Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

That most children should be able to read when beginning kindergarten is well known by psychologists though this depends on their earlier experience. Parents should begin reading to their toddlers about the age of 2 1/2, having them sit beside them and running the parent's finger along the lines as they read. If done, most children will be able to read simple books by the time they start school.

They do this by using the same inborn cognitive mechanism that they used to learn the grammatical structure of the language of the country into which they were born. Thus a child born in Spain naturally learns to speak Spanish and a child born in France naturally learns to speak French, not by memorizing the placement of one word after the other which would be impossible, but by inducting the grammatical structure of the language. Similarly, a young child, if provided a helpful experience with reading, will induct its nature and learn to read.

No expensive gadgets are necessary for this critical childhood achievement, just simple books and willing parents. Try it.

"You don't live forever" is a well-worn phrase though one which isn't thought by the emotionally ill for whom daily survival is priority. The unconscious is powerful and prioritizes pain reduction above all else, reality and self-awareness being secondary. Its powerful weapons of anxiety and fear hone and direct behavior at the ignoring of the reality which is obvious to others.

An organized sense of self, sense of who one is, which originates with the childhood experience of a "good-enough" parenting, is needed to experience time passing and wasted years. Like the addict whose world has become reduced to gaining their next "fix" or those surviving a mortal illness, the sensing of time has become absent. Only with greater health can they rejoin the universal human quest for individual fulfillment.

The destructive power of loneliness has long been recognized. Lengthy solitary confinement, even when needed to insure the safety of others, has been condemned as torture, and it is not unknown for a spouse to die soon after the death of their beloved. Humans are social beings and suffer when isolated. While a newborn could not survive on their own an adult can for they have other capacities: imagination can transform a solitary existence into a happier time and productive work can grant life meaning.

Coping with the memory of past mistakes is painful too. Forgiveness may be divine but is not easy, and more so when one is socially isolated. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal described the murder suicide of a Connecticut technology executive who, after a lengthy marriage which ended in divorce, lived with his mother. Suffering from substance abuse and mental health problems he found a friend in his Artificial Intelligence companion who exuded sympathetic and reassured his views, feeling less isolated as he became more delusional. While suicide has complex roots and, as has been said, is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, murder/suicide reflects both anger and unconsciously forcing the suicide that is believed deserved because of feelings of worthless, of being unworthy of life.

Relationships are not easy and their absence can devastate but allowing oneself to hope can reduce suffering since memories of survived pains and earlier joys do persist in the recesses of one's mind.

The greatest danger of poor psychotherapy is not its waste of time and money but rather that the process becomes distrusted by the patient. Conducting psychotherapy may be one of the most complex of jobs since it involves interaction between the conscious and unconscious minds of two people, this causing inevitable errors. The antidote for this is self-awareness by the therapist, their good training, and honesty. But no therapy is perfect, an eminent British psychoanalyst, Michael Balint, wrote long ago in a paper posthumously published by his wife, that having been treated by the most eminent British analysts he gained a little understanding of his life from each.
If a therapist is excessively narcissistic and the patient feels inadequate they may become tied to their therapist, unable to leave and gain more competent treatment. This is the greatest danger of inadequate treatment: that the patient henceforth avoids it, no longer trusting the process because of their earlier destructive experience. 

A long held tenet of psychosomatic medicine is that what cannot be spoken will be expressed through the body. Thus when anger or another emotion is suppressed, physical symptoms may develop: pain in parts of the body, anxiety symptoms such as fearing that one is about to faint, skin conditions, even eye symptoms (ocular migraine). This discomfort may develop when positive strivings which conflict with injunctions from early childhood parenting are felt. If healthy assertiveness was then condemned, confidence became eroded and the belief that one was worthy of love may fail to develop. The unconscious is powerful and one must respect its power.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described how some wealthy are seeking to create intellectually gifted children using genetic testing and gifted surrogates. Yet most such efforts are doomed to fail though the children of high IQ parents do tend to have a higher IQ.
The best psychological tests are those of intelligence, the individually administered Stanford-Binet and Wechsler Scales. Studies have long found that the correlation between the intelligence of parents and their children is among the highest of all behavioral correlations but it is not perfect being in the low 80s. And though intelligence tests are excellent instruments, the accuracy of their findings depends on the skill of the examiner and the emotional and psychological readiness of the child to perform at their best. Moreover, for intelligence to flourish requires that the child experience a "good enough" though not perfect parenting during their earliest years, which can be problematic. Perhaps these parents would do better concentrating on parenting skills rather than biology. 

