Difficult Child

What Do You Mean, He’s Normal?

If you have a truly difficult child, you may have wondered if he could behave the way he does and still be “normal.”

I strongly believe that you don’t have to be average in order to be normal. Nor are you abnormal simply because you are difficult. To me, abnormality implies the presence of a clear diagnosable disorder. Human beings are all different, and a great variety of characteristics and behaviors falls well into the range of normality. 

Take, for example, three equally intelligent and motivated 8-year-olds sitting down to homework. One will work evenly and with good concentration; the second will have trouble getting started, but once he does, will be so persistent that it’s hard to get him to stop; the third child will jump right in without any hesitation but will then be easily distracted and work in fits and starts. None of these three behavioral styles is more “normal” than the other. They are simply different. 

There are many more difficult children than you might suspect. The New York Longitudinal Study identified 10 percent of the normal children they studied as difficult. Furthermore, the authors did not include high activity level, distractibility, negative persistence, and low sensory threshold in their definition of a difficult child. Estimating conservatively, another 10 percent of children would be difficult because of these characteristics. Thus, we can arrive at a rough estimate that some 20 percent of all children under the age of 6 are temperamentally difficult and hard to raise. Based on current census figures, this means that between three and four million young children in the United States are difficult. And if we introduce the concept of basically an easy child with some difficult traits, we are talking about many, many more.

The Temperamentally Difficult Child

In a general way, any child can be assessed in each area as follows:

Depending on how many areas of temperament fall on the difficult end of the spectrum and to what extent the resulting behavior poses a problem for the parents, any given family may be dealing with a child who is: 

• Basically easy but with some difficult features: The parents are coping but may need to learn some management techniques and principles of discipline.
• Difficult: The child is hard to raise, and there is strain on the mother and usually on the family.
• Very difficult: Both the child and the family are in trouble.
• Impossible, a “mother-killer”: This graphically descriptive term says it all.

What Causes A Difficult Temperament?

No one knows for sure what the cause is. There is definitely a genetic factor, as in the transmission of hearing or eye color. I often ask parents of a difficult child to ask their own parents, “What was I like as a child?” They have been surprised to hear their mothers and fathers identify in them traits similar to those they have perceived in their offspring. This would seem to indicate that inheritance plays a role, and research on identical twins supports this conclusion, although we cannot say that there is a direct transmittal of each and every characteristic from parent to child. 

It is also now quite clear that many personality traits have a biological component. Nature, we are starting to realize, is every bit as important as nurture. Genetic influences, brain chemistry, and neurological development contribute strongly to who we are as children and what we become as adults. For example, tendencies to excessive worrying or timidity, leadership qualities, risk-taking, and obedience to authority all appear to have a constitutional aspect. 

The role of factors during the pregnancy is not clear. With highly active children, particularly those diagnosed as having “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” one finds a somewhat greater incidence of pregnancy and delivery complications. And a high percentage of such children are boys. All other types of difficult children are as likely to be girls as boys. There is no correlation between temperament and intelligence. Difficult children may be low, average, bright, or superior in their intellectual functioning. Nor is there any correlation with birth order or social class. 

An intriguing association, not fully researched as yet, is between difficult temperament and allergies, particularly food allergies. A certain number of difficult infants are allergic to milk. Later on, they tend to have more ear and throat infections. Some parents notice a correlation between episodes of particularly difficult behavior and eating certain foods, especially those containing a lot of sugar or artificial additives. While the claims of the committed advocates of dietary approaches are generally viewed as exaggerated by the medical profession, many physicians believe in the link between nutrition and behavior, and certainly, no one can argue with protecting our children from chemicals, pesticides, and other pollutants, and providing them with a diet most conducive to their healthy development.

Uneven neurological development may also be a factor. While most children do not always mature evenly, difficult children are usually more uneven. They may be very grown up, even advanced, in some ways – yet often act babyish and immature, leading to a general tendency to overreact. Impulse control, which depends on the maturation of certain parts of the brain, is often poor in highly active, difficult children. Irregular sleep rhythms, late development of bladder control, and somewhat uneven language and learning skills development are not uncommonly seen in difficult children. Many of these children impress me as “high-strung,” skittish like finely bred racehorses. They are like this from an early age, often from infancy. All these features have to do with a child’s neurophysiology. 

