In the preface to my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom, Ages 4-14, I ask readers  to “pay attention to the linits of developmental characteristics and characterizations.” I note that although general expectations about childrens’ behavior have emerged through detailed and repeated observations and have yielded certain patterns of development, “they are not precise predictions of what will happen at a given age.”

In 1993, writing in Childhood: A Multicultural View (out of print, but check your library, used bookstore, or online sources), Melvin Konner had this to say:

We have to be patient; we are finding out new things just as fast as we know how. And if anyone gives you the impression that he has all the answers now to the great timeless questions about childhood, you can smile and listen politely or you can turn your back and walk away, but in any case don’t believe him.

I was so strongly reminded of Konner’s caution recently when reading that the erudite American Psychiatric Association just decided that childhood bipolar disorder, which had shown such dramatic diagnostic increases (from roughly 20,000 in 1994 to 800,000 in 2003, according to the National Center of Health Statistics), was being considered for reclassification in the new DSM – V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Seems now that psychiatric researchers are discovering that it may be extremely rare for bipolar disorder to occur in children and adolescents and continue into adulthood, but that it can happen.

However, a new category of disorder is being proposed. TDD, or temper dysregulation disorder, may actually be what is afflicting hundreds of thousands of children, most of them boys, previously diagnosed as bipolar. The diagnostic descriptors for this disorder are many and serious and clearly suggest therapeutic and medical interventions of their own. To gain a deeper insight into this shifting territory, you may want to read the comprehensive article on the Child Psychology Research Blog by Nestor Lopez-Duran, Ph.D.