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BPS Presidential Address 2001 CITATION: Bhatawdekar M. Modern parenthood through the eyes of a psychiatrist. Mens Sana Monogr 2015;13:125-133.
Modern Parenthood through the Eyes of a Psychiatrist* Manoj Bhatawdekar**
ABSTRACT
Child Psychiatry has always described disorders of childhood. Parents form an important dimension of Child Psychiatry since they present the child’s behaviour before the therapist. Modern life is full of increasing competition among children, thereby increasing stress among children as well as parents. Modern parents are overly aware, concerned and anxious about their children’s future. As a result children get under the pressure of comparison, competition, ambition and goal-setting. All this typically results in the vicious cycle of parental pressures, miscommunication, generation gap etc. No textbook gives clear-cut guidelines about practical aspects of parenting, which is more an art than a science. Dealing with parents in therapy has to take into consideration their psychological make-up and the way it relates with the child. For professionals it is important to empathise with the parents in therapy and at times to share their own experiences of parenting. Key Words: Ambition; Childhood; Competition; Generation gap; Goal-setting; Kahlil Gibran; Life; Parental pressures; Parenting Peer reviewer for this paper: Anon
**MD. BPS President 2001-2002. Address correspondence to: Dr Manoj Bhatawdekar, G/9, Bimanagar, Sir M. V. Road, Andheri (East), Mumbai - 400 069, Maharashtra, India. E-mail: [email protected] *Revised and updated version of BPS Presidential Address delivered in April 2001 Received 16 Dec 2014. Corrected 3, 14 Jan, 22 Feb 2015. Accepted 23 Feb 2015 Access this article online Quick Response Code: Website: www.msmonographs.org
DOI: 10.4103/0973-1229.153319
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Mens Sana Monographs, Vol. 13(1), Jan - Dec 2015
Introduction It gives me immense pleasure to welcome you all to this gathering. Being a President of the Bombay Psychiatric Society gives me an opportunity to introspect, to witness my own past and also to share some of my insights with you. The seeds of what I am today as a psychiatrist were sown in my days in the Department of Psychiatry, KEM Hospital. All my teachers there were competent, each endowed with unique abilities. I learnt a lot from Dr. Doongaji, Dr. L. P. Shah, Dr. P.V. Pradhan, Dr. Ashit Sheth, and Dr. P. D. Lakdawalla. They not only trained me to develop an excellent clinical approach but also inspired me to inculcate within me their own qualities of giving, sharing and teaching. After getting out of KEM Hospital, I started private practice. It was like opening the doors to a new world but with no map. The very little inputs in Child Psychiatry had got me interested in the subject. I discovered that it was a challenging field: allowing scope for various drug and non-drug treatments, many of them off-beat and unconventional. It was a field which allowed one’s own creative potential to grow and flourish, and also kept the child within alive.
Children and Their Parents I like children. I like to work with them. However, an inevitable component of Child Psychiatry is the parents. One cannot work with children alone. One has to deal with parents, who can either be facilitators or obstacles in the treatment of a child. They bring the child for treatment, they give the presenting complaints, they paint the child’s picture - positive or negative; and the clinician has to sort out the true colours of the child from the pseudo-colours often painted by the parents (See also this issue pgs 31-46). Psychiatric literature is replete with references to different aspects of parenthood, bio-psycho-social, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5) classification mentions several categories of disorders of childhood (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).[1] Let us see how this helps in handling children’s problems. Recently I saw a 5-year-old child attending six kinds of classes-General Knowledge, drawing, yoga, tabla, karate and swimming. He was brought by his mother with complaints of irritability. The mother, incidentally, was a postgraduate in human development. She wanted him to develop into an all-rounder; and wanted to get his IQ/EQ/CQ and SQ done. I felt like telling her–return your degree! The only diagnostic term I could think of was ‘Overanxious disorder of parenthood’ which is conspicuous by its absence in the DSM classification. I am sure all psychiatrists see varieties of the same syndrome in varying degrees day in and day out. MSM : www.msmonographs.org
Manoj Bhatawdekar, (2015), Modern parenthood: Psychiatrist’s view
127
I have had the opportunity to work for the past 14 years as an honorary psychiatrist at a parents and Child Guidance Centre run by a social institution in Vile-Parle, Mumbai, and also with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation for the past 8 years. I have learnt my Child Psychiatry and ‘Parent’ Psychiatry (as I call it) in these two places. I interact with not
BPS Presidential Address 2001 CITATION: Bhatawdekar M. Modern parenthood through the eyes of a psychiatrist. Mens Sana Monogr 2015;13:125-133.
