Time Travelers

May 31, 2014 //

We all move forward through time because that is the nature of time; it progresses. Due to our brain structure, we are also able to travel back in time through memory. And based on our memories, whether they are biased, fading, or correct, we think about them as well as our current experience to make predictions about the future. These predictions often inform our current behavior.

Thus, we live in the past, the present, and the future. This makes life rich, but it also makes it complicated. We get all kinds of messages about which time is the best. “Live in the moment!” “Keep your eye on the prize!”

Getting stuck in any one time can cause a lot of problems, though. For example, depressed thoughts and feelings, for example, come in part from viewing today’s misery as being a constant. The past was always bad and the future will be bad. Past joys and the possibility of joy in the future are buried under the weight of today’s despair. Impulsive behavior comes from living too much in the moment. I want this now. I feel this now. The past doesn’t matter and the future only matters in like of getting the goal I want right now, accomplished.Later, after the negative consequences come crashing down, impulsive behaviors result in regret and guilt about the past. And anxiety often comes from living in the future of “what-if’s” and “what might be”.

One of the things I have noticed in my mindfulness practice, is that I am better able to integrate my past, present, and future. I observe the present and recollect the past. I use information from both of these times to inform the plans for my future. Being able to travel through the time of my own life is a fascination to me. I don’t always travel at the right time or to the right place. But I think I am getting better at it, more frequently feeling in more of some kind of balance.

Memory makes life complicated. But without it, we would always live in the present moment. And that, my friends, would be although a simple way to live, a very dependent, sometimes incredibly distressing way to live. There’s no sophisticated learning without memory. There are no moments of beautiful nostalgia. No dreams for the future and no appreciation for the way that people and their relationships unfold over time. I could go on and on.

A life with just one time is like a story without a beginning or an end, just the middle. And the middle is the crisis, as I recall, the problem that needs to be solved. I want to continue understanding the grand narrative of my life. It has many beginnings, middles, and ends. My life has many stories, some unfolding as we speak, and they are all part of who I am and how I connect with the rest of life.

Tags anxiety, depression, future, impulsivity, May Mental Health Month, memory, mindfulness, narrative, past, present, time

Categories Mindfulness

Satisfaction

May 29, 2014 //

A common interview question for a young child is “If you had three wishes what would you wish for?”

I recently interviewed a quite delightful 5 year-old and this is what she told me.

Me: What’s your first wish?

Child: A jewelry box and I already got one.

Me: What’s the next one?

Child: A ballerina and I already got one.

Me: Okay, what’s the third wish?

Child: A doll and I already got one.

Me: Your wishes have all come true. Lucky you!

Categories Uncategorized

Learning from Maya

May 28, 2014 //

Maya Angelou died today at the age of 86. She taught me so much.

I learned the power and beauty of the spoken word. Poetry accentuates the music in language. Maya Angelou’s poetry did this to such a great degree that for me, reading her written poetry instead of listening to her read it, was like watching a brilliant jazz combo with no sound. It just wasn’t the same. Her voice was powerful, beautiful, and the words were hers.

Many of us know that Maya Angelou feared the power of her voice so much that she stopped speaking to anyone other than her brother, Bailey, for years. She had been raped as a child, told her brother, who told adults, and the man who had raped her was briefly imprisoned and then murdered after a few days after his release. The then 9 year-old Marguerite Johnson held her voice responsible for the man’s death. Over time, she recovered from her trauma enough to speak again.

Not only did Maya Angelou overcome the fear of the power of her voice but she used the power of her voice as a singer, a poet, a teacher, and as an activist. And when she read her poem, On the Pulse of Morning, for President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, I got goosebumps that seemed to last for days.

Another lesson I learned from Maya Angelou was the power of telling one’s life story, and further, telling it in installments. I started reading her autobiographies in high school. Although her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, remains my favorite and the most memorable, I loved her life story. I burned through the three subsequent books that had already been published and then eagerly waited for the rest to be written. Her life is fascinating and she was pretty open about her imperfections. I see now that I missed her final installment published last year. How did that happen? Oh yeah, I was experiencing cancer treatment and the resulting chaos.

