
of her mind, but we found out later that even this was a dramatic
attention-getting device. After psychotherapy with her for six
weeks in the hospital, I followed Jane with weekly outpatient
psychotherapy sessions for two years. During that period Jane ran
away once more for half a day, overdosed half a dozen times or so
in an attempt to manipulate her mother, smoked marijuana
occasionally, and had about a hundred temper tantrums. All of
this was a dramatic improvement over her previous behavior. By
the time she was sixteen, she went to live in a youth home for
girls and had matured quite a bit. When I inherited her as a
patient at age fourteen, she was operating at about the
three-year-old level of psychological maturity, even though her
I.Q. was tested out at 135. By the time she was sixteen, she was
behaving like a ten to twelve-ear-old most of the time.
Parents sometimes bring in a teenager whose rearing they
have bungled for fourteen or sixteen years, and expect the
psychiatrist - since he has that magical "Master of Deity"
degree-to correct all their mistakes in a few weeks of therapy.
It doesn't work that way! All we can do is help the parents to
find some ways to modify the 5 or 10 percent of that teenager's
personality that isn't already formed. In reviewing Jane's first
six years of life, I discovered that she was born into an
upper-class family in which the mother was extremely Victorian
and the father financially successful, but psychologically very
weak and immature. The boss of the family was a very domineering
maternal grandmother, who was also a business executive. Since
Jane's father was immature, and Jane's mother never satisfied him
sexually-thinking sex was somewhat vulgar-Jane's father turned
all of his attention to Jane. He completely ignored his wife and
the other children. He praised Jane over and over again for how
cute she was, and wouldn't think of disciplining her for
anything. Whatever Jane wanted, Jane got. Her father and mother
slept in separate bedrooms, and Jane slept every night with her
father. During her preschool years, Jane was molested at least
once by her maternal grandfather, who was becoming somewhat
senile and had never gotten sexual satisfaction from his
domineering wife.
When Jane was five, she and her father were lying in bed
together when, all of a sudden, her father had a heart attack. An
ambulance was called, and as he was being carried out of the
bedroom, he told his frightened daughter, "Don't worry, Honey,
I'll be back." But he died at the hospital, and Jane refused to
believe that he was dead. For months she would look for him in
closets and behind doors. He was her whole life. With her vivid
imagination, she would conjure him up and imagine him walking
into her room to talk to her several times a day. She finally
quit doing this when she was sixteen, though she may still be
doing it on rate occasions. Using her strong denial, she would
actually believe he was there sometimes. In her childish way of
understanding, she blamed her fattier for leaving her when she
needed him so much. In reality, she probably would have been much
worse if he had lived and continued to treat her the way lie did
like a substitute wife. So she loved her fattier and hated him at
the same time. She became bitter towards men in general, and more
and more seductive as she grew older. She developed a very
hysterical personality with all of its characteristics. When I
served as her therapist for over two years, she learned to trust
and identify with an older male who would not yield to her
seduction and manipulation, but who showed her genuine Christian
love in a matter-of-fact way. During the course of therapy she
did put her faith in Jesus Christ, and she tried off and on to
grow in the Lord. But she found herself trying to manipulate God
in the same way that she had manipulated tier father. As most
people do, she thought God must be a lot like her father, and had
difficulty accepting His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence,
and His divine mixture of genuine love and perfect justice. I
spent scores of hours trying to teach Jane's mother how to handle
her at home. But her mother, who had arthritis and a heart
condition, simply could not force herself to discipline Jane in
the way she needed to be disciplined, so Jane went to live in a
youth home for girls in a nearby city. The last letter I received
from Jane let me know that she was doing quite well there, even
though she was still trying to play on my guilt for having
recommended that she not live at home with her mother any more.
Not all hysterics are women. If you apply the same
techniques I have listed to your son, you can just as easily make
a male hysteric out of him, and there are quite a few male
hysterics around. Some of you may know one. I hope none of you is
married to one.
