I read an article today that was just horrifying. The title alone is scary: Therapy in Preschools: Can It Have Lasting Benefits? Apparently there is a growing trend to have “mental-health services” professionals working with preschool kids. Preschoolers. What?! From the article:
The idea of assigning mental-health workers to child-care centers and preschools is jarring; I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Children so small shouldn't need mental-health help, it seems, and having therapists or counselors working in classrooms seems to risk stigmatizing them with labels, or simply interfering with the innocence of childhood.
However, a growing body of research shows that the programs are benefiting entire classrooms of children by reducing behavior problems and supporting overburdened teachers. The specialists' purpose isn't to diagnose or treat mental illness in individual children. Instead, they provide targeted, expert help to teachers, and sometimes to parents, on ways to interact with children and reorganize classrooms that improve behavior and the emotional climate. In the process, many researchers believe, the specialists may be helping prevent bigger social problems in kids in the future, such as delinquency.
These are things that used to be taught to kids by their parents. They taught their kids to play nicely with siblings and other kids, to be polite, etc. Now we have professionals who step in to correct behavior brought on by very small children being warehoused in daycare centers under the oversight of strangers. I can't even fathom the idea of a therapist trying to teach a preschooler to be nice to others using psychotherapy or something. If my little ones act up, they get a swift swat on the backside to let them know that behavior is not OK. I am utterly unconvinced that trying theapy and rationalization on a preschooler is going to be very effective.
Plus, who is paying for all of this? Specialists like this don't come cheaply. This whole thing smacks of another job creation engine for college grads. Now your three year old needs therapy and counseling because he might fight over a toy with another kid. Hello, we call that childhood and in happier times those situations were dealt with by parents.
Man, how did we survive all of these years without someone giving us therapy, doping us up for our various syndromes and parents actually caring for their own children? It is amazing we aren’t still living in the stone age. It is all a vicious circle. We spend less and less time with our kids and send them to be cared for by someone else. Because of that, behavior problems become worse. In response to that we then seek even more professional help in the form of behavior altering medication and counseling. Around and around it goes.
I have to agree with Lisa Snell here when she is quoted in the article as saying:
Some critics say the programs hit the wrong target. The rising behavior problems spring from too much large-group care for children too early, not from a lack of mental-health support in preschools, says Lisa Snell, education director for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian public policy research concern. "Negative behavior in general seems to be an unintended consequence of every child going to preschool at younger and younger ages."
The issue is not one of preschoolers needing therapy and mental-health services, it is one of large scale warehousing of children by our society, which logically is going to lead to anti-social behavior at young ages when only the most egregious misbehavior is going to garner a response. When we observe deep-seated behavioral issues that we trace back to early childhood, maybe the solution is not more "professional" help, maybe it is parents giving up some baubles and staying home with their children. You know, actually being a parent.
The idea of assigning mental-health workers to child-care centers and preschools is jarring; I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Children so small shouldn't need mental-health help, it seems, and having therapists or counselors working in classrooms seems to risk stigmatizing them with labels, or simply interfering with the innocence of childhood.
However, a growing body of research shows that the programs are benefiting entire classrooms of children by reducing behavior problems and supporting overburdened teachers. The specialists' purpose isn't to diagnose or treat mental illness in individual children. Instead, they provide targeted, expert help to teachers, and sometimes to parents, on ways to interact with children and reorganize classrooms that improve behavior and the emotional climate. In the process, many researchers believe, the specialists may be helping prevent bigger social problems in kids in the future, such as delinquency.
These are things that used to be taught to kids by their parents. They taught their kids to play nicely with siblings and other kids, to be polite, etc. Now we have professionals who step in to correct behavior brought on by very small children being warehoused in daycare centers under the oversight of strangers. I can't even fathom the idea of a therapist trying to teach a preschooler to be nice to others using psychotherapy or something. If my little ones act up, they get a swift swat on the backside to let them know that behavior is not OK. I am utterly unconvinced that trying theapy and rationalization on a preschooler is going to be very effective.
Plus, who is paying for all of this? Specialists like this don't come cheaply. This whole thing smacks of another job creation engine for college grads. Now your three year old needs therapy and counseling because he might fight over a toy with another kid. Hello, we call that childhood and in happier times those situations were dealt with by parents.
Man, how did we survive all of these years without someone giving us therapy, doping us up for our various syndromes and parents actually caring for their own children? It is amazing we aren’t still living in the stone age. It is all a vicious circle. We spend less and less time with our kids and send them to be cared for by someone else. Because of that, behavior problems become worse. In response to that we then seek even more professional help in the form of behavior altering medication and counseling. Around and around it goes.
I have to agree with Lisa Snell here when she is quoted in the article as saying:
Some critics say the programs hit the wrong target. The rising behavior problems spring from too much large-group care for children too early, not from a lack of mental-health support in preschools, says Lisa Snell, education director for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian public policy research concern. "Negative behavior in general seems to be an unintended consequence of every child going to preschool at younger and younger ages."
The issue is not one of preschoolers needing therapy and mental-health services, it is one of large scale warehousing of children by our society, which logically is going to lead to anti-social behavior at young ages when only the most egregious misbehavior is going to garner a response. When we observe deep-seated behavioral issues that we trace back to early childhood, maybe the solution is not more "professional" help, maybe it is parents giving up some baubles and staying home with their children. You know, actually being a parent.
3 comments:
Parents who send their children into the cesspool called public edukation, are the ones that need some therapy.
Suck it up, make some extra sacrifices, and get you kids out of there.
I would imagine that a lot of behavior issues of 3 year old children have more to do with not enough sleep, too much sugary/food dyed cereal, and too much tv. I stayed home with my children when they were young, and I also babysat several children, one thing I found was that the babysitting children were often very tired, they would have to get up early to get to my house, then picked up after Mom or Dad got off work, who then keep the child up too late because they haven't seen them all day. The children were generally given way too many things, lots of new videos, new toys, new clothes, to compensate for the fact that the parents were at work. The children were taken out to eat a lot, so they were eating a lot of junk, again, a side effect of tired parents picking up a tired child and it was easier just to go get something to eat.
A healthy diet, and adequate sleep make for a much happier, more cooperative child. It is a travesty that so many parents feel that they have no choice but to work and send their children to daycare/preschool.
Steve, you need to learn to let loose and say what you think!
Anonymous,
Great comment. Kids aren't wired to get up before dawn. It kills me when i see parents bundling a tiny child still in her jammies off to daycare or a sitter and then watching mom get back in her new car to go to work. What are these people thinking?
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