I strongly recommend to parents, however, that they not become obsessed with the search for causes. The main thing for you to remember is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the way you parent your child causes his difficult temperament. Whatever the contributing factors, all children, including the difficult ones, are individuals not only in their physical characteristics and abilities but in their temperaments as well. 

Do You Mean My Child Isn’t Doing This On Purpose?

Precisely. Your child isn’t being “bad” in order to “get” you. Unfortunately, it’s common for parents to attribute motives to their children, especially if they are bewildered by the child’s behavior. Lois, a young mother, felt extremely anxious each night when she made dinner because she never knew if her daughter Marcie would eat the meal or not. Lois began to believe the harder she worked to prepare something her daughter liked, the quicker Marcie would reject the food, on purpose, because she knew her mother had worked so hard. Lois had not noticed, however, that toward the end of each day Marcie was hungry at a different hour – one night at 7:00 P.M., the next night at 9:00 P.M., the following afternoon at 4:00 P.M.  Marcie’s irregular appetite prevented her from sitting down each night at the same time, hungry. She wasn’t trying to thwart her mother; she simply did not want to eat each night at 6:00 P.M. Of course, if Lois made a big fuss at mealtimes over whether Marcie sat down and ate her food, resulting in either bribery or a major fight, Marcie would come to see that not eating could be used as a tool to get her own way, and motivation would enter the picture. 

The Vicious Circle

Difficult children tend to get locked into certain behavior patterns but so do parents in response to the difficult behavior. This kind of repeated negative interaction may cause these traits in the child to become more pronounced.

Take another case, that of a small boy, Evan, who expressed an interest in owning a pair of roller skates and learning to skate. His father, eager to please Evan because the child normally did not express much pleasure or delight in anything, went out of his way to go to several stores and buy the most expensive, flashy skates he could find. When he brought the gift home and presented it to his son, Evan took it to his room with scarcely any response. The father was furious. “How can he do this to me! I went to four stores, and I bought him the best skates in the city”. His son, in response to this outburst from his father, threw the skates on the floor and started to scream and cry. The father failed to realize that his son’s disposition is due to his negative mood and that a mild expression of pleasure from this child is equal to another child crowing with delight. Evan is not doing this on purpose because his father went into a lot of trouble. This is Evan. But if his father continues to get angry, eventually, Evan’s negative mood will be exaggerated by his father’s response.

Difficult children, through their behavior, create a “ripple effect” in their environment. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the child’s impact spreads in widening circles, affecting first the mother, the rest of the family, then the rest of his environment, like the extended family, neighbors, peers, and the school, although these effects are less intense as the circles spread wider.

However, not only do difficult children affect their environment, but they in turn, are themselves affected by the responses of significant people around them. Not understanding their difficult child’s behavior, parents cannot fall back on well-known methods of child-rearing and discipline. Mothers become angry and guilty. Parents lose their authority. Ineffective discipline accentuates even further the child’s difficult behavior, in turn increasing the power struggles. Eventually, the whole family becomes involved in the vicious circle, and to some extent, so can other people who interact with the difficult child.  

Wear and Tear

How does this affect the child? Here, the concept of “wear and tear” is useful. As a result of the continuing friction, the child may develop certain secondary problems. A difficult child can become clinging and fearful. He may have frequent nightmares or, in general, behave as if his feelings are easily hurt. Or he may act angry or spoiled much of the time.

Of most concern to me is the problem some of these children can develop with self-image. They behave as if they don’t like themselves; they may actually say, “I’m bad.” Lower self-image may also show in other ways. Some children are too focused on winning or “coming out on top”; they often cheat at games. They are perfectionistic and easily frustrated. They can become very upset with themselves over small mistakes or show great disappointment at minor setbacks. Paradoxically “spoiled” children, who behave like little tyrants at home, usually have low self-esteem. 

Such behavior is not determined by temperament but is frequently found in poorly managed difficult children. Once parents alter their management and the family atmosphere relaxes, this wear-and-tear behavior usually improves. In other words, it occurs in reaction to the vicious circle and is not indicative of deeper emotional problems. 

However, if the vicious circle continues, eventually, the child will be affected at a deeper level, and it is precisely these later emotional and behavioral problems that one is trying to prevent. 

Hope this helps!

Gayane Zakaryan
Head Rehabilitation Services
«ArBes»