Saturday 9 July 2011

Early childhood experiences and their possible role in the creation of childhood disorders such as ADHD and so on

I wrote briefly yesterday about the hugely dysfunctional families with which I worked some years ago. The children of these families all had various problems and these were caused, or at the very least greatly exacerbated, by the way that they were raised. It was not until I had been thinking about the common factors in these families that I noticed an eerie similarity to the way that some home educators recommend that children be treated in childhood.

A lot of the things which afflict children, ranging from dyslexia to ADHD, are not random bolts from the blue. These syndromes are all too often associated with common factors in early childhood. Take ADHD, for example. The impulsiveness, sleep disturbances and other features of attention deficit are often noted in children who have no sort of consistent parental discipline in their lives. It is also connected with kids who do not have regular and age appropriate bedtimes. In other words, if a child’s wishes are never thwarted and he is allowed to do what he likes; he is far more likely to grow up displaying low levels of ability to control his behaviour and more liable to grow angry if his immediate wishes are frustrated. If his internal body clock has not been properly set by regular bedtimes, then he might end up being frantically active at midnight and very sleepy during school the next day. This is one example; there are many others. The way that parents raise their children has an impact upon the type of disorders with which they later present. A chaotic and disorganised lifestyle is often coupled with problems like ADHD.

Of course the trend these days is to pretend that children’s problems are like illnesses which have struck for no apparent reason; certainly nothing to do with parenting. Anybody who works with kids knows that this is nonsense. Now the sort of chaotic families with whom I worked would allow their children to stay up to all hours. This was part of their lifestyle. They would go visiting friends until one or two in the morning and took the kids with them. The result would be that the kids would not get enough sleep and their body rhythms would become screwed up. They would always be tired during the day, but wide awake at night. Even at home, the concept of ’bedtime’ was unknown. They would sit up with their parents until they fell asleep on the sofa and then be put to bed when the parents themselves went to bed, perhaps at two in the morning. Discipline was frequently non-existent. The child ate on demand, was very often allowed to do anything at all, as long as it did not irritate the parents.

It is not hard to see how this kind of lifestyle caused problems when the child began school. The kid would be unable to follow instructions and sit still for story time. Nobody had ever made him sit still quietly; of course he would have trouble starting now. He would fall asleep during lessons and be unable to obey simple requests. If he couldn’t get his way, he would scream and become aggressive. Many of these kids were diagnosed with ADHD as a consequence.

The treatment to which these children were subjected had no underlying ideological rationale. Their parents simply carried on their own lives and left the children to their own devices; expecting them to fit in with the parents’ lives. It is odd though how similar themes emerge in some home educated children. Some home educating parents refuse to enforce a bedtime. They allow their children to decide what they should do, when and what they should eat. There is minimal or wholly non-existent discipline and structure. One cannot help but wonder whether the high number of home educated children with special educational needs of the ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia type could be a by-product of certain kinds of parenting. In other words, do they end up being home educated because certain syndromes strike their children at random or are the disorders themselves precipitated by the style of upbringing? I shall explore this thesis further over the next few days.

43 comments:

  1. Thank God for Ritalin.

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  2. The Christian HS don't have that problem with their children, they just break out the lengths of plastic pipe and drag 'em to the woodshed for a bit of 'training'.

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  3. Or, of course, the family could have chaotic lives because the child (or possibly the parent) has a medical condition that interferes with circadian rhythms.

    Correlation does not imply causation.

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  4. Or the nipper is a chip off the old block.

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  5. Or maybe it's because of their anticipation of the impending Apocalypse.
    They can't contain their exitement waiting to ascend during The Rapture.

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  6. When 'exploring this thesis further', could I please ask you to remember the feelings of the parents who DO have set routines, who sweat blood to make things as stable as possible and who still all too often have to face comments like this from alleged and often self-appointed experts who have cherished theories but little or no practical evidence. Please also remember that many of these parents did not have the luxury of choosing home education in the way that you did and are thoroughly fed up with the 'it's all your lousy parenting' theory of diagnosis.