Modern Parenthood through the Eyes of a Psychiatrist* Manoj Bhatawdekar**
ABSTRACT
Child Psychiatry has always described disorders of childhood. Parents form an important dimension of Child Psychiatry since they present the child’s behaviour before the therapist. Modern life is full of increasing competition among children, thereby increasing stress among children as well as parents. Modern parents are overly aware, concerned and anxious about their children’s future. As a result children get under the pressure of comparison, competition, ambition and goal-setting. All this typically results in the vicious cycle of parental pressures, miscommunication, generation gap etc. No textbook gives clear-cut guidelines about practical aspects of parenting, which is more an art than a science. Dealing with parents in therapy has to take into consideration their psychological make-up and the way it relates with the child. For professionals it is important to empathise with the parents in therapy and at times to share their own experiences of parenting. Key Words: Ambition; Childhood; Competition; Generation gap; Goal-setting; Kahlil Gibran; Life; Parental pressures; Parenting Peer reviewer for this paper: Anon
**MD. BPS President 2001-2002. Address correspondence to: Dr Manoj Bhatawdekar, G/9, Bimanagar, Sir M. V. Road, Andheri (East), Mumbai - 400 069, Maharashtra, India. E-mail: [email protected] *Revised and updated version of BPS Presidential Address delivered in April 2001 Received 16 Dec 2014. Corrected 3, 14 Jan, 22 Feb 2015. Accepted 23 Feb 2015 Access this article online Quick Response Code: Website: www.msmonographs.org
DOI: 10.4103/0973-1229.153319
126
Mens Sana Monographs, Vol. 13(1), Jan - Dec 2015
Introduction It gives me immense pleasure to welcome you all to this gathering. Being a President of the Bombay Psychiatric Society gives me an opportunity to introspect, to witness my own past and also to share some of my insights with you. The seeds of what I am today as a psychiatrist were sown in my days in the Department of Psychiatry, KEM Hospital. All my teachers there were competent, each endowed with unique abilities. I learnt a lot from Dr. Doongaji, Dr. L. P. Shah, Dr. P.V. Pradhan, Dr. Ashit Sheth, and Dr. P. D. Lakdawalla. They not only trained me to develop an excellent clinical approach but also inspired me to inculcate within me their own qualities of giving, sharing and teaching. After getting out of KEM Hospital, I started private practice. It was like opening the doors to a new world but with no map. The very little inputs in Child Psychiatry had got me interested in the subject. I discovered that it was a challenging field: allowing scope for various drug and non-drug treatments, many of them off-beat and unconventional. It was a field which allowed one’s own creative potential to grow and flourish, and also kept the child within alive.
Children and Their Parents I like children. I like to work with them. However, an inevitable component of Child Psychiatry is the parents. One cannot work with children alone. One has to deal with parents, who can either be facilitators or obstacles in the treatment of a child. They bring the child for treatment, they give the presenting complaints, they paint the child’s picture - positive or negative; and the clinician has to sort out the true colours of the child from the pseudo-colours often painted by the parents (See also this issue pgs 31-46). Psychiatric literature is replete with references to different aspects of parenthood, bio-psycho-social, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5) classification mentions several categories of disorders of childhood (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).[1] Let us see how this helps in handling children’s problems. Recently I saw a 5-year-old child attending six kinds of classes-General Knowledge, drawing, yoga, tabla, karate and swimming. He was brought by his mother with complaints of irritability. The mother, incidentally, was a postgraduate in human development. She wanted him to develop into an all-rounder; and wanted to get his IQ/EQ/CQ and SQ done. I felt like telling her–return your degree! The only diagnostic term I could think of was ‘Overanxious disorder of parenthood’ which is conspicuous by its absence in the DSM classification. I am sure all psychiatrists see varieties of the same syndrome in varying degrees day in and day out. MSM : www.msmonographs.org
Manoj Bhatawdekar, (2015), Modern parenthood: Psychiatrist’s view
127
I have had the opportunity to work for the past 14 years as an honorary psychiatrist at a parents and Child Guidance Centre run by a social institution in Vile-Parle, Mumbai, and also with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation for the past 8 years. I have learnt my Child Psychiatry and ‘Parent’ Psychiatry (as I call it) in these two places. I interact with not
