Maladjusted children

Maladjusted children tend to use violence as a natural form of expression and thus are difficult to integrate into many social settings. Managing them, even within specialized institutions, raises challenges of the appropriate level of constraint and sanction.

Adults now appear to find exerting authority over children, including their own, extraordinarily problematic. Both parents and institutional staff have difficulty preventing wayward adolescents from engaging in unsuitable activities. Part of that difficulty arises from the perception that children's autonomy must be respected at all costs. As a result they are treated as adults prematurely. The confusion over appropriate levels of constraint arises from the fundamental misapprehension that to respect their rights it is necessary to forget that children are children.

In the USA in 1971, 3% of USA school children were hyperactive according to the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1974, official estimates put the number at 15%. In 1978, 1.7%-1.8% of school children in the USA were receiving drugs to control 'hyperactivity'. In the UK, there were 600 'maladjusted' children in 1950; 8,000 'maladjusted' children in 1966; 20,000 'maladjusted' children in 1976; and in 1978, 16,000 to 18,000 school children were receiving drugs to control 'hyperactivity'.

1. Today's mental welfare activities have focused increasingly on children considered to be hyperactive or maladjusted. They have turned the raising of children into a technical problem that needs the constant monitoring of experts. When the parents fail to fulfil their role in the manner considered appropriate, then the experts are prepared to 'intervene' as surrogate parents. This intervention is sometimes blatantly repressive; there are many cases of children 'in care' being massively drugged to quell their protests. In the 1960s, it was suggested that hyperactivity stems from otherwise undetectable 'minimal brain damage', and that drugs can put it right. Within a few years, about a million American children were living under permanent sedation to control their 'hyperactivity'.

1. Personal and social maladjustment
2. Disordered behaviour in children
3. Disabled children

1. Vulnerability of refugee children
2. Social maladjustment of children of migrants
3. Feral children
4. Childhood aggression

1. Loneliness of children
2. Lack of facilities for disturbed children
3. Juvenile delinquency
4. Disruptive behaviour in schools
5. Bad-mannered children

1. Vulnerable children
2. Uninvolved working parents
3. Single child family
4. Repressive detention of juveniles
5. Physically handicapped children
6. Negative effects of the nuclear family
7. Mental illness in children
8. Maternal deprivation
9. Inadequate rehabilitation facilities for the disabled
10. Inadequate child welfare
11. Forced separation of parents and children
12. Female prostitution
13. Discrimination against male children
14. Deteriorating social environments for raising children
15. Cruelty to children
16. Adjustment difficulties of new urban families

1. Children's diseases

1. Treating hyperactive children
2. Researching hyperactive children
3. Rehabilitating maladjusted children
4. Providing facilities for disturbed children
5. Dealing with truculence in children
6. Calming disturbed children
7. Addressing problem children

1. Unruliness
2. Problem
3. Overactivity
4. Maladjustment
5. Disturbance
6. Difficulty