One of the situations I found most challenging working in emergency rooms and urgent care settings was when a teen came in for “medical clearance”. This phrase is code for “a teen in an emotional crisis who may need be having a major psychiatric issue…or not.” My job was look into any possible medical issues of the mood changes and then to call the on-call psychiatric crisis team in for the remainder of the evaluation, if needed…which was the majority of the time.

I recall one 17 year old teenager who had threatened to commit suicide earlier that day.  I remember being struck by two observations: how sad she appeared and how “normal” her family was by all standards. They were basically like any of our neighbors.

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Q)
Dear Dr. Gwenn:

My daughter is 3 ½ years old. I just spent the last year raising her alone while my husband was in Korea. Since we are a military family, our lives change every so often when it has to. Lately our daughter takes up to 3 hours to go to sleep, we have left her by herself and we have to take her back into her room at least 6 times. We’ve tried reading stories in her bed and staying in her room until she falls asleep. On occasion, she has lain in our bed for hours before falling asleep.

During the evening struggles, she often throws fits and kicks and screams. I need help!!! This is affecting my marriage and now I have become one of those mothers that I didn’t want to become with a spoiled child. Please help!!!

Thank you,
Rebecca

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Many children are lucky – they live with at least one of their natural parents. But, what if a child can’t live with mom or dad? What if circumstances dictate that a child must be removed from the home to live with relatives, friends or a foster parent? If you are having trouble creating a mental image or even coming up with the words, you need to read “Finding The Right Spot” by Janice Levy. It fills just the right spots of this challenging topic in just the right way for kids and adults.

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It’s an all too familiar scenario these days. One minute we are happily going about our lives and the next we hear that another unexpected horrible world event has occurred. I knew immediately by the expression on my husband’s face that something in the world was amiss. I quickly went to turn off the TV news but it was too late – my ten year old daughter had already heard that there were explosions in London. “Was it as bad as 9/11? Do you think they’ll catch the bad guys this time?”

Good questions with difficult answers. These events shatter not only our feeling of security in the world but our hopes our children’s futures. Luckily, children are not small adults and their lack of life experience actually protects them in many ways from all the concerns we focus on when we hear that about a tragic event. Children of all ages really only need reassurance about the integrity of their own worlds, their own safety, and the safety of those they know and love. They still have that wonderful leap that everything will turn out fine – especially if we, their parents, tell them that it will. Continue Reading

Disney movies have a wonderful way of providing something for everyone but are sometimes criticized for content that may be too overwhelming for children – parents dying, natural disasters, and sickness in a friend or loved one. I was particularly sensitive to these very issues when my children were younger and would simply fast-forward through “questionable” scenes. Eventually my kids started insisting on watching movies without interruptions regardless of content. What’s interesting is my kids did fine with the movies we felt were “too intense” but had a tough time with movies we assumed would be more low-keyed. For example, in Bambi, my oldest daughter figured out at age 5 that Bambi’s mother was now gone but told us that Bambi would be ok because his daddy and Flower were around to help. In contrast, when my youngest daughter was 3 she cried uncontrollably in Elmo in Grouchland because Elmo’s favorite blanket was lost. She had a much loved blanket at the time called “kiki” which she still has. The parallel to her life was just too intense for her whereas my older daughter was more able to process a tough topic because her life was not at all like Bambi’s – her mom and dad were right there watching the movie with her. Continue Reading