I’ve learned over time, as a parent and as a therapist, that more often than not the cause of a child’s behavior is, wait for it …. because they’re children. We’ve worked really hard to turn those behaviors into diagnoses, with unfortunate success, but the fact of the matter is most of it is just normal. By the way, I never use normal in the context of adults because I don’t know what it means, and it is dangerously subjective to keep using it. But with children, I will term behaviors as normal because it’s the only way I can think of to keep them from being pathologized. Kids yelling when they’re upset is normal, kids deceiving us as normal, kids underperforming is normal.
Parents are often reluctant to discipline children around these normal behaviors because they identify them as being part of who the child is. Yes, that’s absolutely the case. But it is very important that we don’t confuse reason with excuse. A reason explains a behavior, an excuse removes responsibility for it. It may be normal for a child to sneak around and do things that we’ve asked them not to do, but we can’t allow that to continue just because they’re kids. With children’s behavior the word “normal” sometimes has to be followed by the phrase “…but unacceptable”. With this new phrase we can identify children’s behavior without pathologizing it and still hold them accountable so they learn their way out of it.
Far too many mental health providers will fail to make this discernment and will move towards accommodation. We are not doing our children any favors with this approach, not by a long shot.