Our nation needs a half-credit high school course in child development and parenting skills required for graduation. There are two basic reasons why such a mandatory class could benefit society: (1) When I recently taught a college course entitled “Developmental Psychopathology”, I was strongly struck by how many juvenile mental health issues (e.g., anxiety, mood, and conduct problems) have parents’ moods and disciplinary styles listed as causative factors. It’s not just that parents may contribute to the deviance and malady of their kids; it’s also that Mom and Dad have much potential to deter their progeny from the heartache and trouble of mental health and behavioral problems. And (2) parents could do more to reduce the likelihood of school shootings and gun deaths in our country. Healthier, happier, more achievement-oriented children and adolescents are less likely to harbor rage and antisocial urges. Parents who minimize and manage stress at home, and teach anger management effectively, raise more sociable and less violent kids. How could we enhance the mental health of our citizenry? It might be time to try early intervention with would-be parents. Teach them the ABCs of child-rearing in a developmental psychology course in high school.
The study of human development, including both healthy children and their myriad psychological issues, is complex. The forces of nature and nurture, genetics and environment, interact in complicated ways. Most of us assume that kids will turn out just swell, that the child-rearing that we received was good enough for us and may just as well be replicated, as well as we can recall it, with our own offspring. This article challenges that assumption. Concern is based on the alarming state of mental health, values, ethics, and sense of well-being in our country and the world. Hope lies in the science and experience of raising children in a healthy, wholesome, constructive manner using best-practice child-rearing strategies.
Mental Health Data
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 out of 7 U.S. children aged 2 to 8 years have a diagnosed mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicate that 13% of children aged 8-15 have a diagnosable mental disorder; these include ADHD, mood disorder, anxiety, and major depression. Lifetime prevalence of any mental health disorder among adolescents aged 13-18 is 46.3% (21.4% severe disorders) according to NIH. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents. In addition, personality disorders (e.g., antisocial, borderline, narcissistic) often emerge during adolescence and may adversely impact our society. Youths are responsible for more numerous (though generally less serious) acts of violence, vandalism, and illegal activity than are adults (Mash & Wolfe, 2016).
“Normal” children appear to be dwindling in number; nearly the majority of children, according to the data, have something troubling them. Causes of increasing mental health issues may include changes in our food supply, air and water pollution, variable political and personal attitudes, the technological revolution, stresses and fears, influences of the medical model and pharmaceutical industry, overzealous labeling of disorders, and various educational/societal practices. Contributing factors are many and complicated. And how about parents? We may be implicated, as well.
Parenting Challenges
We as parents may feel that we too often get blamed for what’s wrong with our children, and we may feel that parenting is a private matter; we don’t need some so-called “experts” meddling in our family affairs. However, data and conjecture about child development show that we have profound influence over how our kids are going to turn out. Rather than have our descendants, and our subsequent world, be disgruntled, rude, unhappy, worried, greedy, aggressive, troubled, and dysfunctional, let’s strive for a society of people, young and old, who enjoy life, succeed at tasks, get along with one another, and experience contentment.
How might parents be partially responsible for the rash of developmental psychopathologies? Heredity provides genetic predisposition for many of the aforementioned maladies. Children tend to follow family patterns, as well. For instance, “children of parents with depression have about 3 times the risk of having depression” (Weissman et al., 2006); lifetime prevalence of depression in mothers of depressed children is 50-75%. “Children of parents with anxiety disorders are about 5 times more likely to have anxiety disorders” (Beidel & Turner, 1997). Behavioral and mental health issues are also caused by parental discipline that is either too harsh or too lax.
Negative patterns and expectancies help problems take shape. Our society is geared to fault-finding; teachers and parents look for mistakes, blame is sought for any and all mishaps, discipline is prized and consequences are meted out liberally, while the justice system seems to assign punishment more than compassion and rehabilitation. Unjust or heavy-handed punishment can cause kids to feel and act naughty, harbor resentments, seek revenge against authority figures, and act out defiantly. Parents who use excessive corporal punishment model physical aggression as the way to defuse anger and solve problems. On the other hand, some parents nicely wish to cultivate positive self-image in their offspring by giving them free rein to regulate their own behavior, with little limit-setting; others lack the knowledge and resolve to structure and guide the lives of their kids. Such children who are raised with insufficient boundaries may desire too much, feel entitled, lack moral restraint, and ultimately feel unhappy because they can never realistically get all that they want. The seeds of unrest and delinquency are sown by either too strict or too relaxed parenting.
Child-rearing practices (e.g., teachings, reinforcements, disciplinary measures) may cause and worsen, or correct and prevent, various disorders. Parents have the power to enrich the environments and psyches of their offspring, just as they may instead add to discouragement and discontent. Fortunately, most parents would like their progeny to have better lives than they’ve had. We can get better at child-rearing if we use some guidance and evidence on which to base our strategies. Fortunately, there is a wealth of information about ways to enhance child and adolescent development.