One male hysteric that I treated was a Roman Catholic
priest. He came to me complaining about all of his superiors, who
were constantly misinterpreting his actions. Whenever his
superiors would walk into the church and find him caressing a
female parishioner, they would accuse hum of being overly
seductive. Of course, in his view he was only showing her
sympathy for her marital and other problems. He complained that
his bishop kept harassing him because of his liberal ideas about
women's liberation and other women's rights causes. I ordered
complete psychological testing for him, so I could find out what
was really going on. I wrote my own predictions down, and when
the psychological tests -including the Rorschach ink-blot
test-came back, they supported my predictions 100 percent. He was
a male hysteric who unconsciously hated women. When he saw a
feminine ink blot, he would think it was an atomic bomb. It all
stemmed back to his relationship with his neurotic mother, who
pampered him all his life and continually praised him for his
appearance rather than his character. She also followed most of
the other steps listed above.
Hysterics traditionally seduce persons of the opposite sex,
either consciously or subconsciously, so they can put them down
and prove that they are good-for-nothings like everyone else of
the opposite sex. Many prostitutes are hysterics. Many a female
hysteric seeks a good man to bring down sexually, so she can tell
everyone that he seduced her, thus ruining his reputation. Many
of them even make up stories of ministers and physicians who
supposedly have seduced them. The Book of Proverbs describes
hysterical females and males better than any book on psychiatry I
have read. Solomon describes the hysterical male: "A naughty
person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. He winketh
with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his
fingers; Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief
continually; Ire soweth discord" (Prov.6:12-14). Solomon calls
hysterical females "strange women" and says that they seek out
the precious life, to bring him down. He warns godly young men
that:
The lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her
mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as
wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to
death; her steps take ]cold on hell. Lest thou shouldest
ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable [unstable],
that thou cans[ not know them. Hear me now therefore, 0 ye
children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove
thy way far front her, and come not nigh the door of her
house: Lest then give thine honour unto others, and thy
years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy
wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; And
thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are
consumed [probably referring to the devastating effects of
syphilis], And say, How have 1 hated instruction, and my
heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of my
teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed mel
I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation
and assembly. Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and
running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be
dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in tire streets. Let
them be only thin, own, and not strangers' with thee. Let
thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy
youth. Let lie, be as tire loving hind and pleasant roe; let
her breasts satisfy these at all times; and be thou ravished
always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished
with a strange woman, and em- brace tire bosom of a
stranger? For the ways of man are before tire eyes of the
LORD, and he pondereth all his goings. - Prov.5:3-21
E. How to develop your normal child into an adult schizophrenic.
All of the literature I have reviewed indicates a strong
genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, more so than most other
mental illnesses. Many childhood schizophrenics come from quite
normal homes, as do some adult schizophrenics. And then again,
many people have inherited a genetic predisposition for
schizophrenia yet never develop the disease, because they were
reared in loving healthy homes that were based on principles
consistent with what God recommends in Scripture. As a matter of
fact, many of those individuals who would have become
schizophrenic under adverse circumstances instead become very
creative. On the other hand, some individuals do not inherit a
strong genetic predisposition for schizophrenia, but become
schizophrenic anyway because they were reared in
schizophrenogenic (schizophrenic-producing) homes. I'm going to
give you five easy steps for producing a schizophrenic
environmentally. But first, let me tell you what schizophrenia
is. Schizophrenia is defined as a
mental disorder of psychotic level characterized by disturb-
ances in thinking, mood, and behavior. The thinking
disturbance is manifested by a distortion of reality,
especially by delusions and hallucinations, accompanied by
fragmentation of associations that results in incoherent speech.
The mood disturbance is manifested by inappropriate affective
responses. The behavior disturbance is manifested by ambivalence,
pathetic withdrawal, and bizarre activity.11
Here's how to produce a schizophrenic:
1. Again, use most of the same basic rules as the alcoholic's
mother, with the following exceptions:
2. Tell your child you love him, but never hug him or show any
genuine warmth. When you have to carry him as a baby, put him on
your hip, facing away from you, rather than snuggling him up
close to you and facing you.
3. Promise him you'll do things with him, but always think of
excuses when the time comes; encourage your husband to do the
same.
4. Husbands should be seen and not heard, and they should be seen
only when they have permission from you. The weaker your husband
is, the easier it will be to make a schizophrenic out of your son
or daughter, especially if you are cold and impersonal whenever
you lie to your child by telling him that you love him.
5. In contrast to the alcoholic's mother, be very weak and in.
effectual yourself. If you and your husband are both psycho.
logically weak and ineffectual, it will help a great deal.12
I had one patient who was a ten-year-old schizophrenic boy.
