Attachment, Parenting and Childhood Mental Illness
Posted May 23 2010 6:08am
This moving essay by NAMI's medical director contains many gifts, including a "refreshing humility" and a positivity about parents and love and the "capacity for health" for our kids Attachment, Parenting and Childhood Mental Illness
"I have also seen in my practice that kids who live with psychiatric conditions are not defined by them--they have real strengths and gifts that can be forgotten in the storm of a psychiatric presentation. I also have noticed that kids have a tremendous capacity for health--they often improve, sometimes dramatically with the right package of help. And it is the love, trust and security created by the parents - the attachment that my field had formerly so pathologized - that often makes all the difference for them."
And isn't it fascinating that the comments on that essay are so often reflexively negative? This essay just shouldn't be controversial or in need of negative rebuttal. Why is there such an investment out there in villifying parents? It is a black/white thinking that equates saying something good to saying that all things are good. Some parents suck: we know. But celebrating good parenting shouldn't trigger an open season on bitterness and regret.
Attachment, Parenting and Childhood Mental Illness
"I have also seen in my practice that kids who live with psychiatric conditions are not defined by them--they have real strengths and gifts that can be forgotten in the storm of a psychiatric presentation. I also have noticed that kids have a tremendous capacity for health--they often improve, sometimes dramatically with the right package of help. And it is the love, trust and security created by the parents - the attachment that my field had formerly so pathologized - that often makes all the difference for them."
And isn't it fascinating that the comments on that essay are so often reflexively negative? This essay just shouldn't be controversial or in need of negative rebuttal. Why is there such an investment out there in villifying parents? It is a black/white thinking that equates saying something good to saying that all things are good. Some parents suck: we know. But celebrating good parenting shouldn't trigger an open season on bitterness and regret.