THE "DIFFICULT" CHILD

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 72, 26 March 1935, Page 8

THE "DIFFICULT" CHILD

GUIDANCE CLINICS

VALUE OF MOVEMENT

The work of child guidance clinics was the subject of a lecture to the Education Handwork Association in Manchester by Dr. Henry Herd, school medical officer to the Manchester Education Committee. Dr. Herd described , the child-guidance movement as largely an American product, although the idea embodied in it, that of pursuing complete ■ educational and social investigations regarding individual children or adolescents, was one already adopted in clinics on the European continent (reports ' the "Manchester Guardian"). ■In the United States the work came to be organised under teams of at least three —a psychiatrist, or student of mental diseases; a psychologist, and a social worker; and in this form it had been taken up in England. London now possessed several clinics, some of them attached to the larger hospitals, while Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Stoke, and even one or two country areas such as Derbyshire had established clinics of larger or smaller size. TWO TYPES OF PROBLEM. The child guidance clinic set itself to solve and ameliorate what might be comprehensively described as behaviour problems. This meant not only moral behaviour. One group for which the clinic existed was, indeed, that of "delinquent" children, whose abnormality consisted in stealing, bullying, cruelty, and so on. But there was another type of difficulty, the personal problem • hampering the child's own development and his own prospects; his behaviour, while not actually transgressing social laws, might yet be distressing and irritating to those who came in contact with him. Such was the problem of the nervous child who might stammer, "have nightmares, or night terror, dyspepsia, or muscular twitchings, for which all treatment by purely medical means proved ingThe two types of problem had, though apparently so different, one common factor. The children affected were not adequately adjusted to the environment in which they were living, and their abnormal, manifestations were only evidence of that lack of adjustment. In the main they were normal children whose normality had been distorted. "We; call them difficult children," said Dr. Herd; it would be more correct to speak of them as children in difficult situations, often, unfortunately, children with difficult parents, or parent substitutes." The efforts of the team constituting a child guidance clinic were aimed at obtaining as complete a picture as possible of the child-himself and of the factors that had made him what he was. It might be called a threedimensional picture: personal, educational, and sociaL "From the personal point of view,;.the physical condition of the chilcl'isi examined and his mental equipment is assessed on. the intellectual side by,;tests of intelligence and performance. •• Temperament, or instinctive-^enjptional -development, is not so ;easy to assess, but there are several methods' of" approach. THE CHILD AT FLAY. "We may obtain reports from the teacher, or it may be that in the process of mental testing temperamental characteristics are made apparent in,the child's manner of response. The distinctive method of the child guidance clinic in its approach to this problem is the observation of the child at play;, a playroom is an essential part of the equipment;" In studying the educational aspect also the reports of teachers were valuable. Backwardness, educationally, was a not infrequent cause of abnormal behaviour; sometimes it was backwardness not in general but in one particular direction, which might be due to some, inborn Jack, but had been caused by an emotional dislike of a particular teacher.1 , ; ■ On the other- hand, delinquency and nervous symptoms had often been traced to a Superiority of ability which had not been given scope. Attempts to keep back a child; who was mentally in advance of his years might be a prolific source of the nervous symptoms on which parents or physicians based their decision to keep him back.

HOME INFLUENCES. "The social reactions: are the special study of the social worker who, by interviewing parents, visiting the home, tries to sense the atmosphere of the home and to understand the effects the various members of the household have "upon each other and particularly, upon the child concerned." It was desirable in considering delinquency to recollect that our. moral sense was not a ready-made thing given to us at birth. It was built up by conscious and unconscious assimilation from those around us. In the child, throughout his school life, the process was still a process; and his actions at any time depended on his training up to that time as well as on his natural temperament. Any interference in the normal relation between parent and child might upset the functioning of the moral sense. • Various abnormalities or changes in the family might produce abnormalities, moral or nervous, in the child The child guidance clinic had as its first function to understand; that was followed by the attempt to help. It was obvious that, in the treatment the parent had a part to play. Child guidance was mostly parental guidance, and if the parent were difficult co-operation might not be easy to obtain. Separation from the home might be. necessary in some cases, but as a rule the workers of the clinic preferred to do their work whfle the child was in the home. Tlie rooms of No. 2 Wadestown Road were ailed with the fragrance of pink and mauve asters and lovely hydrangeas yesterday, when Mrs. L. Vaughan Morgan gave a delightful sherry party at her home for ViceAdmiral Ford and the officers of the Australian squadron, and Captain Gra ham and officers of Diomede and Leith. Mrs. Morgan wore a graceful dress of black and white-figured crepe de chine, and. Miss Elizabeth Morgan, who assisted her mother, was in a pretty frock of red and white patterned silk.

Among the other guests-were Lieut. Commander and Mrs. Alcoek, Lieut. Commander and Mrs Hewson, Captain Morris, Miss Harcourt, Miss. E. Bell, the Misses Monica Robertson, Annette Harcourt, Juliet Nathan, t Joan Miller, Betty Reading, Margot Peacock, Sheila Coates, Helen Whyte, Alison Pearce, Joyce Nathan, Jessie. Elliott, Janet Steele, Joan Wheeler, Patricia Marshall, Catherine Young, Mary Paterson, Sheila Hudson, Lorna and Sheila Brodie and Georgette Handysjde.