He was reared by a weak, ineffectual mother who would not
discipline him. She was very cold and impersonal. She had
divorced her husband many years earlier. He was a chronic
paranoid schizophrenic himself, and spent most of his adult life
in V.A. hospitals. When the boy was admitted to the hospital, at
the insistence of social workers, he had a wild appearance-torn
clothes, long claw-like fingernails, a glaring stare-and very
little body movement. He hadn't had a bath in several weeks. The
mother said she simply could not get him to take a bath. I told
the mother that the hospital policy was for the parents not to
visit the children on the
[11. Alfred M. Freedman, et a., "Modern Synopsis of Psychiatry,"
p.791.
12. See bibliography references ...]
psychiatric ward for the first three days after admission, so
they can adjust to being away from home. She accepted this
readily, but when I asked her to tell her son that she wouldn't
be back for three days, she just stared at him. She was so
ineffectual that site couldn't even tell him that, for fear he
might not like her. We treated him with major tranquilizers and
behavior modification, and he got a lot better. He could laugh
again, and play with other children. We recommended to the courts
that he be placed in a foster home or a boys home, rather than go
back to his schizophrenogenic mother. The last I heard, she was
suing the social work service to get him back.
Another schizophrenic patient that I evaluated at Duke
University was an eighteen-year-old girl. Her mother was
borderline schizophrenic herself, and her father was neurotic.
Her parents had used most of the above rules for developing a
schizophrenic - they were quite ineffectual, cold, and so on.
They were also ultra-charismatic, claiming, for example, to have
seen the Holy Spirit in person and to have cast out demons. The
schizophrenic girl was especially disappointed to find out I had
never spoken in tongues. Her conversation went from one subject
to another; she would break off in mid-sentence, not remembering
what she had been talking about. Her thoughts constantly went
back to sexual things, and her mood changed rapidly back and
forth from elation to tearful sadness. She seemed to think the
world revolved around her, and she had the answers for any
question. I have seen many like tier get a great deal better
after two or three weeks on the proper medications, but when I
recommended that she take medications, she refused and the mother
was too ineffectual to insist that she take them. So they never
came back, even after several telephone calls asking them to.
One of the saddest things in psychiatry is knowing you could
help someone, then having them refuse your help. Solomon, the
wisest human counsellor, said, "if you rebuke a mocker, you will
only get a smart retort; yes, he will snarl at you. So don't
bother with him; he will only hate you for trying to help him.
But a wise man, when rebuked [or given insights], will love you
all the more. Teach a wise man, and he will be the wiser; teach a
good man, and he will learn more" (Prov. 9:7-9, LB). And so in my
psychiatric practice, I share with my patients observations and
insights which are sometimes painful (rebukes). What they do with
those insights is their responsibility. I can only hope and pray
that they will use them to change their behavior and improve
their mental and spiritual condition.
F. How to develop an obsessive child.
"Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-II),
obsessive-compulsive personality is the diagnosis for individuals
who are "excessively rigid, over-inhibited, over conscientious,
over-dutiful, and unable to relax easily.13 If this progresses to
a neurosis, the condition is characterized by
the persistent intrusion of unwanted thoughts, urges, or
actions that the patient is unable to stop. The thoughts may
consist of single words or ideas, ruminations, or trains of
thought often perceived by the patient as nonsensical. The
actions vary from simple movements to complex rituals such
as repeated hand-washing. Anxiety and distress are often
present either if the patient is prevented from completing
his compulsive ritual or if he is concerned about being
unable to control it himself.14
Here's how to produce an obsessive child:
1. Talk all the time, but don't be very active physically, and
never listen to what your child has to say.
2. Expect perfect etiquette and manners from your child from his
clay of birth on. Don't tolerate any mistakes.
3. Be an introvert. Don't let him see you interacting in a
healthy manner with other human beings.
4. Be very critical of the people around you-this includes your
minister, your neighbors, your husband, and, most importantly,
your child.
5. Be a real snob.
6. Be sure to domineer your husband as well as your children.
This is very important.
7. Emphasize instrumental morality as a way of being superior to
other children, or of getting to heaven.
[13. Manual of Mental Disorders,p.43.
14. Ibid., p.40.]
8. Don't make any serious commitments to God yourself, and be
critical of the religious convictions of your child's
grandparents.
9. Tell your child that his father is the boss, but in reality,
allow your husband to be nothing but a figurehead.
10. Expect your child to be completely toilet-trained by the time
he is twelve months old. Then, when he grows older, he can get
even with you by being constipated much of the time.
