Behavioural problems in children…
-an Osteopathic viewpoint,
by Philip Owen D.O., B.Sc. (Hons).

Much of adult behaviour is learned or conditioned. We are taught in early years behavioural etiquette and indeed we learn behavioural patterns based on our own experiences. In the highly informative years children are taught by society to become stereotypes of that society’s culture. It would seem quite alien to us if an adult started crying when s/he became close to feed time or not to makes a move to visit the WC when ‘nature’ calls. What would our reaction be to someone who has a temper tantrum at every red traffic light or to the diner who starts to throw food in a restaurant? All these seem quite foreign behaviour to an adult but quite normal and expected behaviour in a young child. It can be seen that we, as adults, pattern are behaviour to fit in with our surrounding situation and often the people we are with.
We all know that some days we wake up and have that ‘good to alive feeling’ whereas on others every thing goes wrong and we wished we had stayed in bed. But even in the latter example we modify our behaviour according to whether we are in the office dealing with clients or at home with are loved ones that are less likely to judge us harshly if we show signs of weakness or stress.
We are all born with a basic feeding response. If we are hungry we sense a dis-ease or a hunger sensation and then we do the only thing we know how to do and that is cry unrestrictedly. This crying stops immediately the desire is not only fulfilled but starts to be fulfilled. In other words our behaviour in early life is reactionary, i.e. we can’t help it.

Let us now consider behaviour patterns in children who have learned how to modify their behaviour in certain situations, either as part of social etiquette or as a means to protect themselves against showing weakness.
One of the ways we deal with stress as an adult is to transfer it into our muscles as stress. In other words unresolved stress and worry are often ‘shifted’ to our muscular system which has a reducing effect on the tension in our brains. However whilst that process is taking place we call upon our learned behaviour patterns to keep the status quo so that the outside world, particularly the office clients, does not see any change.

The concept of physical tension in our tissues as a result of stress is not new to us. Massage therapists have been in existence from time immemorial. Is it however important to realise that whereas unresolved mental anguish can be put into the body’s stress reservoir, so too can pre-existing tension in tissues can predispose to mental anguish. Both adults and children experience this by periods of feeling irritable or unaccountably fatigued. It is often quelled or suppressed by adrenalline which in itself is caused by stress. Have we ever asked ourselves why we often feel so lousy when we start our annual holiday or why we are bad tempered or are prone to infections in the first week of relaxation? This is because the body is being denied is normal day to day adrenaline and the stress reservoir is starting to empty and drift back towards the direction of optimum health.

A similar concept happens in children. If a child is carrying around unresolved physical stresses, it may result in something the child experiences as a form of mental anguish. That may have been initiated through physical (as in the case of a birth injury) or mental (as in the case of extreme mental worry transmitted from the mother during it’s development in the womb). As children (and indeed animals) have not learned how to modify their behaviour and their response is reactionary it may result in behavioural patterns that become repeated as a result of the unresolved physical stress harboured within their tissue.

Behavioural modifications seen in children are often in the form of outbursts of unprovoked anger or an inability to listen with their bodies or conform to what is taking place around them. They may indeed feel threatened by ‘giving’ of themselves to relationships to either their piers or their parents. There is often a lack of contentment as a result of these unresolved physical factors or, what is felt to Osteopathic physician, as blockages to normal tissue flexibility and yielding.