But I Did Everything Right!

I sobbed after reading this article. We thought we did almost everything right, yet our 19-year old son has multiple drug and alcohol offenses. Not only have I looked back over our parenting with sadness and regret, but I worry how my future grandchildren will turn out. Thank you Sharon Begley for making me feel a little better today. Could you make this required reading of every teacher, psychologist, judge and neighbor?

The author is considers it shocking how resistant child development experts are to these developments in genetics. Could it be because they work with children and know first-hand just how important parenting is?

Comment: Thank you for this article. I have three sons all of which have grown up in the same home with the same parents and the same parenting. Our oldenst has been a "problem" for many years now, we tried witlderness therapy followed by residential treatment only to have him return and drop out of high school and be consumbed with drugs and alcholol. The other two are very different and I get so angry and hurt when I hear other adults say things like " what kind of parent did that child have" when ever they hear of a young person doing something wrong. This article helps me take away some of those "blame" feelings I have. Thanks

I am the mother of three boys, the oldest of which dropped out of high school,turning to drugs and alcohol. I struggle daily with " why" did we do something wrond as parents? We put him in rehab etc. but quickly went back to his old ways and worse. All three of my boys respond dirfferntly to our parenting and have grown into three differnt individuals. Thank you for your article as I sit and waite daily for the police cruiser to drive up or that dreaded phone call in the middle of the night, maybe it just isn't my fault.

Hmmmm....highly debatable, this. So, someone parties before test and does so every time means that it's genes' fault? Could it be they do so because they love to party and don't care about the grades? And did not have the set of consequences put in place by parents to deter such behaviour because they gave up and chalked it up to faulty DNA? While I can see from some posters here that they did have legitimate medical condition and the medicines helped, I also think it is very dangerous that all the new "scientific" research seems to suggests that we are a speices product of mechanisms completely out of our control and that our actions and behavior have nothing to do with our decision making, cognitive reasoning capabilities and free will to make choices.

I loved the article. I'm not much of a writer and less of a speller, but this article states what I have figured out years ago and I have to comment on it. "Nature vs. Nurture is a distracting lie." Whenever I hear this brought up in an argument, I see people/experts try and prove they are correct more than trying to improving the situation. It is not "Nature vs. Nurture", it is "Nature & Nurture". They are both equally important. I am male, 27, and I was diagnosed with ADD as a child. I fall into the super hard-headed category. I was not missgiagnosed with ADD mind you as so many are. On medication(Ritalin), I didn't act like a zombie or even medicated for that matter. I acted and played like a normal kid. You would know the moment that stuff wore off though. I learned most lessons the hard way even knowing and fully understanding the consequences of my actions just to fight with the powers that be. I must say as an adult, those lessons that my mother worked so hard to teach have stuck with me. This article rings strait and true with what I've seen in life so far. I look forward to new developments in this field. =)

I loved the article. I'm not much of a writer and less of a speller, but this article states what I have figured out years ago and I have to comment on it. "Nature vs. Nurture is a distracting lie." Whenever I hear this brought up in an argument, I see people/experts try and prove they are correct more than trying to improving the situation. It is not "Nature vs. Nurture", it is "Nature & Nurture". They are both equally important. I'm 27 and I was diagnosed with ADD as a child. I fall into the super hard-headed category. I was not missgiagnosed with ADD either. On medication I didn't act like a zombie or even medicated for that matter. I acted and played like a normal kid. You would know the moment that stuff wore off though. I learned most lessons the hard way even knowing and fully understanding the consequences of my actions just to fight with the powers that be. But I must say as an adult, those lessons that my mother worked so hard to teach have stuck with me. This article rings strait and true with what I've seen in life so far. I look forward to new developments in this field. =)

Please do an article about what happens when a child's DNA reveals paternity fraud.

I have a highly gifted 6 year old who is one of the statistical outliers as discussed in this article. After three years of highly intensive work with several pychiatrists, child pyschologists, neuropsychologists, special education personnel, occupational therapists and a clinical social worker, we have finally put our son on a medication that puts more dopamine and seratonin into his system, and he is a changed child.