11. Be a real miser with your money. Always save for the future,
and don't let that future ever come.
12. Emphasize the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the
law. Make your rules quite rigid, and never allow any exceptions.
13. Practice the Victorian ethic. Shame your child for being a
sexual being.15
Research has shown that these are the kinds of principles
the parents of obsessive children follow. This is quite
consistent with my own findings. Actually, a degree of
obsessiveness can be very beneficial in life. It can help a
person to be hard-working, conscientious, and genuinely moral.
Almost all of the physicians and medical students that 7 have
given personality tests to have several obsessive-compulsive
traits. If they weren't organized and industrious, they would
never make it through the grinding demands of medical school and
private practice. Not all doctors have the nice hours and
independent wealth of Marcus Welby, M.D. Many seminary students
and ministers are quite obsessive - compulsive also. This can
help them to accomplish great tasks for God, provided they also
know how to relax and enjoy life at the same time. I'm sure the
Apostle Paul had some healthy obsessive-compulsive tendencies,
and lie may have had to overcome some unhealthy ones. But
obsessive-compulsiveness can get out of hand if we, as parents,
use the thirteen rules listed above. I've seen obsessive children
who literally hate themselves for not being perfect, even though
most of them are superior in intelligence and in many other ways.
If they go to a
[15. Paul L. Adams, "Family Characteristic, of Obsessive
Children." See also bibliography references 176, 188, 338.]
Christian party and start having a little fun, they feel guilty.
They think its not right to have fun, especially if they could be
at home in their room doing their homework over for the third
time!
G. How to develop an accident-prone child.
1. Be somewhat neurotic and marry a neurotic husband.
2. Get into serious hassles with your husband, especially over
your child. That way the child can blame himself and react to
family stresses by hurting himself to relieve his guilt.
3. Ignore your child, especially when he shows confidence or good
character traits. That way, tie will be noticed only when he gets
hurt again.
4. It will help if you and your husband are both gone most of the
time. Just leave him at home with his older brothers and sisters.
Be too tired and busy to notice him when you do get home, that
is, if he's not in bed already.
5. Overreact with extreme sympathy when he does get a scrape or a
bruise, since you feel guilty for ignoring him the rest of the
time.16
The average age when accident-prone children are seen by a
psychiatrist is about seven or eight. Usually they have been
accident-prone for several years. The tendency appears to be
slightly more common in girls than in boys, and in the youngest
child of the family. The accident proneness frequently goes away
when the psychiatrist finishes treating the child's parents.
H. How to develop an obese child and anorexic teenager.
This syndrome may sound strange to many of you. It's known
as anorexia nervosa, and used to be quite rare. But there has
been a fivefold increase in the incidence of anorexia nervosa in
the past generation.17 Hundreds of research studies have been
done on anorexia, but none have been conclusive about the reason
for the
[16. Peter Husband and Pat E. Hinton, "Families of Children with
Repeated Accidents."
17. "Epidemiology of Anorexia Nervosa," p.556; also G. F. M.
Russell, "Clinical and Endocrine Features of Anorexia Nervosa;"
p.40.]
dramatic rise in the incidence of this disease in the past
generation. The mothers of anorexics are frequently women of
achievement or career women, frustrated in their aspirations,'-
so I think that there is a good chance that some of the
philosophies of the Women's Liberation Movement and the rapidly
changing roles of women in our society may be partially
responsible.
Over 95 percent of the adolescents who develop anorexia
nervosa are females, frequently overly dependent females with
pent-up hostilities toward their parents.'- Most anorexics were
somewhat obese in childhood, are above average in intelligence,
are from the upper socio-economic class, and are the daughters of
professional parents, many of whom are in the nurturing
professions.-" They frequently have fears about growing up, and
especially about becoming a woman. Many have sexual guilt,
sometimes for unfounded reasons.21 They frequently get along
quite well until they start changing from a little girl into a
young woman. Then, all of a sudden, they develop a phobia of
food, especially fattening foods. Their menstrual cycles cease.22
At first, the parents think their daughter is on a typical
teenage diet-until she keeps on losing, and losing, and losing.
About 15 percent of anorexics become increasingly emaciated until
they die of starvation and its effects.23 I had one
twenty-two-year-old anorexic who got down to thirty-eight pounds.