My blog is, in part, a memoir that unfolds in frequent, short installments. As you know, I get a great deal out of writing this blog. It’s not just the writing, it’s the sharing of my writing, the conversations that ensue, and the miraculous times when the words I write are exactly what a reader needs to think about at that time. Every once in awhile, I have a little nagging thought that my writing is self-absorbed. Maybe I am enjoying the attention I get from writing this blog, a little TOO much. I am no Maya Angelou but I have an interesting story to tell and I write well enough. Someday my daughter will read this blog and I hope it will be something that enriches her life and our relationship.

Maya Angelou also taught me the power of resilience. She was abused, repeatedly traumatized, mistreated, and oppressed. Maya Angelou’s life was a triumph of the human spirit and a testimony to the highest power of resilience. And then she used her life experience to help others. That may seem like a natural thing to do but it is not the case. Think of how many people justify their lack of compassion for others by giving examples of how they managed to be successful despite adversity so everyone else should be. These are justifications by parents for rejecting their own children and for everyday citizens for justifying policies that let children in our country and all over the world go hungry, to be poorly educated, and to live in unsafe conditions. Maya Angelou could have hurt others with her stories, beaten up others with her success, but she didn’t.

And if you have read Maya Angelou or heard her interviewed, you know that she does not take sole credit for her resilience. She talks about the support of her brother, Bailey or her close relationship with her son, Guy. She talks about her neighbor, Mrs. Flowers, who helped her speak again by having her over for tea time and time again and talking to her in the most beautiful way.

Today, I am thinking about the power of my spoken words. I have been short-tempered, as you know. Short bursts of anger and I yelled at my daughter yesterday. She was being a pain in the butt, but yelling isn’t a solution. I am thinking about the power of my written words, not just in this blog but in my work. The reports that I write for children and teens with ADHD and learning disabilities impact their lives. The care that I take in writing them can make an important difference in the kind of support they receive from their parents and from their schools. They can also give them a new, more positive way to understand themselves and in time, lead to strategies to cope with their particular patterns of strengths and weaknesses.

Today, I am going to think about how to be an adult who helps build resilience in others, people both near and far away. What can I do to honor the people who paved the path for me, who helped me along the way, by helping build a world in which children not only survive, but thrive?

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
-Maya Angelo (1928-2014)

Tags autobiography, death, May Mental Health Month, Maya Angelou, memoirs, poetry, resiliance, selective mutism, trauma

Categories Mindfulness, Parenting

The Numbers Game

May 26, 2014 //

I almost always cringe when I hear someone who is not elderly, refer to their perceived decrepitude. “I’m soooo old.” “I hate getting old.” I compare it to my own internal tape that told me that I was fat for about 40 years. It was a harmful statement for me to make to myself and reinforces the pervasive negative view of overweight people. There are also pervasive negative views of old people. Our society, by and large, does not treat the most experienced of our citizens very well.

Puppies are cute. They are fuzzy and cuddly but they will also eat your shoe and poop on your favorite throw rug. Young people are also a bit like that. And during spring break, young people are EXACTLY like that.

My parents didn’t really complain about aging in the way a lot of people do. They were happy and active people. Now they are happy, active, and elderly. In the fall, my mom will turn 80, my dad will turn 82, and the two of them will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on Thanksgiving. I know they have to navigate their daily lives differently than in the past and that this adaptation process continues. My parents are traveling to Yellowstone National Park this summer, a place they have gone many times over the years. This is the first time they are staying in a hotel instead of camping. This is a loss but they have found a way to visit and hike in one of the most beautiful and fascinating places on Earth.

My parents have been blessed with good health, this is true. And they do notice the effects of aging; they are not in denial and they have planned their life in a sensible way. But I wonder how different their lives would have been if they had proclaimed themselves old 30 years ago? I wonder what kind of limits they would have placed on themselves? Or how much time they would have wasted feeling badly about themselves instead of walking together every day, going camping several times a year, spending time with friends and family, and looking at the photos they both take of places and people.

