Several of the children Maeder talked to encountered serious drug problems, which Maeder attributed to both the parents' permissiveness and the easy access to samples of amphetamines and tranquilizers in their parents' drawers. One woman's psychiatrist father served at her school as a part-time counselor. One of the main problems he dealt with was a sudden use of amphetamines among the student body. What he never learned was that all the amphetamines were coming from his own office, courtesy of his daughter, who thought it would be nice to share the wealth. In an exclusive interview following the presentation, Maeder was asked what advice based on his research he would give to psychiatrists who are parents of young children and teenagers.
Good people make good parents.
My vision of the way children ought to be brought up is that you start out with this wild beast who is then progressively domesticated. If you are overly analytical, overly intellectual, overly intrusive, and trying too hard to treat your child as a mature, adult person, you are eviscerating that energy. Don't domesticate too soon. They have got to grow, they have got to have the raw material that is later bridled and channeled into useful things. There are so many cases where psychiatrists want to treat their kids like grownups and they want to have a nice, adult relationship with them.