Over the course of those three years we have changed how our family communicates and interacts togther, and it is not like it was ever bad in the first place. We have followed the behavioral interventions prescribed by all the professionals listed above, everything would help bandage the problem, but nothing would ever work to the point that our son's behavior would ever be considered within the range of normal to be in a regular classroom, a self-contained gifted classroom or a Montessori classroom with some chance of social and academic success. We resisted medication for all these years, and with a heavy heart and some serious reservations about the side effects, we started him on a medication that gives him a dopamine and seratonin boost. The effect was immediate. It was like his body finally got what it needed and he is able to recognize the consequences of his actions; GOOD and BAD. It is as if he is able to reprocess the times he was physically and emotionally out of control and consequenced for those actions. Except this time he gets the connection between the action and its consequence.

This article does not necessarily speak to those in the Bell curve, but to those on the ends. And being a parent of one of those on the end, it makes sense. By the way, I have a degree in Social Work, Children's and Family Services, and I subscribed to some of the same preconceived notions about the importance of one's environment, in terms of mitigating genetic destiny. I have blamed and doubted myself for years for fear of being the cause of all his behavioral problems. Now that we have found a solution to the genetic destiny problem, we can now breathe a short sigh of relief as we help our son learn to work on helping keep himself under control and be aware ( and hopefully adhere to) societal norms, while feeding his intellectual
curiosity.

Each child is different., whether it is realted to DNA, the amount of time they spend in clild care, or exposure to toxic substances in the womb. Any parent who thinks the same thing makes each child tick has never had more than one child. Temprement plays a role in how we treat children as does birth order. All research tells us is that they are all different. You spend your entire life trying to raise children right ask my 95 yrar old grandmother, she is still working and worrying on her children.

Yikes, this article really distorts the nature of behavioral genetics, which is not at all this cut-and-dry. The authors do not adequately explain that many of these genes are associated with dozens of different attributes. It can be unclear which attribute is the "cause" of the behavior. They make it sounds like you just flip a switch and the person's temperament or gambling addiction is set in stone. This is ridiculous! Often a gene gets branded with a specific role, i.e. "the alcoholism gene" based on slight (but "statistically significant") differences between groups. It's not like you can go somewhere and get tested for the gene and say, "whew, I won't be an alcoholic, I guess I'll go binge-drinking now!" It doesn't work that way, as convenient as it would be. The fact is that many of these genes depend on environmental influences in order to be protective or harmful. For example, there is a gene associated with aggressive behavior and depression, but it has been shown that this gene needs to interact with high life stress to make a person more prone to these outcomes. Not definitely have these outcomes, but more likely to, based on statistical probabilities. Oh by the way, I am in a psychology doctoral program and am studying child development. It is simply nonsense what you write that psychologists are not studying genetics. Sure, not everybody studies genetics, but most researchers are highly specialized, so why would they? Regardless of whether or not they are doing genetics studies, psychologists are plenty familiar with this area of research!

Dude, you can try till your blue in the face, ti all comes dow nt oWHO you let them associate with!

JT
www.FireMe.To/udi

The article states, "In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use. But the effects spill beyond such extremes. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in." I'm not going to argue the specific mistakes of this article. They're not that critical. Conceptually, however, this is an extremely important article. The people writing this article think this is a new idea. It???s not I wrote my first paper on genetic low brain reward system and dopamine activity causing addictions and other serious symptoms in 1992. I named this genetic disease Hypoism, Hypo for low reward system (and dopamine) activity caused by a variety of genetic reasons including genetic deficiency of dopamine receptors. This paper has evolved into the current version: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . My first letter to the editor of the NY Times about this theory is at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/nytimesletterstotheeditor/ . My 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, discusses the science behind this disease, the derivation of all its symptoms, and the symptom prevention and recovery methods known as Hypoism recovery. In this book I also discuss and solve many of the issues raised by today's article. Many of these issues such as psychology's bias against behavioral genetics have interfered with the dissemination of the Hypoism paradigm, a problem that has injured and killed many addicts and others such as ADHD patients, a subgroup of Hypoism. Under Hypoism the addiction epidemic would have been severely reduced had it not been censored from its inception by the conflicted addiction community.
The field of addictions is doing so poorly because it is being run by the outdated and scientifically disproven hijacked brain hypothesis (my Hypoism Hypothesis paper goes through this disproof) and the public desperately needs to know about the true genetic theory, The Hypoism Paradigm, so that it can decide on its own whether or not to use it as a replacement of the current wrong and ineffective one, the theory being wrongly pushed for non-scientific reasons by NIDA and ASAM. Today's article by Begley is strong evidence for this.
This science goes way beyond whether parents should or shouldn't feel guilty about their children's "misbehavior." They should not. It's about how to understand the origins of this behavior and help these kids correct it. Hypoism does this. Hypoism recovery does this. It's about a completely new human nature paradigm, one that also happens to solve the addiction epidemic and all its consequences. It's time for the public to know abou