Adult-Child Interaction
Expectations are important. Some adults tend to believe that, or behave as though, their young children have brains with full capacity for learning from experience, foreseeing troubles ahead, and reasoning logically in a cause-effect manner. They believe that youthful mistakes deserve to be punished. In truth, critical portions of the human brain (e.g., the prefrontal cortex that controls executive functions such as planning and foresight) do not develop fully until we reach our early or mid 20s. Kids are not born with well-developed senses of empathy, compassion, fairness, and impulse control; on the contrary, we begin life as uncivilized beings guided by self-interest. Children are not “little adults”; they need thoughtful guidance and discipline (which means to teach, not to punish) to help them learn right from wrong. Self-control and pro-social skills develop gradually, over time and maturation. Does this mean that adults should not bother to model and teach kids proper behavior until they are 20 years old? Certainly not. We should impart lessons to our youngsters but with measures of patience and forgiveness as they make unsteady progress, without yelling and labeling them as naughty or mentally ill for their periodic and largely unavoidable transgressions. Most kids don’t need therapy and medications; they just need repetition and reinforcement of lessons they should learn.
How else might a structured child-rearing course be beneficial? I like to compare parenting to teaching. As I grew up, I typically had one classroom teacher in elementary school, and then multiple teachers during each year of junior high school (or middle school) and high school. Many were skilled instructors and nice people; others were not very effective or likable. Likewise, in college and graduate school, I got first-hand, in-depth exposure to a variety of teaching styles. When it came time for me to teach, to think about how to structure and present a curriculum, I had a wide range of role models and experiences from which to draw. I have tried to tailor my approach to be in line with those teachers whom I have admired over the years.
When it comes to parenting, who have been my role models? My own parents. That’s about it. I got tangential exposure to the parenting practices applied to my friends and cousins. But their adult caregivers were not raising me, so I got only superficial experience of them. My parents raised me day in and day out. It is only natural that I would then rear my own children in the only way to which I had become accustomed. And where marriages dissolve and single parenting takes over, children may become deprived of the impact (good or bad) of one parent or the other. Some children, of course, get the potential benefit of having additional, rather than reduced, parenting influences when step-parents enter their lives. And that means that more adults could benefit from having optimal parenting skills. Knowledge is power. Let’s arm young adults with an array of parenting styles and principles from which to choose.
A general parenting course could outline normal developmental expectations. Principles of behavioral psychology could be useful—e.g., behavior that is followed by a favorable or pleasant consequence tends to be repeated, while an action that attracts a neutral or negative consequence tends not to be repeated. Evidence about the Rosenthal Effect tells us that expecting good behavior increases the probability of good deeds. Teach parents how to establish guidelines for family communication and collaboration, including good manners and etiquette. Practical information about sleep, vision, hearing, hygiene, and health can help guide parenting decisions. Teach early developmental milestones along with stages of cognitive, language, and moral development. Parents could learn how to prepare their children for early schooling and to help with their homework as years go by. Emotional intelligence can be cultivated by helping kids learn how to make and keep friends. Pro-social skills training, including problem-solving and coping strategies, can help with stress and anger management. Would-be parents could learn and express knowledge about diet and nutrition, exercise and sports, and wellness–helping kids to become the best that they can be.
Recommendations
In order to raise the probability that future generations will develop for the better instead of our seeing increasing numbers of children and adolescents slide into various levels of dysfunctionality, I advocate for our educational system to adopt universal parent education. Make a half-year parenting course, taught during high school, mandatory for graduation. Why should this be a requirement rather than an elective? Most students, whether they plan to or not, are likely to bear children, or they may adopt them. Also, adults and children interact in many contexts. Grown-ups may have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews. Adults might work with kids as their babysitters, teachers, counselors, coaches, bosses, customers, and role models. Society is multi-generational; people of all ages mingle in meaningful ways. Everyone could benefit from some knowledge of research about human development in order to have more positive than negative influences on the young people we encounter. Naturally, better-behaved children and adolescents, with the social skills to get along well with others, are advantageous (more enjoyable) to adults, as well.
Let’s give our high school students a leg up on becoming parents, or positive influences on children, in the future. Departments of Education at federal, state, and local levels should enact classes to teach the fundamentals of child development and effective child-rearing. Betterment of the quality of life for all U.S. citizens, young and old, could thus be accomplished. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Benefits to our children, as well as us adults, are worth the cost and effort.
About the author: Dr. Wallace has spent most of his career working as a psychologist in schools of various kinds, with children and adolescents alike, as well as in private practice treating people of all ages. See his website http://www.eqpsych.com for details.
References
Beidel, D.C. & Turner, S.M. (1997). At risk for anxiety: Psychopathology in the offspring of anxious parents. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 918-924.
Mash, E.J. & Wolfe, D.A. (2016). Abnormal Child Psychology (6th Ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.
Weissman et al. (2006). Offspring of depressed parents: 20 years later. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 1001-1008.
http://www.cdc.gov (online resource), 2017.
http://www.nih.gov (online resource), 2017.
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