The popular concept of Neurodiversity is as fallacious as that of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder which symptoms reflect the anxiety and depression that are present in nearly all medical and psychological concerns. The basis for considering various social symptoms as Neurodiverse rather than psychological is the disfavor which many have for considering their children to possess mental health difficulties. One mother said she would prefer her child to have a brain tumor since this could be cut out!

The notion of neurodiversity tends to be affixed to the common symptoms of autism and Asperger's Disorder, which are among the most socially debilitating of all psychological disorders. The social limitations of these youth derive from their lack of awareness of and experience with such basic human characteristics as trust, sharing and gaining warmth from others, and love. To heal these deficiencies the appropriate psychotherapeutic and social experiences must be provided.

Far greater improvement can be expected when these critical limitations are considered psychological and the result of inadequate childhood parenting experiences rather than neurological and fixed.

Long ago a psychiatrist friend made an important statement: that the unconscious is powerful and one must respect its power. Yet, because of this power, one is often unaware of its influence over poor decisions involving relationships, jobs, and life itself. To defend against the power of the unconscious, as the impulse to engage in a particular behavior at that moment, resist the urge! While not making a decision is also a decision, avoiding poor ones should be the goal. Thus, think rather than act. Road rage behavior is a common example of destructive impulsivity as is suicide of which a well-worn statement is that it reflects a permanent solution to a temporary situation.
Deciding on the choice of therapist is more complex since virtually all therapists are friendly but therapy is a a business relationship and not a friendship. If, over a period of time, one has not gained greater insight into one's behavior and greater enjoyment in life the choice of therapist should be questioned. Which is not to say that change through therapy is rapid or painless but its goal IS change: to gain greater control over the unconscious forces affecting one's life and, ultimately, greater enjoyment.

The Netflix documentary "The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping," is important and riveting viewing. It describes the so-called residential therapeutic residential school industry run with unlicensed teachers and so-called therapists, using behavior modification techniques resembling concentration camp demands and frequently resulting in complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder with many suicides and addiction problems resulting. That federal legislation to outlaw this child abuse has not yet been passed is more than troubling. Watch it.

The popularity of these destructive institutions derive from several factors: the widespread lack of knowledge of child psychological development among parents and their desperation to find a solution for their pain. Parents sending their children to these institutions are not evil or incompetent but have been lulled by sophisticated marketing. Moreover, there has long been belief in the usefulness of behavior, modification techniques with children and others, which is false.

Behavior modification, the punishment of undesired behavior and the reward of desired behaviors, works with dogs, but not cats, with people of very low levels of intelligence since it so simplifies their environment that they know what to do, and for those in such institutions as prisons where there is tight control over inmates. Which is exactly what the facilities described in the Netflix documentary have been, though not even in prisons would they be tolerated once becoming public.There is no substitute for knowledge.

I recently watched Netflix documentaries on the investigation of cold case murders in Los Angeles and New York City. in one, two teenagers from affluent families were convicted of murdering a middle-age man in Manhattan's Central Park, they later receiving the shockingly brief prison sentence of six years and serving half before being paroled. Thereafter, the girl was returned to prison to serve out her remaining sentence after she assaulted a fellow-parolee in their half-way residence while the boy remained out of trouble. No motive was ever established for the boy's vicious knife attack and the girl's complicity except rage.

While both their families had been caring, the girl had been adopted, which is a risk factor if the child is past infancy when adopted, and the boy had been a loner and shy. She had been in numerous drug treatment programs and both attended excellent schools. This raising the issue of whether, even given the best of treatment, their lives would have been different.

Change through therapy depends on the depth of psychological problems, the talent of therapy provided and its length. Luck too is a factor: had the youths not been drinking in Central Park that evening the murder might never have occurred. Which is why therapy is best provided in early childhood, before the stresses of adolescence and adulthood are encountered and lives are wasted.