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  7. Simon wrote,
    "One cannot help but wonder whether the high number of home educated children with special educational needs of the ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia type could be a by-product of certain kinds of parenting."

    Or maybe the type of parenting ultimately adopted in a family is a way to cope with how a child already is? In our case, we chose autonomy because it seemed like the most efficient and moral way to raise our children and our children have none of the issues you mention. However, I can imagine that if a child had this type of issue, a family might adopt an autonomous, supportive approach as a coping strategy.

    Much as parents of school phobics have the choice of the 'professional' approach, getting the child back into school as quickly as possible, or the HE approach, parents of children with problems can take the professional approach (whatever that is depending on the 'condition') or they can adapt their parenting style to accommodate the behaviour.

    I would also add that an autonomous parent would discuss the pros and cons of issues like bedtimes, teeth brushing and healthy diets with their children. They wouldn't just leave them to sink or swim. It's amazing how logical children can be when given information and a free choice. It's also surprising how much works out fine (and often better than the alternative in hindsight) when they make a choice that the parent might have objected to if they were not autonomous!

    Here's a link to an interesting TCS article about a survey they carried out in 1997. The asked parents which things a child must do out of a list of 16. The results were interesting and suggest that the reasons for coercing children are arbitrary, depending on the individual parent's beliefs rather than any objective 'truth'.

    http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/the_tcs_survey_1997

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  8. "could I please ask you to remember the feelings of the parents who DO have set routines, who sweat blood to make things as stable as possible"

    An interesting comment, anonymous. So would you say that, in your experience, the issue comes first, followed by the choice of the most effective parenting style to cope with the issue? I have known some children who thrive on an organised routine and really struggle with choice or change and can imagine that if one of our children had been like this our parenting style would have been very different.

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  9. Well, as a parent witha child with autism, and who has a close friend with a child with ADD, I am not convinced by Simon's theory. Some children are just different, and it is impossible to link the differences with parental behaviour. Both my friend's family and mine lead pretty ordered lives, - by any definition there is little autonomy and plenty of structure in both our home education but in the rest of life too - set bed times and individual chores for the children etc. The children concerned are not the first born either, but middle children. The structure in the families has been there from the beginning not a response to the issues with one child, and the other children in the families are "normal"

    What is present in both families is a genetic link - I have a BIL with what would definitely be considered Aspergers, and the father of my friend's child has some kind of ASD/ADHD.

    Furthermore, although I do agree that many of the children who do have some sort of tendency towards ADHD ect do have chaotic family lives (well the one you see on TV anyway), it often appears that the behaviour is a direct result of the chaotic upbringing and also the parents are busy searching for a confirmation of "diagnosis" to almost excuse the behaviour. That is along way though from saying that all behaviour type disorders are caused by the chaos!

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  10. "it often appears that the behaviour is a direct result of the chaotic upbringing and also the parents are busy searching for a confirmation of "diagnosis" to almost excuse the behaviour."

    I wonder if any research has been carried out that finds a link between chaotic lifestyles and diagnosed ADHD as opposed to behaviour that has similarities to ADHD?

    I do think there is a big difference between a supportive, caring, autonomous lifestyle and the chaotic lifestyles that are often the result of a failure to cope adequately with day-to-day life and often include an element of neglect which is what you and Simon appear to be describing.

    I know my other half was raised in a household that did not have set bedtimes (I did) and were given free choice in diet (I wasn't), etc, but it was also a loving, caring household and this love seemed to make the children very protective and caring towards their parents. They would not have misbehaved seriously because this would have upset their parents. I can imagine that if the parents had been neglectful along with their bedtime/diet attitudes, the children would not have felt this way and their behaviour would have been different.

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  11. 'Correlation does not imply causation.'

