RSS
Home
How To Recognize If Your Child Is Depressed
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The first thing to know is this. Depression in children results from the relationship with the parent. That's very hard information to accept. But without recognition that how you relate to your child is the root of the problem, there is little or no possibility of improvement.
What is the problem? A child needs a parent who tunes in. Remember the old radios with a knob? You turned the knob until you found the station. Then you turned the knob back and forth across the signal until you zeroed in on the middle of the signal area. That's where the phrase "tune in" comes from. It expresses the receptive focus needed to sense your child.
When a parent does not know how to sense his or her child, the parent tries to figure things out. Emotions do not need to be figured out. Emotions need to be sensed. Only when the parent senses the child's emotional state - and the child senses that the parent is attuned - can the next step be taken.
Share the emotional state. Don't hurry. The mistake here is to try to fix something. Don't run away from an emotional state your child is sharing with you. And don't try to help the child get rid of it. Stick it out. Trust that after some time of sharing the feeling, the next step will appear.
A next step may not be needed. Simple sharing of experience makes a difference. There is a big difference between being alone in an experience and knowing someone else feels the same way.
The second thing to know is this. A parent's needs and ambitions stand in the way. A parent who fears being alone, needs the child, and can be counted on - consciously or otherwise - to sabotage the child's independent interests and desires, and prevent the child's full development.
The parent who has ambitions that the child needs to fulfill - consciously or otherwise - will not be able to know who the child really is. This parent will related, not the the real identity of the child, but to the identity the parent has assigned to the child.
The third thing to know is this. Since neither a parent who needs the child or a parent who has ambition for the child will recognize that. This is why there is a problem. This is why the child is depressed.
The fourth thing to know is this. Every parent, to some degree, needs their child. Every child feels the pressure to actualize something for the parent's benefit. Noted authority on personality, Dr. James Masterson, M.D., has pointed out that no child escapes childhood unscathed. To some degree, every child is depressed. The question is not one of depression or no depression, but the degree of depression.
The fifth thing to know is this. Most parents need to recognize that he or she lacks the training to recognize the degree of depression experienced by the child. And, parents who are mental health professionals should be smart enough to not trust their own judgement in matters so close to home.
Get ahead of the game. Get a checkup. Ask the child's pediatrician to refer you to two or three therapists who are trained and experienced in parent-child relationships. Most parents will not be able to see a problem until a crisis erupts during the teenage years. Often at that point, the game is over. The window of opportunity usually closes as puberty arrives. If your child has not reached puberty, get an emotional checkup with a professional to find out what level of anxiety and depression (the two go together) your child is secretly dealing with.
My work as a therapist has been both with children and with flight anxiety issues. As a retired airline captain and therapist, I specialize in treatment of fear of flying. When parents contact me about flight anxiety in a child, I have to tell them the good news and the bad news. The bad news is, problem is not about flying; the problem is about the relationship between you and your child. But I also give them the good news. You know about it early enough to fix it, if you are willing to bite the bullet and recognize, as Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us."
We, as parents, are the problem. We, of course, inherited it from our own parents who, in turned inherited it. The question is only whether we will or will not do the responsible thing.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
