Recipe for producing frequent tantrums in children

Joseph Biederman is the Harvard Psychiatrist who has been pushing the diagnosis of "pediatric bipolar disorder." He also advocates the use of potentially toxic brand-named antipsychotic and mood stabilizing drugs for children who display symptoms of this alleged condition, because Lithium tends to not work in this population. That could be because these children are not bipolar to begin with. According to the New York Times, drug companies paid Dr. Biederman at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from 2000 to 2007, but for years he did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.

Biederman argues against the use of any duration criteria for manic or depressive episodes in these so-called bipolar children. In the current DSM, hypomania - a mild form of mania - must be present constantly for at least four days, and a full-blown manic episode has to last seven. Although these time lengths are obviously arbitrary, they were put in the DSM so psychiatrists would not label normal mood reactivity as being due to bipolar disorder.

Biederman argues that mood swings in bipolar children can last just a few minutes and rapidly alternate. He further argues that pediatric bipolar disorder is unlike adult mania and is manifested by the key symptoms of temper tantrums and “explosive irritability.” There is no credible scientific evidence that such behavior is related to bipolar disorder. He just MADE THIS UP.

The folks writing the DSM-V are somewhat concerned about the widespread adoption of this ridiculous idea by doctors who only dispense drugs and do no psychotherapy, so they decided they might come up with a whole new mental disorder, discussed in an earlier post, called "temper dysregulation disorder."

Actually, children do not have to have any biogenetic disorder in order to display frequent temper tantrums. We used to call such behavior acting out.

There is a well-known recipe that parents can use to produce this behavior in nearly any child. Just follow the following steps:

1. Start with one parent who constantly tells a child to do or not to do something, but always caves in so the child always disobeys and always does whatever he or she wants to do.

2. Add in the other parent yelling and screaming at the child about this, but still allowing the child to do whatever he or she wants to do.

3. Stir up the mix by having the parents criticize one another’s parenting in front of the child and blame one another for the child’s behavior.

To make a child with borderline personality disorder, follow these additional steps:

1. Add parents who start blaming the child in addition to each other for all of the family problems, but still let the child always get his or her way.

2. Have the whole family invalidate what the child says and does as much as possible.

3. Have parents vascillate between hostile overinvolvement and hostile underinvolvement.

Optional: If a severe case is desired: add in neglect and/or physical and/or sexual abuse of the child.

One has to keep in mind that if parents who usually act this way somehow listen to advice and stop it, the child’s behavior will get worse before it gets better. Furthermore, if the parents occasionally lapse back in to old habits, the child’s misbehavior will continue on even longer before it stops.

This is due to something behaviorists call a variable intermittent reinforcement schedule. The child will keep testing the parents to see if they will revert to prior practices.