Becoming really good at something takes a great deal of time. I am hoping to be around long enough to be an expert on living my life.

Joe and Martha MacKenzie, Thanksgiving 2010. See, being as old as my parents looks like it could be fun!

Tags aging, agism, mindfulness, wisdom, youth culture

Categories Mindfulness

Match Day

May 24, 2014 //

One of the requirements for my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology was completing a one year long internship at one of many sites around the country. The application process is a very stressful rite of passage for students. I often say, “You can have time or money but not both.” Well, in grad school, most of us had neither. But we managed to fill out internship applications and travel for interviews to the sites that were most promising. I remember traveling from North Carolina to Oklahoma City, Seattle, Chicago, and Gainesville, Florida.

Internship offers were made by phone back then on “Match Day”, which started at 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time and I believe was on a day in March in 1996. Prospective interns would wait by the home phone (no cell phones back then), hoping that it would ring right at 10:00 am and that we would hear the sound of the voice of the director of the desired internship. We were allowed to say, “yes” or “no” on the spot. There was no, “I’ll think about it after I’ve considered all of my offers.”

Prior to Match Day, we had the option to send an internship site a “first choice” letter. The communication was, “If you call and offer me an internship, I will accept it.” There were a number of rules around this. Sites weren’t allowed to ask us if we were going to “first choice” them and if we “first-choiced” a site and didn’t take it, it was considered a very uncool thing to do. We were also not allowed to “first choice” more than one site.

After my visits to sites, I made a rankings list, weighing professional and personal variables. My first choice for professional reasons was the University of Florida. However, getting back to Seattle was a high priority so the University of Washington made it to the top of my list. Both sites were prestigious and offered excellent training. I sent a “first choice” letter to the University of Washington. A few days later, I received a call from the internship director there. She told me that I was a “very strong candidate” but that it was not in my best interest to give U.W. my first choice letter. She recommended that I withdraw it, which I did. This was a painful phone conversation, but even at the time I knew that it was very kind of her to let me know I was not one of their top candidates. I sent off a new “first choice” letter to the University of Florida.

Meanwhile, John and I were nervous wrecks. John was researching job markets for all of the potential cities in which we might live. Fortunately, since Gainesville was a drivable distance from where we lived, we had gone together and he’d gotten an opportunity to check out the area, which he liked a lot. The job market there was terrible for him, though.

There was nothing for us to do at that point but wait for 10:00 am on Match Day and hope that the phone would ring. I was well trained, having completed some ridiculous number of supervised clinical hours during my years at UNC. (If memory serves, I’d logged 2700 hours when the requirement was 500.) Oh, the other stressful thing was that sometimes, no one called a student. There was usually one student each year from our program who despite their excellent application and the strength of the reputation of our program, did not get an offer. Those students had the chance to go through the “clearinghouse” process and be placed in one of the leftover spots. (These days, incidentally, there are no “leftover” spots. There are more applicants than there are spots at accredited internship sites.)

Match Day came. All of the worry about where we would live, what I would do, and would I be able to work anywhere would hopefully be reduced. 10:00 am came and went. I willed the phone to ring. At 10:02, the phone range and I answered it. It was the University of Florida and they made me an offer, which I accepted. It was really quick so quick that I said, “You just made me an offer and I accepted it, right?” The director chuckled and said, “yes.” We said our goodbyes. The first one I called was my husband. He was happy. The second call was to my parents. My mom was happy. My dad was happy though said, “Florida? You are moving even FARTHER away from home.”

Exactly two years ago, I found myself waiting by the phone again. The call that I would receive would say a lot about my future. I was waiting on a call from the Swedish Cancer Institute with the results of my core biopsy, which had been performed two days before. I knew that a call would arrive at any time. As fate would have it, I was called at 10:00 am, just like Match Day. The diagnostic radiologist told me that I had an invasive ductal carcinoma tumor of approximate size of 1 cm. She said, “This is the most common breast cancer. A surgeon will call you within the hour. I’m sorry. We will take good care of you.”

