Right Mental Health

Behavioral Problems in Daycare Children
Religion & Happiness
Liberal Bias in Mental Health

Behavioral Problems in Daycare Children
Robert R. Cassman, MA
March 4, 2008

            Some things are widely known.  The fact that time in child care settings is positively correlated with behavior problems is widely known.  And yet, this fact is argued, or at least not given any attention by those who don’t want to believe it.  And who would that be?  Parents are the ones who would benefit the most from ignoring this information.  Like the health concerns covered earlier, if parents were to honestly look at these issues, they would be forced into only one course of action.  The importance of a good mother-child attachment cannot be stressed enough when discussing these issues.

            In 1987, a study published by researchers from the University of Illinois concluded that infants are more likely to avoid or ignore their mothers after a short separation if they were left in day care due to full-time maternal employment.  This has been referred to as “insecure-avoidant” behavior or attachment.[i]  In 1992 researchers showed that children feel less secure with their “caregivers” no matter how consistent the outcome of home care is.[ii]  To top of a string of studies showing insecure attachment due to day care settings, the University of Calgary published its finding involving over 22,000 children.  The researchers reported that nearly 50 percent of the children in day care had an insecure attachment with their mothers.  These children were described as being “at risk for psychological maladaption.”[iii]  There are reams of studies to show what has already been made blatantly obvious: Day care negatively effects mother-child attachment.  However, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, not convinced, did their own study in 1991.  The study published read “most babies with employed mothers are securely attached to them”.   News sources ran with this headline, again trying to champion the cause of day care as the Communists from the Soviet Union and Russia had done decades earlier.  But the new sources failed to mention the actual findings: Forty-five percent of infants of mothers employed full-time were insecurely attached.[iv]  These attachment problems present themselves later in life in the form of depression, anxiety, high levels of loneliness, low self-esteem and an overall inability to deal with daily difficulties as an adult[v] as well as an “estrangement from biological mothers and intolerance of intimate relationships.”[vi]  The importance of healthy attachments early on cannot be stressed enough.  Extreme cases of insecure or anxious attachments can later lead to borderline personality disorder and in common cases lead to aggressive defiance, clingy, panicky children who lack self-reliance.[vii]

            Psychologist Ken Magid writes on the connection between child care and increasing childhood violence, emotional disorder, criminality and psychopathic behavior.  Magid argues that much of the behaviors are actually symptoms of antisocial personality disorder (APD).  According to Magid, this can be traced by to poor maternal attachment.[viii]

Dr. Magid indicates that the development of APD can be seen early among some aggressive children:

You’ve just walked into a waiting room in a pediatrician’s office… A little boy playing in the center of the room attracts your attention; in fact, it would be impossible not to notice him.  He is zooming around the room, playing with first one toy then another…Your little girl has picked up a toy truck and sits down to examine it.  But before she gets all the way down to the floor, this little boy…has run over and yanked it from her hands…As you sit with your mouth agape, he hits her with the truck, smirks, and runs to the corner, where he immediately drops the truck and begins climbing on chairs.  He pays no heed to your child’s cries, acting like he doesn’t even notice.  Despite his mother’s pleas the child does not stop his antics or even acknowledge her.[ix]

Writing on this sad state, Dana Mack, author of The Assault on Parenthood, comments:

What parent today has not encountered that familiar little “terror” of a child who hits, spits, screams, threatens, and generally wreaks havoc with impenetrable self-assurance and pleasure!  When finally forcibly restrained by an adult and given a talking-to, his eyes harden his lips purse in an inscrutable smile.  When one meets the parents of such children, one is often surprised to find them loving, concerned, frustrated, and anxious to correct their child’s failings.  Where, one wonders, do such children acquire their hostility?  The answer may lie in the overcrowded or otherwise unloving child care situations in which they have been forced as infants to fight for attention, and in the contradictory messages about acceptable behavior that they have received from parents and daytime caretakers.[x]

What Mack is asking is a legitimate question: Where do children learn their hostility?  And yet, in the above example by her, does she not realize what she has said?  “When finally forcibly restrained by an adult…”  Why not “…by the parent?”  This is the argument of the village vs. the family when it comes to raising a child.  Who actually does the raising?  And who should do the raising?  There is no arguing that children today are learning, and being raised by the village.  And the village is more like a housing project.  So why aren’t the parents doing the “restraining”, doing the raising?  Mack hints at the answer to her own question: Children are learning to fight for attention in day care, while receiving contradictory messages about acceptable behavior from adults.  Day care workers, it has been noted, are trained “in a philosophy of permissiveness toward aggression and emotional spontaneity, are reluctant to punish every misdemeanor…The parent with an articulated ideal and coherent philosophy of child rearing…might view the day care environment as dangerously indifferent: to behavioral development.”[xi]  Who then, should accept the ultimate responsible?  Should this be forever blamed on outside forces such as the feminists of the ‘60’s, the Communists of earlier, or maybe is it the fault of the parents of today?  Hopefully, this book will continue to answer this and other vital questions.  For now, we return to the present discussion.