She didn't improve very much, and I assume that she has probably
died in the past few years. On the other hand, one of my best
patients was a sixteen-year-old girl who got down to sixty. six
pounds, responded quite well to psychotherapy and spiritual
encouragement, recovered completely, and has done excellently
ever since. She still sends me occasional postcards. Many
anorexics recover, but continue to have sexual maladjustments and
difficulty becoming intimate with a man.
The results of some research studies (e.g., abnormal EEG's)
[18. Hilda Bruch, "Family Transactions in Eating Disorders."
19. Ibid.
20. Arthur H. Crisp, "Premorbid Factors in Adult Disorders of
Weight, with Particular Reference m Primary Anorexia Nervosa."
21. Arthur H. Crisp, "Reported Birth Weight and Growth Rates in a
Group of Patients with Primary Anorexia Nervosa (Weight Phobia)."
22. See bibliography references...
See bibliography references...]
indicate a genetic predisposition for this disease?24 The parents
of anorexics are quite similar to the parents of children who
become obese and simply stay obese. Perhaps the genetic
predisposition may make the difference. Anyway, the rules I am
about to give are based on general trends that have been observed
in the families of both obese children and anorexic children.
1. Start out by using most of the rules used by the drug addicts'
mothers, so you can create a super-dependent child. (Note: The
thirty-eight-pound patient I told you about was so dependent upon
her mother that she used her emaciated condition to manipulate
her mother into carrying her around like a baby wherever she
wanted to go. The mother did this willingly in spite of our
warnings that it was very detrimental to her daughter's
condition.)
2. Be a frustrated women's libber.
8. Give your children lots of food instead of lots of love.
4. Fathers should be passive in the home, intelligent, and
financially successful, preferably teachers or doctors or members
of some other nurturing profession.25
5. Mothers should be overweight and neurotically overprotective.
They should also wear the pants in the family.26
6. Don't show much respect for your husband.27
7. Be dominant, restrictive, and oversolicitous. Also be sure
your family lives near your own mother, so she can dominate your
life a little too.28
8. Marry an obsessive-compulsive, Victorian husband who doesn't
[24. William P. Wilson, ed., Applications of
Electroencephalography in Psychiatry, p.268. See also
bibliography references ...
25. See bibliography references ...
26. Ibid.
27. Bruch, "Eating Disorders."
28. Patricia Wold, "Family Structure in Three Cases of Anorexia
Nervosa: The Role of the Father."]
like women much because his mother bossed him around quite a
bit.29
9. Direct your husband's pent-up hostility toward your daughter,
so he will be more accepting of you.30
One of the world's leading authorities on anorexia. and
obesity problems is Dr. Hilda Bruch, a prominent woman physician.
In her research studies (several of which are listed in my
bibliography) she notes that women who feel a conscious or
unconscious rejection toward their children frequently compensate
for it by excessive feeding and overprotective measures. Food
thus has an exaggerated emotional value and becomes a
love-substitute. She also notes that these mothers are frequently
frustrated career women who don't respect their husbands.31
I would like to divert our attention here briefly to some of
the research findings, and some of my own personal opinions, on
the Women's Liberation Movement. First of all, I think many of
the complaints of the Women's Libbers are quite legitimate. One
of our best friends is a female lab technician who gets a couple
hundred a month less than male lab technicians with the same
amount of training and experience. I don't think that's right.
And I personally believe that God calls many women to make great
contributions to society through professional careers. However, I
really get angry when I hear Women's Libbers criticize and
downgrade other women for choosing to be housewives or for
submitting to their husbands' authority. I think being a
housewife is a calling from God that is just as worthwhile as any
other calling, and frequently a lot more difficult. Take John
Wesley's mother, for instance. He was the fifteenth of nineteen
children, and his mother didn't have the modern conveniences
American mothers have today. And yet, on top of all her other
chores, she managed to spend at least one hour each week with
each child individually for devotions. No wonder God was able to
use John and Charles Wesley to bring about a revival that reached
around the world. Look at the godly mother they had. This story
has been repeated over and over again
[29. Ibid.
30. Ibid. For an award-winning article an the treatment of
anorexia nervosa, see Ronald Liebman, et a., "An Integrated
Treatment Program for Anorexia Nervosa."