The first person I called was my husband. He told me that he was taking the bus from work to be at home with me. Then I called my parents. My mom answered and I told her, “Mom, I have cancer. Mom, I am scared.” She was comforting and I was able to stop crying so that I could get information and make decisions. (Not everyone copes this way. I like to work fast and get things in place.) I called my friend, Nancy, a 12 year breast cancer survivor and psychologist who works with breast cancer patients. I got her voicemail so I left her a message. I had not even previously told her that I’d had a biopsy. Then I left a voice mail for my friend, Jennie, who had known about the biopsy. As soon as I finished my message to Jennie, Nancy called.

Nancy was reassuring and also gave me a list of surgeons who had excellent technical skills but also good people skills. Dr. Beatty was on the list. His office called while I was talking to Nancy. I got off of the phone with Nancy and picked up the call from Rhea, who was the scheduler at his office back then. I made an appointment for the next day. I was not required to accept the first surgeon who called. I could have met with another surgeon after I met with Dr. Beatty. But I immediately adored him and didn’t feel like I needed to see anyone else. Nancy, who had accompanied us to the appointment, and John agreed.

My family has been through a great deal in the last several years and not all of it was related to my cancer. If you’d asked me even as recently as five years ago, how I would cope with all of the life events that were in store for me, I would have guessed that I would go into an anxiety spin, followed by depression, and some kind of severe mental breakdown. I certainly would not have guessed that along with the anxiety, anger, and pain, I would also find more joy and peace than ever before in my life.

I feel a mixture of feelings and thoughts today. And maybe that’s part of what these “anniversaries” are about. Experiencing a year or several years’ ups and downs in the span of a few days.

I will never say, “Cancer, you have met your match.” I know that cancer can kill. But I can say that right now, I am a match for its aftermath.

Tags anxiety, cancer anniversaries, grief, psychology internship match day, stress

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Feelings

What does it mean to be good?

May 21, 2014 //

As a psychologist, I work with a lot of parents who disagree about how to best address their children’s problems or often, whether there is a problem to address at all. A good deal of the time, these perpetual conflicts are a result of the couple trying to solve a different problem than the one they think they are trying to address. The real problem might be feeling like a bad parent and trying to solve it by deflecting blame to the other parent.

But what does it really mean to be good or bad? Kids often tell me that “bad kids” are the ones who get corrected by the teacher or who hit or who learn differently. In other words, “goodness” is defined by actions and abilities. A lot of the kids I see think of themselves as “bad”, which is an extremely painful state of being. I say, “I’ve worked with thousands of children in my life and I’ve never met a bad one. All children are good. Sometimes even grown ups get confused about this. They think that there are good and bad people.” When I say these things to children, I am not just trying to ease their pain. I mean it from the very bottom of my heart to the very top of my brain.

We make good and bad choices. We have skills at which we are good and those at which we are bad. We perform good and bad actions. These statements are true for all of us on a daily basis. We do good things and we do things well. We do bad things and we do things poorly. Every day. Every person. Are all of these good’s and bad’s equivalent in terms of importance? Of course not.

People are beings, not actions, skills, or decisions. Actions, skills, and decisions are capacities, not entities. I believe that every living being is a miraculous creation. A miraculous creation is a good thing. Every person is a miraculous creation. Why is this so hard to accept?

I spent a good part of my early life worrying about being “good enough”. The hardest times were when I was depressed. There were some things I learned getting myself out of those depressions, though. A very important lesson was that even having failed at happiness by becoming depressed was not the end of my life. I came back from the illness. I was more resilient than I had realized despite my imperfections. It was an important step in stepping away from the question, “Am I good?”

Stepping away from “Am I good?” is a really important part of self-acceptance. I don’t believe that self-acceptance is a absolute. It is a process toward an idea. I believe that I have traveled close enough to it to make a very large positive difference in my life.