Here we go again, parents fail to be real parents to their kids and science is trying to say its not their fault. Guess what? It is!!! Stop with all this crap and be a parent, no one said it would be easy. I am raising 3 of my own and 1 nephew (18,17,15,&14) I work full time and it is the hardest thing I have ever done. Get to know their strengths and weak points. Most important of all accept that your life is not you own anymore. Yhey come first. A very hard thing do do in this Me, Me Me society of ours.

I am affronted by how much this article has misrepresented research as well as fields of research. Although, there are grains of truth scattered about in it, it is very misleading and the ???facts??? are twisted until they are no longer accurate.

The author(s) make it seem as if one could get a genetic profile of their child, buy some drug ???tailored??? for that genetic profile and thereby raise a near-perfect child. There have been years of studies that show that individual children react differently to the same method, so that a child with an average intelligence will benefit from a program but both a child with a below average or above average intelligence will be negatively affected by the same program. There are so many factors that affect a child???s development that to say that genetics is at a root of it all is simplistic and untrue.

Furthermore, psychologist have spent decades using twin studies and other scientific methods to tease apart behavioral TENDENCIES and whether the primary factor(s) is/are genetics/inheritance and/or environment stimuli. To say that psychologists are ignorant of genetics and that they affect behavioral development is ignorant in and of itself and goes to show the lack of research done for this article.

I am affronted by how much this article has misrepresented research as well as fields of research. Although, there are grains of truth scattered about in it, it is very misleading and the ???facts??? are twisted until they are no longer accurate.

The author(s) make it seem as if one could get a genetic profile of their child, buy some drug ???tailored??? for that genetic profile and thereby raise a near-perfect child. There have been years of studies that show that individual children react differently to the same method, so that a child with an average intelligence will benefit from a program but both a child with a below average or above average intelligence will be negatively affected by the same program. There are so many factors that affect a child???s development that to say that genetics is at a root of it all is simplistic and untrue.

Furthermore, psychologist have spent decades using twin studies and other scientific methods to tease apart behavioral TENDENCIES and whether the primary factor(s) is/are genetics/inheritance and/or environment stimuli. To say that psychologists are ignorant of genetics and that they affect behavioral development is ignorant in and of itself and goes to show the lack of research done for this article.

This is an extremely poorly written article, even by the standards of the popular press. Take for example, the quote, "But not, it seems, all kids. In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use." There is no specification of the particular dopamine receptors claimed to be involved, or whether it globally affects dopamine 1 or 2, etc. The description of the function of dopamine in the brain is not just impoverished, but laughably inaccurate. Neurochemicals do not carry thoughts or emotions. They modulate them. Articles like this may mislead more than they inform and hence Newsweek should be ashamed for publishing it. However, what are we to expect from a magazine that has darkened photographs of criminal defendants on its cover to make him look more menacing?

Nature and Nurture combine but the one size fits all pop predictions of modern psedo-science are antithetical to healthy human development period.
Children all develop in different ways and at different rates, but enculturation i a HUGE factior. the rpedictable but underestimated impact of mass media and peer group and educational enculturation which is foisted on our kids from cradle to grave are much more powerful factors than spurious research artciles written to make their cheating competuing so-called social scientists famous and prosperous.