31. Bruch, "Eating Disorders."]
in history, but the books are written about the great sons, and
their great mothers are frequently neglected. I thank God over
and over for the godly mother I had and still have. I also thank
Him for the elderly unmarried woman in my home church who prayed
for me in her closet every day when I was in high school. What an
impact that had on my life! ....
Many people are surprised to find out that the ideal godly
woman described in Proverbs 31 had servant girls help her at home
so she could have time to invest in a little real estate (v.6),
do a little farming (v.16), and make girdles to sell commercially
(v.24). But she also "watches carefully all that goes on
throughout her household, and is never lazy" (v.27). Moreover,
she is a great help to her husband and richly satisfies his needs
(vv.11-12).
Edith Schaeffer, the wife of author Francis Schaeffer, has
written an excellent book for women, entitled "Hidden Art," in
which she shows numerous ways in which godly women can be
creative in the home, making good use of their God-given talents.
She says that much of the impetus for the Women's Lib movement
comes from frustrated housewives who aren't expressing their
creativity in the home. I wish every Christian woman would read
this book.
I think the Women's Libbers have some legitimate complaints,
but I am also aware of some morally corrupt trends within the
movement, such as the call by some to make war against God's Word
and God Himself. As a psychiatrist, I don't like their
denunciation of male authority in the home, since the vast
majority of neurotics I see come from homes that are dominated by
women. Janet Zollinger Giele, of Radcliffe Institute in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently published an article in which
she stated that our young people "have been steeped in the new
morality, the new psychology, the experience of mechanization and
the interchangeability of personnel. It took only a small step to
extend these principles to sex roles."32 She states that "recent
demographic trends indicate a shift in the parental and marital
roles of both men and women.... The nature of the family is being
transformed as the worlds of women and men increasingly
overlap."33 This is
[32. Janet Zollinger Giele, "Changes in the Modern Family: Their
Impact on Sea Roles," p.757.
33. Ibid.]
especially true of women born after the great depression. 1 hope
God won't have to bring us through another depression to bring us
to our senses. Karl Marx taught that "the patriarchal family must
go because it is the chief institution in contemporary society
that oppresses and enslaves women."34 Dr.Henry Greenbaum is a
psychiatrist and Freudian analyst who is pro-Women's Lib in
general. But even Dr. Greenbaum states that the Women's Lib
movement is attacking marriage, family, and parenthood, which are
essential human needs. He states that these trends will "lower
the quality of life."35 He also makes the rather astute
observation that "whatever form our evolving institutions do take
will depend to a great extent on our moral value systems and the
quality of people."36
Research studies show that over 40 percent of American
mothers with children eighteen years of age or under are
presently employed.37 These studies indicate that maternal
employment is some times beneficial and sometimes harmful to the
family, depending on various circumstances. Maternal employment
was found to be generally harmful if the mother's job lowered her
self-esteem, if she was working against the wishes of other
family members, or if her children had to be kept during the day
in inadequate facilities.38
I. How to develop an enuretic (bedwetting) or encopretic
(soiling) child.
Occasional bedwetting and soiling are quite normal in young
children. Research studies show us that, in the case of
bedwetting, 88 percent of children quit by about four and
one-half years of age, 93 percent by age seven and one-half, and
98 percent by age seventeen. It may surprise you to find out that
from 0.5 to 2 percent of our American servicemen continue to wet
their beds occasionally.40 It has been estimated that about 10
percent of bed
[34. Alive S.Rossi, "Family Development in a Changing World,"
p. 1057.
35. Henry Greenbaum, "Marriage, Family and Parenthood."
36. Ibid.
87 Mary C. Howell, "Employed Mothers and Their Families."
38. Ibid.
83. Alfred M. Freedman and Harold I. Kaplan, eds., Comprehensive
Textbook of Psychiatry, p.1880.
40. Ibid.]
wetting in late childhood is organic, meaning the child may have
a small bladder or some other physical difficulty. If this is the
case, teaching him to hold in his urine longer can frequently
serve to stretch his bladder and eliminate bedwetting. Ninety
percent of bedwetting in children five years or older, however,
is felt to be psychologically caused, usually an expression of
hostility toward one or both of his parents. So if you, as
parents, stay calm and matter-of-fact, and have the child clean
and change his own wet bed without scolding him, you'll be doing
the right thing. If he's doing it to express hostility and to get
you upset, or to give you extra work to do, this reaction on your
part will take all the fort out of it-especially since lie has to
clean his own bed. And if in fact he does have a small bladder,
you're still doing the right thing because you're not scolding
him, and cleaning up his bed himself will help him to feel more
responsible and independent, and less guilty. If it continues to
be a problem, there are medications, like low doses of Tofranil,
that will usually eliminate the problem within a week or two.