I am discovering the freedom in self-acceptance, in stepping away from the question, “Am I good?” It allows me to more frequently see myself and others as whole people with beauty and mess. I am a messy imperfect but loving person. By accepting this, I am actually better able to make good decisions, engage in good actions, and learn good skills. I have a lot more time and peace as I learn not to berate myself. I don’t devote energy to fancy justifications for my actions.

Getting wrapped up in that question can cause so many problems. Even if you don’t believe that people are miraculous beings and inherently good, perhaps you might consider that classifying oneself and others as “good” or “bad” is really not helpful to anyone.

What does it mean to be good? It means that we are here. It means that we can move on to more useful questions, ones that bring love and compassion to our lives, instead of keeping us stuck.

Tags black-and-white thinking, Mental Health, mindfulness, perfectionism, self-acceptance, self-doubt, unrelenting standards

Categories Mindfulness

Breaking bad news

May 21, 2014 //

Although I see kids for psychotherapy, most of my time as a psychologist is spent as a diagnostician. I gather background information, I do tests, I scour through records, and I do lot of thinking and a lot of writing. Then I meet with parents and I go over the results.

Most of the time, parents are satisfied and grateful for the report and for my recommendations. I believe that this is a testament to their parenting and also a reflection of my experience delivering complicated information about serious problems. There are other times when I am pretty sure that the news I am going to share is going to be much different than expected and it’s going to be viewed as bad. At these times, I’m tempted to tell parents, “I don’t make the news; I just report it.”

But to do so would be flip and unprofessional. I have to keep my eye on the highest priority, which is to communicate clearly and respectfully in order to provide good patient care.

Since I specialize in conditions that impact school functioning, I do a lot of intelligence testing. As I tell parents, there is no be all and end all measure of intelligence or of every type of intelligence. But the tests I use are rigorously developed and evaluated; they are useful in helping answer questions about why children are not doing as well with school as one would expect.

Working at grade level is the expectation. But some children do not work to grade level in many areas. This can be due to a number of things such as learning disability, ADHD (although ADHD does not always impact academic learning), or lower than average intellectual ability. Lower than average intellectual ability includes intellectual disabilities but some children just have lower than average intelligence; in other words, they do not have the degree or pervasiveness of difficulty that we used to call “mental retardation”. And to make matters worse, these students usually struggle in school without special education support because they do not easily fit into one of the special education categories.

The kids who are “merely” below average often fly under the radar. If they have a cooperative nature, work very hard, and gets lots of parent support, they can actually do quite well in school until material gets less concrete and more abstract. These are the kids who start sticking out in adolescence, a time when for most teens, abstract thinking skill development accelerates rapidly. (Alas, if they could apply these higher order thinking skills to making better life decisions…)

I sometimes find myself doing private testing for an early adolescent child who has had a history of learning difficulties, which have accelerated only to learn through testing that the probable reason is low intelligence. Then I have to think about how to share this “bad news”.

There are parts of our society that confuse “goodness” with intelligence. Intelligence is a good thing but it does not make a person good nor does low intelligence make a person “bad”. Most of intelligence appears to be inherited. Another bit is subject to environmental experiences. Most people are average.

When it comes to talking to the parents about the results of these evaluations, it is very difficult to say, “Your child is a very hard worker and is actually doing better in school than we would expect.” That’s not exactly the best news to hear.

So, we do a lot of talking and I do a lot of explaining and placing things into context. I do a lot of talking about what it takes to be a happy and successful person in life, things that are not necessarily related to high intelligence.

But I try to make the challenges clear, too. A lot of kids get yelled at for not doing better at school even though they are working EXTREMELY hard. A lot of kids also need as many educational resources that a school district and family can afford to provide. They are “it takes a village” kids. I have to make my best argument for getting the child as much support as possible but I can’t do that if I gloss over the difficulties.

I wish every child had the same resources and same opportunities but they don’t. It’s my job to try to make sure that they can do their best with the particular package of strengths and challenges that they have. I remind myself of older kids that I see who have beaten the odds and moved mountains. Invariably, they are hard working kids, with parents who have provided early and long lasting support, with supportive teachers and healthcare providers.

