Renowned Irish child psychiatrist visits West Cork to talk to parents and teachers - West Cork People, June 2, 2006

Renowned Irish child psychiatrist, Dr Vincent Maloney, author of ‘Parents Under Pressure’ and ‘Coping With Adolescence’ has built up a reputation nationwide for speaking with sound common sense on the problems associated with child-rearing.

Mary O’Brien caught up with Dr Maloney recently when he visited Dunmanway in West Cork to talk to parents and teachers.

Dr Maloney initially trained as a doctor before branching into child psychiatry, which he says is an area he became fascinated with. “I worked with children and adults who weren’t psychiatrically ill, but who had problems organising their lives and coping with conditions like dyslexia. I became fascinated with this area and the working of the brain,” says Dr Maloney. Dr Maloney began giving talks over 20 years ago to parents of children with reading difficulties. Today, his lectures deal with the day-to-day difficulties most parents face.

At his lecture to parents in Dunmanway, Dr Maloney spoke about rearing children without spoiling them, the general development of children, the milestones that they go through, how children with special needs fit in with the normal development and how we set normal developmental goals for them as they go on. He also pointed out the problems that happen with the normal developmental milestones, for instance, temper tantrums.

One of Dr Maloney’s lectures is called ‘The Ten Commandments of Child Rearing’. The first of these ten commandments is, ‘Blame the Behaviour, Not the Child’. “We constantly say things to our children like ‘you’re the boldest child in the whole world’, or ‘you’re the stupidest’ — you should never ever say that,” says Dr Maloney adamantly. What you should say is, ‘you’re a good or intelligent child, but that’s a bold thing you did’. Dr Maloney explains the reasoning behind this. “It is easy to change what you do, but not what you are. If you’re intrinsically bold or stupid, it’s very difficult to change that. If you continuously tell a child that they’re bold or stupid, you undermine their self-esteem and that is one of the most unhealthy things you can do to a child.”

Dr Maloney believes that if a parent gives a child conditional love and says ‘I love you because you’re a good child’, or ‘I love you because you did that’, this can ruin a child. “Our love for our children should be unconditional — you may not like what they do, but you love your child. Saying ‘I only love because you’re good’ is a recipe for disaster,” he says. He advises parents to listen to their children in order to see where they are coming from.

The Temper Tantrum is a nightmare for most parents. What to do or how to cope with the dreaded tantrum can perturb anyone, especially if it takes place in public.

“If a child has a temper tantrum in a public place,” says Dr Maloney “you have to cut it short because there is a public awareness and the child can make a show of you. When children with special needs have a temper tantrum, people will notice them, whereas they won’t notice other children, because they look different. In public, to put it simply you have to pick them up and shut them up. If it happens at home, you manage it in a totally different way. You let the child go through the temper tantrum and watch that the child doesn’t harm him/herself. What children will learn from this is self-calming in their own body.” Dr Maloney explains that a temper tantrum in a child is the same as a stress reaction in an adult. “You get the fight or flight reaction and we as adults have to keep our temper under control. If a child has a temper tantrum, they feel themselves going up to ninety. But they can only go up so high and then they flatten off and calm down. After a while, they get to know their own body and can feel it going up and down. They learn how to calm themselves down when they get stressed.” According to Dr Maloney, very often a child will prolong a tantrum because they are given attention. “You cannot ignore bad behaviour and promote good behaviour,” he says “what yo u should do is de-emphasie the bad behaviour and promote the good behaviour.”

As the proverb goes, it’s a case of ‘the straw that breaks the camels back’. “It’s the same for anyone: If you had a lot of worries during the day, come home and somebody says something to you, you can just lose it and your reaction is much greater than it should be.

Very often with small children or children with special needs, they can lose their temper much quicker because all of the pressures are coming in from everywhere. If you put the child in to a quiet area, this reduces the amount of stimulation and helps the child to calm down,” explains Dr Maloney. One of the rules with the quiet area is that it should only be for a short time. “Two minutes sitting on the step is enough. Afterwards, bring the child inside and forget about it. Touch gives children security, whereas talk gives them attention, so put your arms around the child and give them affection.”

Another situation that faces every parent is what to do when your child ignores you. For example, when the child, when asked, won’t switch off the TV at bedtime, what do you do? Dr Maloney advises parents to manage this type of situation by following through with what they say to the child. “The important principal of management is that, you say it, you mean it and you do it. Saying something and not following through with it is a major mistake made by many parents,” says Dr Maloney. “If a child chooses to ignore a parent when they are told it’s time for bed and they need to switch off the TV, Dr Maloney advises parents to do the following: The next night, 30 minutes before bedtime, you tell the child the length of time they have left before bedtime, you then remind them at 15 minutes, five minutes and one minute — this way you are warning them beforehand so they are preparing themselves. Then it’s bedtime. If they don’t respond, you take them by the hand or lift them up and bring them to bed.”