Then the medications can be stopped a month or two later to see
if they are still needed:41
Occasional soiling is also quite common in young children,
but after age five or so, it is generally considered more serious
psychiatrically than bedwetting is. It can also be treated with
low doses of prescription psychiatric medications, but family
counselling is generally recommended as well.
Here are some general rules for increasing the likelihood of
producing an enuretic or encopretic child of the psychological
variety:
1. Mothers should be divorced or married to husbands who are
almost always gone. (Note: In one study of fourteen encopretic
children, for instance, eight lived with a divorced mother and
the other six had fathers who were gone all [e.g., overseas
military assignments] or most of the time [e.g., two jobs].)42
2. Be ambivalent toward motherhood (Women's Libbers again).
[41. Paul M. Bindelglas, et a., "Medical and Psychosocial Factors
in Enuretic Children Treated with Imipramine Hydrochloride."
42. Jule, C. Bemporad, et a., "Characteristics of Emopretic
Patients and Their Families."]
3. Show the rejection you feel for your child by being
domineering, over-intruding, and over-protective.
4. Openly criticize your husband for being stupid, socially
inept, and gone all the time.
5. Isolate your feelings and show a real lack of warmth.
6. Nag a lot.
7. Be preoccupied with your child's intestinal functions.
8. Mother and father should argue openly and frequently about how
to raise the child.
9. If and when the fathers are home, they should be weak and
ineffectual.
10. It will help if you force toilet-training on your child
before he is neurologically ready for it. (Note: Children vary in
neurological readiness for toilet-training anywhere from eighteen
months to four years of age, with the average being about two and
one-half years of age.)43
I have treated a number of enuretics and encopretics, but
one ten-year-old boy especially sticks out in my mind. He had a
divorced, borderline schizophrenic mother who was cold and inef-
fectual and felt strong rejection toward the boy. His mother
would wrap up his stools to show the doctor. She had delusions
about their being as big as horse manure and constantly plugging
up her sewer system. We hospitalized the boy and he did very well
in the child psychiatry unit. Only one time did he put a stool on
the floor, and that was out of anger at me for not letting him
have his own way about something. When I suggested to the mother
that her son might do better at a Christian home for boys, she
jumped at the chance to get him out of her home, but pretended
that she didn't want to lose him. He did a lot of growing up at
that new home, where he felt accepted and loved. In the meantime,
I treated the mother with major tranquilizers and arranged for a
female therapist to see her regularly, in hopes that in a year or
two mother and son might both be ready to live together again,
but this time without psychologically damaging the boy for life.
[43. Ibid. See also Jean Marie Hoag, et a., "The Encopretic Child
and His Family."]
J. How to develop a hyperkinetic (hyperactive) child.
Before giving you some easy steps to follow, I want to say a
few words about hyperactive children. I have evaluated and
treated a large number of them. During the initial evaluation, I
talk to the child, watch him awhile, watch him interact with his
parents through a one-way mirror, and do an extensive
neurological exam. Here is what I usually find, and the
literature will bear me out. The most common finding is that the
boy-and I say boy because about nine out of ten hyperactive
children are boys-isn't really hyperactive at all. He's just
wired at a high normal level of activity. The higher androgen
level in boys makes them generally more active than girls. Many
of these parents had a girl first and, surprised to find out how
active their boy is, just want to know if this is normal.
During the evaluation I also ask the parents quite a few
questions about their manner of discipline in the home. The
mothers, and sometimes even the fathers, are simply unwilling to
give their child a good healthy spanking when he gets out of
hand. These mothers are usually quite ineffectual. They have weak
egos and are so selfish in wanting the child to like them that
they are unwilling to spank him, even when they know. in their
hearts that it would be best for him. So in effect the child has
no real limits. But children can't stand to be without limits.
Children with no limits will be constantly misbehaving and
running around in order to get limits put on them. When limits
are established, children will try these limits. If the parents
reinforce these limits with good solid discipline, the children
will quit testing, sit back, and relax. It gives them real
security. And they know their parents care about them enough to
set limits. In my opinion, the lack of physical discipline and
limit-setting in Sweden is the reason Sweden has the world's
highest teenage suicide rate. Limits bring real security.