    Very true. Fifty years ago, things like schizophrenia, autism and bad behaviour in children were thought to have been 'caused' by parents. We remember Kanner's 'refrigerator mother', for instance as a cause of autism. Now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction, with many of these things supposedly being 'caused' by genes or other factors beyond the parents' control. Probably, it is a combination of the two. That is to say a kid might have a disposition towards certain things, which environment and upbringing can bring out or suppress. Heller's Syndrome, very similar to early onset autism, is like schizophrenia apparently triggered by stressful life events. None of these things are completely down to environment, nor are they wholly caused by genetic factors.
    Simon.

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  12. "The way that parents raise their children has an impact upon the type of disorders with which they later present."

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

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  13. 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.'

    About which Philip Larkin was undeniably right! It is however worth remembering that the influence of parents can extend to a little more than fucking up their children; it can also be benignant and positive.

    Simon.

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  14. I think there is a huge difference between a home in which a child has a great deal of freedom in terms of what they do but is growing up within a framework of attentive care and respect and one in which the child has all those freedoms *because* there is a *lack* of attentive care and respect.

    I don't know enough about ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia to make any claims about the causes of those things. I'm sure there's been plenty written about it though. And we have parents here with expertise because of their own family situations. I don't claim that your experiences haven't given you some insight, Simon, but, after all, you weren't living in the families you speak about, were you?

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  15. 'The Christian HS don't have that problem with their children, they just break out the lengths of plastic pipe and drag 'em to the woodshed for a bit of 'training'.'

    I'm a Christian and I was a home educator until my children grew up. I never once used physical chastisement. I'm sorry to spoil your News Of The World Style stereotyping.

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  16. Ah, ye olde Nature vs. Nurture debate.

    Simon, a few years ago I was taking a graduate course in child development and I did my major paper on AD/HD. When I read through the research, it was very clear that children with AD/HD occur in any family, regardless of parenting style. In fact, there have been several studies that have shown that AD/HD is not caused by parenting at all. However, what you say about the issue being exacerbated by parenting style could be true. What the research has found children experiencing highly punitive (especially physical punishment) and critical parenting styles, where the child's attachment to the parent is damaged, are more likely to develop secondary behavioural disorders: Oppositional Defiant Disorder and, the next step, Conduct Disorder. (Most of these studies were done in Britain, which I found to be interesting.)

    Children who come from a home that offers gentle and consistent guidance are more likely to learn to manage their AD/HD symptoms without developing these secondary (and very serious as both diagnoses have a close relationship to future criminality) issues.

    True dyslexia is a brain-based, developmental disorder. There are children who are "wired" as later readers who develop an adverse reaction to reading if pushed to read too young and have trouble learning to read as a result. However, this isn't dyslexia (it's psychological) and is the result of too rigid parental or teacher expectations. But pervasive dyslexia is an ongoing, neurological issue. There has been lots of recent brain-based research that has proven this to be true. (See the book Proust and the Squid.)

    Permissive parenting doesn't lead to the issues you've spoken of. The children may run wild, but that's not AD/HD or any other disorder. And lots of wild children have grown up to be responsible young adults and adults. Also, even in the "radical unschooling" crowd, I've met very few children who weren't just as sweet and well-behaved as their more traditionally parented peers -- there is the odd exception, as there is the odd exception in traditionally parented groups. Children, with some maturity under their belts, tend to treat others how they've been treated. Again, there are studies that have shown that to be the case.

    Re: "In other words, do they end up being home educated because certain syndromes strike their children at random or are the disorders themselves precipitated by the style of upbringing?"... sometimes home education is a "chicken and egg" issue. I ran the special education program for an online school in Canada for 5 years (where the kids learned completely at home with government oversight... which is considered "school", not home education). The Special Ed program doubled each year as more and more parents found out about the option and pulled their children from school because their kids' needs simply weren't being met. Some parents can just tell that school won't work for their child and thus begin to explore their other options. Or they start in school and after weekly meetings with the principal or headmaster, decide enough is enough. And good for them for doing the best thing for their child.

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  17. "There are children who are "wired" as later readers who develop an adverse reaction to reading if pushed to read too young and have trouble learning to read as a result."