Dr Vincent reckons (if both parents are together) the most important thing they can do for their child is to love one another. “If the parents form a good bond, it will automatically rub off on the child,” he explains. “Tragically, this is less and less common now. Having done that, if you find your child doing right, it’s important to recognise it. For example, after dinner, if the child simply takes the cup off the table and puts it into the dishwasher, he/she should be complimented for doing it.”

Another important aspect of rearing a child according to Dr Maloney is encouraging good manners. “Good manners really makes for good society and is very important for parents to encourage manners in a child,” he says. “It’s good for children to have respect for people. It’s an awareness of somebody else other than themselves.”

When it comes to television, video games and mobile phones, Dr Maloney advises parents to be very careful. “I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any TV or video games, but that the time should be limited,” says Dr Maloney. “ Parents should take out the TV times at the start of the week and let the children decide what they want to watch. This way, the children control the TV, it doesn’t control them.”

Dr Maloney strongly suggests that parents, who have given their children mobile phones, take the phones off the children when they go to bed. “The amount of bullying that is going on through text messaging is unbelievable,” says Dr Maloney. “It goes on during the day too, but at least it’s bright and there are people around. At 2 o’clock in the morning, it’s terrifying for the child.”

Dr Maloney advises parents to bring structure to their children’s lives. “I don’t agree with giving children a free rein to do whatever they want,” Children need parents and they need parents who structure their lives for them. It’s a recipe for disaster when parents let children do what they want and don’t have any rules for them.”

Communication between parent and child is also very important. “Instructions from parents should be short and to the point,” recommends Dr Maloney “If you lower your voice, children are more likely to listen to you…. and don’t discuss behaviour in the middle of a crisis. The less you talk to the child at the time, the better.”

Raising a child at all is a very difficult job — it’s 24-hours a day, 7 days a week and it can be especially difficult for single parents, who don’t have any support. “When one person, on his/her own, is doing practically the entire parenting job by his/herself, it is very tiring. It’s important for parents to have time to themselves and build up their own psychological resources,” says Dr Maloney.

According to Dr Maloney, in a family with two parents, discipline should be shared, especially if the parents are separated. “The parents should have rules set out that they both agree on concerning the children,” he says.

It’s also important to relax and have fun with your children. Dr Maloney’s ninth commandment is ‘Make Memories with your Children’. One type of memories are family customs or traditions. “Long ago, it might have been that every one was bathed on a Saturday night or might have been that on a certain day of the year, there was a day off to pick the potatoes,” he explains. “Children will remember these things forever.” The other memories are special events or out-of-the-ordinary things. “For instance, says Dr Maloney “some night at about 10 or 11 o’clock, you might wake the children up and take them out to see what it’s like in the dark on a summer’s night or it might be to watch a fireworks display. This forms the autobiographical memory — the memory of important things in your life.”

In Dunmanway, Dr Maloney spoke to teachers about the problems that can arise, both in learning and behavioural areas, for a child with special needs in the context of a regular national school. According to Dr Maloney, one of the most common problems in this situation is the special needs child’s ability to pay attention, to sit down within the classroom and to take part in the lessons as they are being taught. “ Teachers need to look at the amount of language a child has, how much they can understand and how much they are able to say. When a teacher is speaking to a child with special needs, they may need to slow down the input in order to allow the child time to process the material,” says Dr Maloney. “The second thing that teachers need to be aware of is that many children with special needs have excellent abilities to watch things and copy. If the teacher demonstrates slowly what they want the child to do, the child will retain that information forever. That is one of the areas, where I find that children with special needs are probably better than many other children.”

Dr Maloney advises teachers, when it comes to behaviour, to be just as strict with the child with special needs as they are with other children. “In other words”, says Dr Maloney “we don’t want special needs children to have a behavioural problem when they grow up. The teacher should have expectations of their behaviour with other children and if they fight, they should be corrected in exactly the same way as other children.

Dr Maloney also highlights the importance of the role of the special needs assistant. “The special needs assistant has a very important function in taking care of the child’s personal hygiene and toileting. It’s important for the children to do it themselves, but the assistant should do a quality check to make sure they’re ok. When they go out in the playground, the assistant becomes a facilitator between normal children and children with special needs, until the children are able to do it themselves.”

According to Dr Maloney, one of the things we’re constantly seeing, from a social point of view, is that children with special needs are very affectionate. “They like people and they can come into your space without being aware of it,” explains Dr Maloney. “We need to teach them awareness of who they can go to and who they shouldn’t, for their own safety. They need to know the differences between public space, social space and personal space.”

According to Dr Maloney, it is essential that backup be provided for both teachers and parents when placing special needs children in a regular school. “I think it’s terrible to provide an assistant and then withdraw them before everybody is satisfied that they can be withdrawn,” says Dr Maloney.

The father of four sons, Dr Maloney regularly draws on his own family experiences as examples during his lectures. He credits his wife Nuala with teaching him a lot of what he knows today about rearing children. This and his own experiences every day working with young people and keeping up-to-date with new research keeps Dr Maloney very informed on the problems associated with child-rearing. “I learn a huge amount from discussing and interacting with the people who attend my lectures,” he says. “Everybody has a contribution to make and my job is to bring all the contributions together, summarise them and give this information out to other people