This Wall St Journal article talks about early diagnosis of autism and anxiety disorder in infants [signs: crying, agitation, inability to express self, mood swings, what?], but my diagnosis is there's a whole lot of projection going on. Parents' own anxieties end up impacting the kid's behavior, and since they can't see themselves as having a problem, well, it must be the kid:
Doctors, of course, have been studying the cognitive development of children for many decades. In the late 1960s, Selma Fraiberg, a researcher at the University of Michigan, began examining the infant-caregiver relationship. She coined the phrase "ghosts in the nursery" to denote emotional patterns that parents bring with them from their own childhood, and created services for vulnerable babies and their families as well as one of the first training programs for professionals in the field.Whatever gets you into a health professional's office, I guess.
Sending baby to the shrink: Infant psychotherapy gains favor among parents [wsj/pitt gazette via dt readers eric, joan, john and julie (nice grouping)]
