Those Child Psychiatrists Down The Hall

I wrote this post last week and took a long pause before publishing, enough of a pause that I convinced myself not to publish it. I often find myself pulled between wanting to share in the struggles of parenting and wanting to provide some possible ways out of the struggle. On the one hand, I know that whatever "answers" I have may or may not be helpful, especially when parents already have so much access to an internet full of suggestions. On the other, how helpful is it to just keep saying how hard this is? After thinking about this all weekend, I decided I needed to remind myself that same as in parenting, I'm not going to get this blog tone right for everyone every time, and if there's someone who needs this particular message today (even if that someone is only me), it'll be the right message to have sent. So, here's the post. Enjoy!

In grad school I took a child psychopathology course that nearly convinced me to go into psychiatric nosology - well, that and watching a lot of episodes of House. The professor was an expert in diagnostic assessment and did an incredible job of making the work of collecting lots of symptoms, compiling data from diagnostic interviews, and flipping through the DSM to find the right diagnosis seem more interesting. Although I was a student in the social work school, she was a researcher at the medical school in the psychiatry department and that’s where she had her office.

I have not needed a lot of the details I learned in that class - critical thinking skills, sure, but I look up diagnoses when I need to in my therapy practice, and most of the time, I’m not dealing with the kinds of things we had to try to differentiate and assess for in that class. The one thing I will not forget, though, is my professor’s comment about the difference between being a remarkable child therapist and being a "normal" parent. She told us: “I share a hall with world-renowned child psychiatrists and I cannot tell you how many times I have had one of them on the couch in my office complaining that they can’t sleep because they have no idea how to get their children out of their bed.”

These world-renowned child psychiatrists knew numerous “interventions” and could have easily told other parents what to do to get children sleeping independently. But when it came to their own children, no one was sleeping.

I wonder about this every time I read a parenting book or see a blog post by a parenting expert: what is the thing that they are complaining to their colleague down the hall about while they finish off their latest book on positive discipline or children’s brains or good parenting?

I’m not trying to disregard or dismiss these experts. Their contributions to the field of child development and mental health, their understandings of brains and behavior and of parents too are all valuable and important. They’ve trained us to think about little kids and advocate for their unique needs in ways that have changed our approaches to infant and early childhood mental health, to early childhood education, to parent support. Just like those child psychiatrists my professor was talking about, I know they’ve helped many people - and I’ve learned some great tools and techniques from them myself.

And at the same time I am reminded that no matter how much knowledge and expertise you have, when it comes time to apply it to your own children, there are some things that just feel different. There are so many reasons why this can be true - your history, your energy, your child’s specific temperament, your knowing you are at some level completely responsible for this kid. The books? They're never going to know all those details. They’re going to tell you “what works” and how and maybe a little why, but only you know yourself and your kid.

You may have heard the expression “you are the expert on your child.” That is absolutely true. And equally true? It’s not as comforting as it sounds like it should be. I often find myself thinking while I run down the street after my children, or (more likely for me) stroll slowly down the sidewalk yelling at them to stop, “if this is what expertise feels like, we are in real trouble.” But the hardest truth among these is that even experts don't know everything - the best experts in any field will tell you how much they know they don't know. Why would parenting be any different?

So, I come back to that child psychopathology professor and think, let’s all find ourselves someone “down the hall” - be that a partner, friend, colleague, therapist, maybe even author - who will let us sit on their couch (real or imaginary) and instead of telling us what we should do, will gently and confidently remind us that even when we aren’t getting any sleep, even when we are full of doubt about our own capacities as parents, we are doing the best we can for our kids, we’re doing what’s right for our family, we are good enough, and we’ll keep figuring it out and adjusting as we go. Or, they’ll let us take a nap on their couch, which might be even better.