Sometimes, but certainly not always, great things can result from the bad news.

Tags children's mental health, May Mental Health Month, psychoeducational testing, psychological testing, school success

Categories Parenting

You all are sweet

May 19, 2014 //

I remember the thrill of discovery when I was in high school German class. There was a second person plural tense, “You all”.

I was raised in the northwest of the U.S. We are considered to have “no accent”, if that is such a thing. In any event, the closest we have to a plural second person is, “You guys.” As a feminist and inclusive person, that convention leaves much to be desired. But when I was learning tenses from Frau Johnson, my high school German teacher, I learned of the miracle of a second person plural tense. How cool was that?

When I moved to the South, I was inundated with this tense, “Y’all.” Again, how cool was that?. But as a person from Seattle, I really couldn’t pull off, “Y’all.” I just didn’t have the cred for that. Although I did acquire a Southern accent while I lived in North Carolina for six years and northern Florida for one year, I thought saying, “Y’all” was not genuine for me. I did not acquire my accent purposefully and it was not a full Southern accent. Throwing out the term, “Y’all” would classify as being a poser. (Yes, I could write “poseur” but since I do not know French, doing so would make me a “poser” twice over.) It was too different from my native dialect.

But I liked the tense. It appealed to my logic as well as my inclusive sensibilities. Consequently, I settled on, “You all.”

Yes, it is pretty nerdy but so am I. And I am not a real Southerner. But I can say, “you all.”

Time and time again I put my feelings and thoughts out on this blog. Sometimes, and rather recently, I have the fear that I am a big whiner. But I also know that many of us do not disclose our complaints, our fears, our anger, or our sadness because we fear that we are to “get over it” by now.

Yesterday, I posted about my anger and my anxiety. It is not overwhelming but it is unpredictable, bothersome, and sometimes scary. A number of you out there, people whom I’ve never met, responded with a great deal of emotional support.

My first response was regret that I had caused you worry. And then I remembered the many times during which I have been happy to offer another support when he/she was having hard times. I remembered that seeking support in each other is not just a part of life but it is also a beautiful part of life.

I have a lot of gratitude and I would like to say to you all. You all are sweet. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Tags Breast Cancer, coping with breast cancer, gratitude, language

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings

Eruption

May 18, 2014 //

May 18, 1980. Eruption of Mt St. Helens. Photo from National Geographic magazine.

As you may already know, Mt. St. Helen’s erupted on this day, 34 years ago. This is a mountain in the Cascade range, one of the two mountain ranges in my state of Washington. I was in the 8th grade when it happened and although the mountain is nearly 200 miles from the city in which I grew up, I could see the ash plume from the home of the neighbor at which I was babysitting.

It was the first time I remember there being a natural disaster near where I lived. Unlike earthquakes, this seismic event could be predicted. The area was evacuated. Nonetheless, there were casualties, people who refused to leave the area. Harry Truman, an elderly man who lived on Spirit Lake, was interviewed prior to the eruption. He stated under no uncertain terms, would he leave the area. He stayed and he died.

What was most upsetting to me was the fact that two children, Day Andrew Karr (aged 11) and Michael Murray Karr (aged 9), were also killed. They actually lived in my town and their father TOOK THEM to see the mountain erupt. A photo of Day Karr’s lifeless and naked body, sitting in the back of a pick up truck was on the cover of a national magazine. I found the photo and planned to put it in this post but honestly, it is still too upsetting to me. The child had not been identified at the time the photo was published. As I recall, Day’s grandmother recognized him when she saw the cover of the NATIONAL MAGAZINE! What a horrible way to identify a body. My mother was asked to sing for the father and the boys’ funeral, which she did.

As I have mentioned, I have been dealing with anger about my cancer in the last few months. And as I have mentioned, anxiety typically underlies my experiences of anger. I feel it bubbling and sometimes it smokes and puffs a little. I have been less patient with my family.