In 1999 the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) published a study that has now received a lot of attention.  One thousand children across the country were study over a span of years.  The study essentially reported that the more time children spend away from their mothers, the worse off they are, behaviorally.[xii]  In 2003, regarding the NICHD project, it was noted “More time in care not only predicted problem behavior measured on a continuous scale in a dose-response pattern but also predicted at-risk levels of problem behavior, as well as assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.”[xiii]  According to Jay Belsky, one of the lead researchers, the studied behavior was defined very specifically.  Aggression was defined as “cruelty to others, destroys own things, gets in many fights, threatens others, and hits others.” Noncompliance & disobedience was defined as “defiant, uncooperative, fails to carry out assigned tasks, temper tantrums, and disrupts class discipline.”  Assertiveness meant “bragging/boasting, talks too much, demands/wants attention, and argues a lot.”  All of these behaviors increased the longer the child was away from the mother.[xiv]

While older preschoolers in day care require somewhat less maintenance, they also get crowded into larger groups—typically from eight to 15 youngsters per adult. This also results in inadequate care. The average toddler makes 10 overtures an hour to his primary caretaker, according to studies. A day care worker responsible for 10 toddlers would thus be faced with an overture every 35 seconds. Obviously most will be ignored. The assistance, praise, rule-teaching, discipline, and reinforcement that one- to three-years-olds need will often not be provided.[xv]

In my counseling work, it is very common to find out that my drug abusing client did not have a good attachment as a child.  Now, this certainly does not mean that one causes the other.  However, the correlation cannot be ignored.  Some of my clients do not know how to handle stress in the least bit.  Day cares have been accused of creating unnatural stressful environments.  In fact, levels of cortisol, a chemical indicating stress, rose as the day went on for children in day care.  This is significant because normally, people’s cortisol level starts high and lowers throughout the day.  The researchers were… stressed at these findings, reporting “…this study raises questions about the degree of stress that toddlers and preschoolers experiences in all-day group day-care settings.”[xvi]  Eventually, Jay Belsky former colleague and opponent Allison Clarke-Stewart said that day care kids “are less polite, less agreeable, less respectful of others’ rights, more irritable, more rebellious and more aggressive with their peers.”[xvii]  Finally a consensus, right?  Well, not exactly.  Clarke-Stewart would go on to admire the children’s’ independent spirit and excuse their misbehavior: “Children who have been in day care think for themselves and want their own way… They are not willing to comply with adults’ arbitrary rules.”[xviii]  Now we are getting to the heart of the manner.  Adults are continuously making excuses for the behavior of children.  In this instance, the children are described as being independent, wanting to “think for themselves.”  This sort of stupidity breeds more misbehavior.  We are back to adults misbehaving, again!  And is it a wonder, anymore, why kids are so messed up?

Religion and Happiness

Robert R. Cassman, MA
August 13, 2007

            How important is religion?  How important is religious attendance?  In February of 2006, the Pew  Research  Center reported that those who attend religious services weekly are happier than those you don’t.  In the article, income level and political party affiliation was also studied.  In just so happens that higher income, marriage, and being a member of the Republican Party affiliation are correlated with happiness.  In other words, wealthy, Republicans who attend church weekly are the happiest.  

            One couldn’t tell based on all the negative stereotyping and reporting on religious folk.  In my profession in particular, those that profess a religious and hold it dear to their hearts are looked down upon.  In fact, they are looked at as somewhat delusional.  This makes sense in light of the upside down world that we happen to live in.  Good is bad and bad is good, as the prophecy promised.  Things that were always viewed as bad are now mainstream and glorified.  And things that we held as virtuous are not demonized and suppressed.  So it is most certainly no wonder that something as important as religion is made fun of etc.  

            But why is religious attendance related to happiness?  It is important to note that the study did not report that “spirituality is related to happiness” but that religion is.  What’s the difference?  Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs are based as a spiritual program.   These programs have done much good.  But they fall drastically short of being religious.  They profess and belief in a generic god, or Higher Power.  This relativistic view of the divine is less stringent and specific that they God of organized religion.  Religion is organized, and purposeful.  Religion gives order to one’s life.  Religion gives specific prescriptions to life’s problems.  The more ordered ones life is the happier the life will be.  When one walks in line with what God intended for that person, anxiety leaves.  People feel better about themselves when they are doing the right thing. 

            This is the problem with modern societies such as America’s.  People are constantly trying to lose their anxiety but without the help of God.  People do not like to be judged, especially today.  And when the idea of God is brought up, feelings of judgment surface and anxiety floods the person.  What today’s people really needs is a healing.  True healing cannot occur without the should being healed.  You can heal the soul?  Certainly not a therapist or medication.  Certainly not food or alcohol.  Never an indulgence of sex or money.  No, the only thing that can heal the soul is the One who made the soul, God.  I would like to think that a therapist such as myself can play a part in leading one to the physician of the soul.  But ultimately, one is “repaired” by God Himself.  This is plain and simple.  No one seems to want to discuss this.  But the further people drift from what they were intended to do, the more unhappy they will be.  People don't want do change their behavior, they simply want their unpleasant feelings to be removed.  And yet, doing the right thing will automatically remove the unpleasant feelings of shame and guilt. 

            People’s consciences are already hard-wired to this fact.  Feelings of guilt and shame are the result of the conscience being ignored.  When I do something wrong, I feel guilty… because I am guilty!  My conscience, which was ordered by God, is telling me “No, don’t do that.  It is not good for you.”  Just as when I eat something that is not physically good for me and a later feel sick, so if I do something that is not spiritually good for me will I feel spiritually sick.  Listen to your conscience.  It was put there by God.  And happiness will be yours.