Due to the living situation of Chuck's daughter, and her current diagnoses of behavioral and mental disorders, in addition to her mother and brother's mental health disorders, we have been talking quite a bit about nurture vs nature in our house recently. What elements of one's personality are innate and unchangeable, and what are coping mechanisms that stem from our environment? Of those, what can be changed by a change of environment, and what becomes innate after time? For example, it is widely believed that conditions like depression and anxiety are highly hereditary traits, but if you are depressed or anxious your in child will pick up on those emotions, your reactions, and learn from you as a role model. So by the time a child is old enough to display symptoms of either disorder, how do you determine what is a learned behavior and what is something intrinsic? Are the issues this little girl has, something she does TRULY need to be medicated for, or with a more stable, consistent, and nurturing environment, can we change her reactions, and behaviors over time? I tend to believe that your have certain traits that you are born with, and even more that are learned. In conjunction with that, you LEARN how to deal with your inherited thought processes and behaviors. For example, my anxiety, maybe inherited or learned, however, through out the years I have learned different coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety. My initial coping skills where not very health, or helpful for that matter. They involved crying, fit throwing, screaming. Then as I got old they involved more self destructive behaviors, but after some help from counselors I was able to relearn new coping skills that were healthier. Now I practice yoga, draw, blog, do some deep breathing. I still have the anxiety but I have learned to control it.
Chuck believes similarly, but he also believes that if you are traumatized or have a behavioral or mental health issue come up during brain development and you are not taught healthy coping mechanisms, that your brain will, in a sense rewire its self. Therefore something that was once learned becomes ingrained, and permanent. So a child who is not able to develop a health sleep pattern as an infant, my have permanent developmental issues and long-term sleep pattern issues. Bringing to question can you "reset" these behaviors over time, or must you simply teach your child a to cope with this? These are questions we are now studying deeply as we try to create the best atmosphere for this young girl to learn grow and develop in. How do we best help her? What does she need from the adults around her to heal and become a strong individual? How do we reduce the use of medications, and replace them with cognitive behavioral techniques? How many of her issues came from an unstable environment, a lack of guidance, a lack of attention, and how many will remain with her for a life time? What therapies will best help her? Cogitative? Play? Art? Developmental? We are prepared to try them all if we need to. Any advice is appreciated, and I will continue to share what we learn on our journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment