Suffer the Children - 9780393071597

Eleven-year-old Laura couldn't sit still in class and had trouble sleeping at night. She was taking eight pills a day to treat what her psychiatrist had diagnosed as symptoms of ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Despite the medications, Laura continued to have difficulty focusing and had stopped eating. When she threatened to kill herself, her mother, a loving single parent, became horrified. Where could she turn for help?

As a society, we are accustomed to believe that medication is the solution to the problems of our children, and we accept psychiatric labels for normal childhood behavior. There is a pill for every childhood woe: a pill to curb unruly behavior, a pill to calm irritability, a pill to cure sadness, and a pill to stop mood swings. Yet many parents, educators, and pediatricians have begun to realize that medication is only a quick-fix solution that doesn't last and that, even worse, medication can have dangerous side effects.

In her provocative new book, Suffer the Children, Marilyn Wedge offers a much-needed alternative for parents like Laura's: strategic child-focused family therapy. Family therapy, as practiced by Wedge in her California office, includes meeting with everyone from the child's siblings to her pediatrician. Wedge proposes that, instead of diagnosing and medicating children, we listen to the child and offer solutions that do not involve a psychiatric label and drugs. A normal child may feel sad or bored, but that doesn't mean she has "clinical depression." She may also be rambunctious, as most young children are, without having ADHD and requiring medication.

Wedge shares the stories of children like Laura whom she has treated over the course of her twenty-year career. She explains how a family therapist listens closely to children's stories and creates a strategy to solve their problems in a compassionate way that makes the child feel safe and understood. Wedge discovered through conversations with Laura and her mother that Laura had internalized the problems her mother was having at work. Wedge recommended that her mother start telling Laura about only the happy moments of her days. The change in Laura was dramatic, and slowly she was weaned off her medication.

Instructive and uplifting, Suffer the Children powerfully demonstrates that the key to resolving a child's problem resides in understanding the real events and relationships in a child's life to which her behavioral and emotional problems are a reaction. As parents, health professionals, and a society, we can now respond to our children's problems in a considerate and respectful fashionùand Wedge brilliantly shows us just how easy it can be to understand and implement her path-breaking approach to treatment.