There's another group of hyperkinetic children, perhaps 10
to 20 percent of the so-called hyperkinetics that I evaluate.
This group stands out because they have some minor abnormalities
on their neurological exam. Their intelligence is normal or
frequently even better than normal, but in comparison with other
children their age they are somewhat clumsy with fine finger
movements. They have more trouble skipping, consistently get
their letters backward when writing, and do a number of other
things that mark them as having a minor neurological problem.
They have what we call late maturation of the nervous system.
I'll explain it briefly. During the first six years of life or
so, a fatty sheath is being formed around a child's nerve cells.
This is similar to the insulation we put around electrical wires
and is what I mean by neurological maturation. Pathologists who
have studied electron-microscope slides of the brains of children
who have died have noted that this maturation is completed
earlier in girls than in boys -about age five or six in girls,
and about age six or seven in boys. That's why neurologically
girls are more ready for school at age six than most boys. In
some boys, and in a few girls, this neurological maturation does
not become complete until the age of twelve or thirteen.
Sometimes it never does. Children with late maturation have a
number of neurological problems which generally clear up when
maturation is complete. They are more rest. less and definitely
hyperactive. Some have specific learning difficulties, especially
in reading and writing. These difficulties also frequently clear
up at a later age. But in the meantime these children are often
misunderstood. They are labelled as having behavior problems or
as being retarded (even though they have normal intelligence),
and as a result they generally develop a poor self-concept.
Over 90 percent of these children can be treated medically
with dramatic results. I have had a number of them come into my
office, run around the room, spin around in my chair, even climb
up drapes. I give them a low dose of Ritalin, and fifteen or
twenty minutes later they're sitting in a chair answering
questions with ,.yes sir." They calmly go to the testing room
next door and do well on I.Q. tests. They go home and behave;
when they go to school, they can sit still and concentrate
better, and their grades usually come up. They're a joy to treat
because their parents think I'm a miracle-worker. Of course, it
is just the medicine affecting their nervous system to work as
though it were myelinated already. Every six months or so, we
stop the medications for about a week to see if the child still
needs them. When maturation is complete, he will be as calm off
medication as he is on medication, so we leave him off it from
then on. Actually, Ritalin is a type of amphetamine. Amphetamines
speed up adults, making them more active and nervous. They are
also habit-forming. That's why I never prescribe amphetamines for
adults. But I give hyperkinetic children very low doses. I've
never seen a child become addicted to Ritalin, although I'm sure
its possible. Nor have I ever seen adverse reactions to stopping
it all at once. If Ritalin doesn't work, there are several other
medications which probably will. Some researchers say Ritalin
works only in children with late neuronal maturation, but I
disagree. I've given it to a number of hyperactive children who
had no neurological abnormalities and came from homes that lacked
discipline. It worked fine for most of them too. I would have
therapy sessions with the parents for several weeks, get them
into some parent-training classes on how to discipline, and take
the children off Ritalin when the parents were finally ready to
give discipline and love a real try. If they did, the children
got along fine without any medication. Many parents think their
child has hyperkinetic syndrome secondary to late neuronal
maturation when actually all the child has is a lack of limits.
And the opposite is true sometimes too. I know of some parents
who kept beating their child excessively to get him to quiet
down, when in reality he had this neurological syndrome.
Most family doctors know very little about this syndrome or
how to treat it, so if you suspect it in one of your own
children, or a neighbor's child, I would recommend that the child
be seen by a child psychiatrist or by trained people at a child
study center. It really wouldn't matter, in all probability,
whether the child psychiatrist were a Christian or not to
evaluate something like this. Listed here are a few easy steps to
follow if you want to produce hyperkinesis (hyperactivity) in
your normal child.
1. Don't spank him when he needs it.
2. Nag at him occasionally, but don't ever force him to stay
within his limits-that is, if there are any limits.
3. It will help if you are divorced, or if your husband is gone
much of the time.
There! These three easy rules should be enough to do the
trick in your son or daughter!44
[44. Roscoe A. Dykman, et a., "Experimental Approaches to the
Study of Minimal Brain Dysfunction: A Follow-up Study." See also
John E. Peters, et a., "Physicians' Handbook: Screening for
MBD."]
.....................
To be continued with "Five Factors Found in Mentally Healthy
Families"
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