Be wary of media definition of 'normal'
By Joel Wade, Ph.D.
I had the unfortunate experience recently of watching Connie Chung's 20/20 piece on "selective mutism." While the research she discusses was not bad, the way it was presented and dramatized, and the conclusions that she came to, were very, very disturbing.
Through the power of television, the impression one gets is that this behavior is something to be really scared of as a parent, and that in order to deal with children who do not talk in certain settings, the only remedies are to put them through behavioral psychotherapy and/or put them on drugs. The tone was very grim.
Denial of a problem is not helpful to anyone. Selective mutism is a real phenomenon, and it is, of course, useful and important to identify and intervene in painful circumstances. If we can help our kids to deal with difficult situations, and deal with them early, that's all to the good. But there is an underlying and insidious message here, one that has become pervasive in the media--and it is having a powerful effect on our culture.
If we were to depend solely on the media for our information about the world, we would think that there is but a narrow band of behavior, "normal" behavior, that is acceptable for existence. Either a child can be too rambunctious, therefore "hyperactive" or "ADHD" (and in need of medication), or a child can be too quiet or shy, therefore "anxiety disordered" (and in need of medication). Ritalin and Prozac are being distributed to our children like candy at Grandma's house.
One of my first clients, when I was a young intern, was a junior high school kid who was having problems at school. I sat in on his classes; I met with his teachers; I talked with his mom; I spent time hanging out with him and talking about all kinds of things. In context, the problems he was having made sense to me. I talked with his teachers about what they could do to help--some were open to this, some were not.
One of the things that was hurting him was a particular fear. His father had been diagnosed as manic-depressive, and placed on medication. Although lithium for manic-depression can be very useful, this boy was terrified that he would be diagnosed as "crazy," and put on medication like his father. And this fear was one of the factors driving his behavior.
After a couple of months, the school counselor referred him to a psychiatrist, who put him on Ritalin. His deepest fears were realized, and I never saw him again. Now, it is possible to accurately diagnose and treat ADD with biofeedback or drugs, and 2 percent to 3 percent of the population actually has ADD; but this boy was not one of them. And he is not alone, not by a longshot.
The medium is indeed the message--we are diagnosing ourselves out of existence, and into the one-dimensional world of television and the illusion of "normality." I am reminded of George Lucas' film THX-1138, which shows a society in which everyone is on medication, and it is illegal to refuse to take your medication lest you see the world as it is. The hero does just that, in a courageous feat that we would do well to emulate by turning off our TVs and tossing them off the nearest cliff.
I would encourage anyone who feels either disturbed by this homogenizing trend, or particularly anyone who feels at all persuaded or compelled by this trend, to explore the work of Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas on temperament. There is a very broad range of perfectly normal behavior that can be understood in terms of the temperament styles with which one is born.
These temperaments can include a slowness or quickness to warm up to new situations or people, a tendency toward tremendous or very little physical activity, intensity of emotional reaction, sensitivity to stimuli from the environment, and five other categories of temperament. These are not broken qualities that need to be fixed; rather, they are an expression of the broad range and depth of the human experience.
They are the height, weight, skin tone and hair color of psychology --don't get me started on what the media tell us about our physical qualities. Through acceptance and understanding of these temperaments, through respecting the individuality of each one of us --particularly our children--we benevolently affect the range and breadth of choices a given person has around their temperament.
By panicking, by rushing in to "fix" our children's temperament, drugging them or manipulating them into conformity with our media's ideal, we polarize and rigidify our children's temperament, thus creating a vicious cycle which does create a problem. It is a problem of teaching our children to deny their nature, to disown themselves, to fear their own internal experience, and to respect the authority of others over their own sense of themselves.
This is the most tragic and dangerous intervention that we can impose on our children--tragic in that it encourages us to be our children's (or our own) worst enemy; dangerous in that it encourages fearfulness, self-doubt, self-distrust and mindless conformity to an authority--in this case, a very dubious authority indeed.
Rather than panic, rather than toting your child off to the nearest psychiatrist at the first sign of individuality, use any signs of uniqueness, whether delightful or difficult, as an opportunity to get to know your child, not as a specimen, but a person. Read Chess and Thomas, explore what your own temperament style is, and what your children's temperament style is, and then work to create a "good fit" between yourselves.
In particular, work to accept your children as they are, and to help them to learn to accept all of who they are, to explore their own experience and to trust themselves.
As the Quakers would say, "Everyone holds a piece of the truth." In a similar vein, we each have our own unique style as individuals as well. Let us not drug this out of our species in the name of fitting into that bland box that we keep in the living room.
Joel Wade is a marriage and family therapist in Los Gatos.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
