Children with no friends
….An emotional problem or a learning problem?

If a drug had been tested, with this level of success, and was found to have no side effects would it be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and would it be in common use? Why isn’t this method in common use, and why isn’t it routinely prescribed for bedwetting?

Is this Salem 1692?

Though this method was developed over 50 years ago its lack of acceptance may go back to a way of looking at human behavior which has its origins in the late 1600s. At that time in Salem, MA, unusual behaviors were looked upon as the result of inner, hidden forces within the person. People were thought to be possessed.

“The devil made me do it,” as comedian Flip Wilson used to say.

Today, we are too sophisticated to believe in possession. Perhaps we have a new modern day demon, the emotional problem which is believed to be at the root of today’s “problem behaviors.”

This way of thinking looks upon bedwetting as the result of emotional problems, hidden anger, or sexual feelings. The secret hidden forces with the child’s psyche, are the badness within which must be let out, talked out or played out.

To solve the bedwetting problem I have suggested the learning therapy method which uses a loud buzzer.

While interning at a hospital in Boston I suggested that this method be used with an 11-year-old bedwetter. A staff psychologist expressed his concern because he felt that it would not be getting to the root of the problem.

Symptom or behavior

Professionals commonly refer to behavioral problems as symptoms, but behaviors are caused by learning. Behaviors are learned symptoms and have deep inner emotional causes. There are two ways of looking at problem behaviors in children: 1) as a symptom of an emotional problem; or 2) as a learned behavior which can be unlearned.

If problem behaviors have been learned just the way we learn to ride a bicycle, or play basketball they may simply be looked upon as bad habits which need to be unlearned.

In 1961 the well known psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote the book The Myth of Mental Illness in which he says:

“ ...The notion of a person ‘having mental illness’ is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization, namely, that problems in human living experienced and expressed in terms of bodily feelings or signs (or in terms of other “psychiatric symptoms” are significantly similar to diseases of the body."

Since we are talking about problems of living, parents need only be taught new ways of relating to their child as a way of helping him or her unlearn old habits and learn new habits in their place.

The child with no friends

Some children alienate other children, they have no friends. One might say that they are alienating children because of emotional problems.

An alternative way of looking at a child with no friends is that he or she wants friends – is reaching out for friendship – but unfortunately has learned ways of bringing children closer by being angry, rather that because they are warm and caring. The child gets attention from these other children, but for the wrong behaviors.

Few things are more worrisome to parents than their child’s lack of friends. The friendless child is a lonely child – who often grows into a lonely, unhappy adult.

What makes a child react to others in ways that are guaranteed to create hostility? What makes a child withdraw into quiet corners and refuse all involvement with other children?

Learning to make friends, even at a very young age, is a behavior like any other. It’s taught by having the seeds of friend-making behaviors encouraged, and it flourishes as the satisfaction of having friends provides its own rewards.

Unfortunately, the seeds of friend-losing behaviors can also develop if the wrong behaviors are encouraged, even in the most inadvertent ways. Parents can be slow to see the problem developing; it’s easier to blame other kids, to attribute a lack of friends to “shyness,” to write off incidents with “kids will be kids.” And when it becomes obvious that the child simply doesn’t have any friends, the first thought parents have is to find some for the child.

“We sent him to camp for a month, so he’d make some friends.” A mother said about a boy nobody like. “He hated it – nobody wanted to be his friend, even there.”

Putting a child who drives away friends in touch with a new set of children is simply switching the problem from one scenario to another. It is not going to bring friends. A child has to be taught how to be a friend.

Friend-winning behavior

I met with parents of a 10-year old who were frantic over her inability to make friends. “she’s her own worst enemy when it comes to other kids.” They explained.

“We worry a lot about things she’s always doing that are making her lonely and friendless. She doesn’t play well, wants to have it her way. Sometimes she’s just plain unpleasant, and it’s gotten so that nobody will come over here to play, and they certainly don’t ask her to go play with them.”

Working closely with the parents, I was able to teach them how to help Maria build up friend-winning behaviors, using praise and encouragement. Although Maria still is not the most popular girl in school, she has been able to make a good start at making – and keeping friends.

© Reprinted with permission from article appearing 10-22-89, The Minuteman Chronicle

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