By Karen Schiltz, Ph.D.
“My child could be the next mass murderer. Alex has bipolar disorder. Last year, he pulled a phone off of the wall in the classroom and threw it at the teacher. They evacuated the whole class and my son was suspended for one day. He was suspended five times in nursery school for hitting children. Alex screams at home, swears, throws his toys against the wall, has hit his sister more times that I can tell, and can’t pay attention for the life of him now. He does not like the word ‘no.’ Alex is eight and in second grade. I’m afraid and something has to be done. I’m glad we are dealing with this now. I have to face this.”
I saw the parents of Alex Monday morning.
Like many of you, I was in shock and horrified about the slaughtering of 20 little children and 6 adults. I wondered: why did Adam Lanza not receive help for his condition or, if he did, was he misdiagnosed? Did his parents not follow through with providers? Did providers fail to address his problems? Were the parents in denial? Were teachers in denial?
“I’m scared. I see things at night like shadows and I hear soldiers that are coming to get me at night. I ran into daddy and mommy’s room. I saw something black when I was running to my mommy’s room. Someone is whispering to me too. I hear whispers and voices. I don’t understand what they are saying.”
Alex was eager to tell me about the voices and sounds he heard. He also told me that his parents were oftentimes angry at home and he was always scared of what could happen next.
His parents told me about several warning signs that increased in severity, intensity, and frequency as Alex aged. They were:
- Fears of attending school
- Hearing sounds such as whispers and soldiers conversing with each other
- Nightmares
- Poor frustration tolerance
- Problems managing his anger
- Real shifts in mood ranging from deep sadness to silliness
- Trouble concentrating
- Trouble sleeping
- Withdrawal from family and friends
- Wringing of hands and complaints of stomachaches
Do these parents need counseling? Does Alex need help as well? Will the parents accept my feedback after I assessed their child, interviewed Alex’s teachers and them, and conducted the testing?
Monday had a happy ending. These parents were not in denial nor did they deny Alex had a problem. They realized early intervention was crucial to helping their child. Alex’s parents were aware that their son’s marked troubles with managing his anger, low frustration tolerance, problems with focusing, and his ability to “go from 0 to 100” in a split second of rage were not normal. They deeply wanted a typical eight-year-old boy before it was too late.
It is not too late for lots of children. All of us, including teachers, physicians, and other care-taking and healthcare professionals need to listen to and observe children when something is not quite right. Taking the time to talk with children and educate parents about the warning signs of mental illness is critical.
Assessment and early intervention are the keys to unlocking the cause of a child’s pain and other problems such as a reading disorder. We can help children if we intervene at an early age and recognize the signs of mental illness such as mood instability, sadness, irritability, and anxiety. Many children need help and aren’t getting it. Recognizing a child’s struggles as early as possible is key to optimizing their success in life and overall mental health. The tragedy can be when it is not addressed in time to help either the victim or aggressor.
The bottom line is: we need to review the big picture of what is happening with our children and help parents advocate for their child when something is a little off. It was not too late for Alex and it shouldn’t be for your child either.
Karen Schiltz is the co-author of Beyond The Label: A Guide to Unlocking a Child’s Educational Potential and Associate Clinical Professor (volunteer) at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has over 26 years of experience assessing children and young adults with developmental, medical, and emotional disorders including the autistic spectrum and maintains a private practice specializing in neuropsychology in Calabasas, California. Dr. Schiltz blogs for Psychology Today at Beyond the Label.
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hazy and humid
This cartoon is one of my thoughts about the effect of our second amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. They have held that it isn't just a right for ensuring state militia power against the federal government, but provides an individual right to gun ownership. Our legislators are so cowed by NRA lobbyists that they have failed to legislate meaningful limits on gun ownership. And so the combination of the 2nd amendment right and the lack of other countervailing restrictions has made our other rights the target of abuse. The very life of citizens is at issue, as so terribly demonstrated by the murder of 20 innocent 6 and 7 year old school children at Sandy Hook. Who can exercise liberty rights when it isn't safe to even attend school or go to a mall or otherwise live in America. What pursuit of happiness exists, other than the happiness of a warm gun? For those of us who do not enjoy gun ownership, we are left without the same freedoms.
The very suggestion that everyone needs to own a gun, that schools should have armed guards, that more guns are the solution to the unacceptable gun violence is total insanity. This
opinion by Fareed Zakaria does a good job of explaining.
20 little children killed in one morning, along with the 6 adults at the school, the very disturbed young man who was the shooter and his mother--so many senseless deaths. We can only have them make sense if we now use this to fuel real debate and change.
For many weeks I had looked toward this weekend as a time to read some of the many books that have come to me from friends, or that I bought myself. In the wake of Friday's news, I have, like you, been paralyzed. There simply are no words. There is less goodness in the world.
I don't know how any of us move forward—how we leave those suffering behind in our thoughts. I was grateful for church this morning. I was grateful for the dark mist of sad weather, for sun would not have been right today.
The book that I have managed to carry with me through this weekend is
Between Heaven and Here, bought from a New and Noteworthy shelf at a nearby bookstore back in October,
by my long-time friend Susan Straight, who has won countless awards and prizes—deservedly. She lives in and is inspired by her own Riverside, CA. Since the very start of what is now a stunning novel career, she has looked toward what most of us cannot see—the lives of those imperiled by gangs, crack, meth, poverty, injustice, prejudice, and bittersweet (but mostly bitter) histories.
Between Heaven and Here is part of a trilogy framed by
A Million Nightingales and
Take One Candle Light a Room. It is a small book with a large cast. It sweeps back and forth over many years and two states, and through horrific crimes present and past. It centers on the death of Glorette Picard, a beautiful streetwalker and crack addict whose son, Victor, studies SAT words and is determined to forge a path out of a proud but battered lineage. Faulkner-like, it circles Glorette's burial—nearly impossible given the hard sheen of a sun-dried earth.
Susan has always written sentences that crackle and steam. She has fabricated characters whose talk is so real and whose conditions are so palpable that we are sure that Susan herself has sat among them, genuine and listening.
In this novel—a novel of assembled parts, of intersecting stories, of clocks moved ahead and moved backward, then stopped—Susan's sentences stunned me at most every turn. Here are just a few of them. Here's what Susan Straight can do with an image:
Gustave touched her collarbone. The knob of bone where it had healed, after she'd broken it falling from an orange tree. He couldn't touch her hair. When she was fourteen, the flesh of her body had rearranged itself, and her eyes had grown watchful under the fur of eyebrows and eyelashes. Her hair had come out of the braids his wife made every morning, and she had coated her eyelashes with crankcase oil and painted her lips, and disappeared into her room. The fear of her beauty wound its way through his entrails.
The Santa Ana was so shallow and clear that he waded across it, kept on through the sandy earth past the river, the willows that smelled medicinal, and came to the eucalyptus windbreak all along the citrus.
"Whatever," the boy said. Felonise let herself look at him. Reddish-brown hair in shiny spikes, like a wet cat sat on his skull.
Just twenty-four hours before the Newtown tragedy, I was reading books to a room full of kindergartners in southern California. At the beginning of the school year, I signed up to read to my daughter's class. After all, my own classroom is only a short nature walk away.
I'm lucky enough to walk my daughter to kindergarten every morning. I say lucky because there are few better ways, if any, to start your morning. Seeing those five and six year-old smiles never gets old. Neither does seeing their energy and eagerness to live and learn.
During our walk, I say
good morning to every child we pass. Most of them are between five and ten years-old. Some of them say
good morning or just
morning. Some smile. Some stick out their tongues and laugh. Some ignore me. But that's okay. They are only kids. They are on the brink of life. They are learning and developing. They are sponges waiting to absorb the next waterfall they encounter. They are honest and eager to please. They are innocent. They are fragile.
I am a husband. I am a parent. And I am a teacher. I have only ever been a teacher. It is all I know and all I really care to ever do. I teach eleven and twelve year-olds. They are three times the size of kindergartners and infinitely "smarter." But when you take away the size and knowledge, they are still kids. They smile. They laugh. They stick out their tongues. They ignore me. They are honest and eager to please. They are all of these things, just like kindergartners. They are even innocent and--though stronger and more independent--still fragile. They are special to their families and their teachers, more special than they'll ever know.
The kids and teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary will always be remembered. They, too, are more special than they'll ever know.
Kids are the joy to the world,
they are the merry in Christmas,
the burning candle in Hanukkah,
they are different shapes and sizes
like the snowflakes that fall
from Above,
they are the bright lights
filling us with hope
for a better place,
they fall down and get up,
cry and laugh in the same breath,
hold hands with new friends,
ask questions that cannot be answered,
say "I love you" when least expected,
they give meaningful hugs
and remember them forever,
Kids wrap their arms around life
and refuse to let go.
They make the world whole.
Oh, Tracy, my eyes filled with tears reading this. --Nan
Very moving...
Beautiful. Kids are special. They are.
I had the heartbreak of going to a wake for a student at our school today. That compounded with the CT tragedy has had me sobbing for days.
Kids are a joy to this world. I will be strong so I can teach tomorrow with a smile and hug my own kids with a smile.
Perfectly stated. Thank you.