I know that I am not going to blow like Mt. St. Helens. But I can feel something coming and I’m not sure how to prevent it. I can’t evacuate from myself. I keep walking in the woods, meditating, and so forth. I am trying to take care of myself. But this feels like a grief episode and likely increasing in part because next Saturday marks 2 years since my breast cancer diagnosis.

The other waves of grief have been ones I had to ride until I got to the other side. I suspect this will be the same. I can comfort myself with the view of a snow capped Mt. St. Helens that I saw from the airplane on my way back to Seattle from New Orleans. It was part of a beautiful range of mountains.

Tags anger, Breast Cancer, grief, Mt. St. Helens

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings

Let’s go yell at some trees.

May 17, 2014 //

About ten years ago, we planted two trees in front of our house. They were the same size and the same kind of tree, styrax japonicus (Japanese snowbell). We made planting holes of the same size and fertilized the bottom of each hole identically. They receive about the same sun exposure and I watered them in the early summers, the very same amount. Water drainage may be slightly different as one of the trees is a tiny bit uphill from the other.

If those trees were my children, one could say that I loved them equally and that they both came from “good homes”.

This is what they look like:

The first tree is the picture of health. The second tree is about half the size and oddly shaped. This difference became noticeable several years ago. Although the size difference has increased, at least the little tree is looking healthier these days. It is actually going to bloom this year. It didn’t for a few years and I actually wondered if it was going to make it. The leaves, however, are already yellowed with age on the small tree but not the big one even though they have not had leaves for more than a few weeks. When the tree was misshapen and stopped blooming, I sought out advice and gave it extra care and attention. Maybe I’ve actually given that little tree more love than the big tree.

I really don’t understand why the little tree is making such poor life choices. I really don’t understand why it isn’t trying harder. I really don’t understand why that tree doesn’t care enough and isn’t living up to my expectations. Doesn’t it appreciate everything I’ve done for it?

Yes, those are really ridiculous statements about a tree, that for whatever reason outside of its control, has a much harder time growing and thriving than the tree next to it.

However ridiculous those statements are, they are applied to children daily. Yes, I know that children have brains and trees do not. But children are vulnerable and developing beings. They need much care and support.

And you know what else? Some of them, for whatever reasons beyond their control, have a much harder time growing and thriving than others. Some of these reasons have to do with mental health.

An estimated 20% of children and adolescents in the U.S. have at least one diagnosable mental disorder. That’s a lot of people and most of them do not receive mental health services. Most of the children and adolescents in my practice have more than one mental disorder. A lot of the kids I see display behaviors that are frustrating, irritating, and annoying to their parents and teachers. And sometimes the intensity of their misery and lack of thriving is downright scary.

Unfortunately, time and time again, children even the very youngest of them, are blamed for their mental disorder with quick explanations such as, “He is choosing to act that way.” “She just needs to try harder.” “He just doesn’t care.” “She shouldn’t be behaving this way anymore.”

Sometimes those statements are just plain wrong. And sometimes there is truth to them but they are not a solution. People act as though these statements are the final word and nothing is to be done. So I ask, “Why is it so hard for this child to make healthy choices? How can we help?”

I ask, “Why is it so hard for this child to motivate himself? How can we help?”

I ask, “Why is this child not meeting developmental expectations? How can we help?”

A good bit of the time, there are adults around the child who “step up to the plate” to help. They do so despite the amount of parenting stress. They do so despite the unfair number of students in their classrooms. We also need to provide more support to parents, teachers, and the other caregivers who are the most important influences in the early part of children’s lives.

These are very difficult roles that most of us choose to take on in life. Frustration is inevitable. Sadness is inevitable. Confusion is inevitable. But the children are not responsible for the fact that it is harder for them to grow, thrive, and meet our expectations. The fact that their jobs are harder to do often translate to our jobs being harder to do.

After all of these years, my little tree is very much alive and I actually think it is interesting and pretty. I wonder how it would have grown if I’d just yelled at it?

Tags children's mental health, May Mental Health Month, parents, styrax japonicus, teachers, trees, youth mental health

Categories Flora and Fauna, Parenting