ArcaMax

I call it “psychological thinking,” referring to the tendency among parents of the last fifty years or so to attribute bad behavior on the part of a child to so-called “issues” that are thought to be causing emotional tensions of one sort or another. That is, in fact, precisely what my graduate school professors taught; to wit, that ...Read more

Strolling through my go-to grocery store the other day, I happened down the Baby Products aisle where I spied packages of toilet-training pants featuring pictures of happy children who looked at least three, some as old as five. The first question that came to mind: Why would a five-year-old who is continuing to eliminate on himself be happy? ...Read more

Question: We have a boy, 6, and a girl, 9, who fight constantly about everything under the sun. My husband and I have a good marriage. We hardly ever have a serious disagreement about anything, so it’s hard for us to understand what has led to our kids’ inability to get along. In any case, their fighting has become very draining, ...Read more

A column of mine that originally appeared in January of 2017 has been circulating on the Internet ever since, accumulating over a million hits to date. In a nutshell, its message is simply that parents, not children, are the most important people in a family and the husband-wife relationship should greatly “trump” that between either parent ...Read more

Question: Our 15-year-old daughter has told us she’s in love with a 20-year-old guy who is in the Army and intending to make the Army his career. We’ve met him, and he is extremely respectful and well-mannered, and has told us he’s in love with her. We’ve made it clear to both of them that for the time being at least, they may ...Read more

Rates of child and teen depression and suicide continue to rise, as they have for fifty years. As regular readers of this column know, I do not agree in the least with current explanations, much less the “treatments” based on them, proposed by the mainstream in the mental health professions. For the past year, on my weekly radio program (...Read more

Question: I am a grandmother with custody of my two grandsons, six-year-old twins. Because of behavior problems at home and school and difficulties relating to other children (they play and communicate with one another just fine), they have been diagnosed with autism. What is your opinion of the diagnosis and what can I do to help them? ...Read more

Competition amongst the membership of the International Association of the Weird and Even Weirder for the Most Bizarre Idea of All Time has finally, after more than five decades of weird-mongering, come to an end – the rest of us can only hope, anyway. The winner is Deanne Carson of Australia who proposes that to advance a “culture of ...Read more

When I was in college and grad school, other students – mostly the “jock” and fraternity crowds – called me all sorts of names because, being the lead singer in a popular campus rock band, I sported long hair and wore flamboyant outfits. This being BPC (before political correctness), the reader can imagine the epithets in question. ...Read more

Question: My 4-year-old daughter, when I do something that upsets her, like reprimand her for something, begins to cry and tell me that I don’t love her anymore. (She’s actually very obedient and well-behaved, so the incidents in question are quite small.) When I’m finally able to calm her down, I reassure her of my love and explain...Read more

Q: We are having no success getting our 3-year-old (her third birthday is in a couple of weeks) to do what we tell her to do. She defies us at every opportunity, whether it’s just ignoring us or telling us “no” or even physically fighting us. We’ve tried time-out, but she won’t sit, and if one of us tries to hold her in her “...Read more

Q: Our 17-year-old son is flunking his junior year in high school. Flunking is not a possibility; it is a definite, a done deal. He has passed the point where he could turn this around. He’s very intelligent and made reasonably good grades until his sophomore year. He’s not depressed in the least, he doesn’t do drugs or drink, ...Read more

Q: Our son, age 8, did fine in school in first grade, but has struggled in second. We’ve taken your advice and not helped much with his homework other than occasional and brief “consultations.” He’s making average grades but his second-grade teacher – she’s fairly young, by the way – tells us that he is actually slightly ...Read more

Do we – here in the USA, that is – or do we not have a child and teen mental health crisis and if the answer is yes, we do, then what should be done about it?

Without doubt, the answer is yes, we do have a child and teen mental health crisis. Today’s child, by age 16, is five to ten times – depending on the source – more likely to ...Read more

Upon arrival on-site for a recent speaking engagement, I am told that several rather vocal parents refused to attend because I am not an advocate of “gentle parenting.” That implies that I proselytize for “rough” or “harsh” parenting, which I do not, and be assured dear reader, at this stage of my life I am acutely clear concerning ...Read more

Q: Even though he had an early-August birthday, we started our son in Kindergarten this past Fall at a private Christian school. They did some testing prior to the start of the school year and told us they thought he would do okay. Now, however, they are telling us that he is “somewhat immature” and would probably benefit from ...Read more