A Child's Reactions to Parents' Problems
Joseph L. Woolston MD1
1 Associate ClinicalProfessor of Child Psychiatry, Yale University, Child Study Center, PO Box 3333, New Haven, CT 06510
In the current world of high technology and glorification of "hard" science, the study of a child's reactions to his parents' problems may seem a bit archaic or sentimental. One might wonder what new information could have been learned in the past several decades about these age-old human problems for which common sense, rather than new data, might seem to serve as the best guide. However, the more rigorous applications of scientific methods of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, epidemiology, cybernetics, and psychology have shed new light on this age-old problem. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of addressing the issue of a child's reaction to his parents' problems is the bewildering diversity of possible responses. To propose that one kind of parental problem gives rise to one kind of reaction in a child obviously in nonsense. Although there seem to be some reactions that are more likely to occur in response to some specific parental problems, children can and do respond with the entire repertoire of emotional and behavioral reactions that are available to them as human beings.
The following case illustrates the complexity and diversity of a child's reactions to his parents' problems.
DG was an 8-year-old boy who was referred for a psychiatric evaluation by his pediatrician because of concerns about DG'S poor attention span, excessive activity, and provocative behaviour.