    Thanks anonymous, for a very interesting comment. As the parent of both late and early readers I'd be very interested in suggested search terms or details of research into the late reading issue. I have access to academic libraries so should hopefully be able to view any papers in full.

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  18. Too much wine during the gestation period.

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  19. Oh...and extended breastfeeding.

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  20. "Too much wine during the gestation period."

    As a cause of late reading? LOL, not in our case, I'm virtually a teetotaller. I've probably drunk a handful of drinks in my life and I don't think I actually managed to finished any of them. Can't see the attraction myself.

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  21. "Oh...and extended breastfeeding."

    It could have been that, but that wouldn't explain the early reader...

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  22. Them 'herbal' Dutch cigarettes would...

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  23. What's the weather like in Birmingham?

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  24. Curiouser and Curiouser...

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  25. Jane, the research I'm talking about has to do with "true" dyslexia being a neurological issue vs. a behavioural. Unfortunately, with kids who are late readers, there isn't a lot (if any) research about them EXCEPT that many of them can read fine as adults. What I've noticed is that once they reach a certain point in their cognitive development, they just take off -- from not reading one day, to literally reading full length novels in a few weeks' time (11, 12, and 13 year olds). If a child is still struggling at 14, then I suspect they may have true dyslexia. Unfortunately, all my "evidence" is anecdotal.. Doing a review of the relevant literature would be a very interesting thing, indeed! But I'd be surprised if you found anything.

    The problem with most research about reading is that it is done in the context of school, so natural (i.e. without an externally imposed timeline) reading development cannot occur. It would be most interesting if a researcher did a study within the autonomous home education population to see how reading development differs from children in a structured school environment.

    If you haven't read Frank Smith's books, I urge you to do so (and you may find references to relevant studies in his books): The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Reading Without Nonsense, and Reading FAQ. Frank Smith is a psycholinguist who received his PhD at Harvard. I love his work.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Smith_(psycholinguist)

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  26. Im glad I didnt see this until now because I would have had all day to be really cross about your implications in this post.
    I have had stable routines from birth. I have consistent and firm discipline, and routines for HE too. My children have grown up with (stable to the 1/2hr) bed times, meal times, 'school' times and playtimes, yet three of them have Autistic Spectrum needs.
    I did not cause these needs. I know this because I saw many professionals who tried to blame my, my husband, our housing, my childrens friends- the list is endless- until in the end one professional conceded that the cause was purely within the children not the circumstances. Some children, for whatever reason...genetics maybe... are just born this way.
    The only thing I can really tell you about my children is that their conditions improved with their age and maturity. With it came their ability to adapt better, handle their frustrations more appropriately, understand the world is not at their 'beck and call' and accept that life isnt fair.

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  27. Jane said 'An interesting comment, anonymous. So would you say that, in your experience, the issue comes first, followed by the choice of the most effective parenting style to cope with the issue? I have known some children who thrive on an organised routine and really struggle with choice or change and can imagine that if one of our children had been like this our parenting style would have been very different.'

    Yes, definitely to the parenting style evolving to meet the needs of the child. Ours are structured in schooling and life because it suits them best, and I get very fed up with people assuming children's behaviour is due to lifestyle and implied failings on parent's part, especially when that person works for a charity that is supposed to be helping families and should really know better than to generalise.

    Simon touched a nerve for me, because he seemed to be insinuating that if these children and their parents only try hard enough they will be normal. (By his definition of normal, anyway.) Yeah... let's try that with diabetes and a peanut allergy too, shall we? Or shall we accept that research is showing that some peoples brains are wired differently and respond to stimuli differently. Some of these people may naturally have very different sleep and eating patterns to what we consider normal. (Which, incidentally, mine don't, but they are quite unusual enough in other ways for me to break the habits of a year or so's lurking and come out and comment.)

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  28. 'Sleep and eating patterns'...
    Circadian Rythym and Metabolism, they can be influenced and altered by lifestyle.

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