The Poor little Single Child
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1998 May / Jun VOL VII NO 4.
Dr Vishpala Parthasarathy
'Plat

Today I want to handle the single child syndrome. This is a distinct entity in psychological parlance. They have a distinct set of characteristics, and a distinct set of problems. And therefore should have a distinct set of Homoeopathic remedies.

Let us first understand what this single child syndrome is.
Definition: A single child in a single unit family. Only parents- one or both and the child, maybe even a grand parent but no cousins, or near relatives in the same house or even next door. What are the likely problems:

1. First of course they are singled out to be different. They have no brother or sister, which every other child in the school has. So they have the sense of being different, in the sense of strange and inferior and not superior.
2. They are lonely and have no one really to share secrets with.
3. They are self-centered, as the whole world of the parents revolves around them, so in their stage of evolution they are stuck at the center of the universe stage. They are stuck at the stage of getting everything without fighting or even asking.
4. So their survival instincts are very poorly developed. They learn little give and take and learn even less to fight for what they want.
5. This then breeds less ambition and even less sustaining power.
6. They are exposed to too much company of the adults, which is a protected world, and breeds a fear of the rough and tumble world of childhood.
7. Stays with mother all day and listening only to adult talk, which can be truly boring. of price of things and of servants' misbehavior and jokes beyond her ken, and what the result is: you have a grown-up misfit child trying to do things the adult way and totally losing out on childhood. Guilt ridden because he does not put things back in place and so on.

It is probably easier for the child to deal with a slap upfront than to be explained pros and cons of his action. You did wrong, you got punished and the score is settled and the slate is clean. No carry forward. No taking responsibilities for action at an age when one cannot even take those choices.
So let us discuss all these various aspects through cases and reach some kind of consensus on what is normal and what is to be treated. 

Case
I had this young 8 yr old, whose mother telephoned me desperately one night at 10pm. She was almost in tears. Her daughter was getting bad thoughts and only talking about sex. And this in a fairly undersexed mother, who for the last 5 yrs has been boring me with "shall we do, shall we not do it? Every time we do it, I cannot get up in the morning. Or every time I get pain in the breast or in the back. Or we did it yesterday and this and this happened. You think it is normal?" I doubt she has had a completely fulfilling session even once in her life. To this mother, the daughter, an only child and who stays with the parents all day, never goes down to play, never sleeps with the grandmother but only with the parents and who goes to sleep at 12 every night. She comes and tells me I am getting bad thoughts, when I see a boy, I think of marriage. I think of a bed. I mouth dirty words. I feel bad, I feel guilty. I see a boy in school, I think of a barat and suhag raat. I feel ashamed. 

How will you handle this little grown up girl? I have been treating her for 5 yrs now. The first impact she had made on me, was that she is a very responsible and articulate girl, almost a small adult. I had given her Calc- c and so on. Now this small adult has become a teenager, not commensurate with her physical age and mind. So she calls it bad thoughts. 

So first of all I explained to her that they were not bad thoughts. They are just thoughts coming at a little early age- 4 yrs too early. At 13 they would have been normal. At some stage every girl gets married and has suhag raat. Only you are too young for it. And it happens because you hang around with boring adults all the time. You leave them, you go down and play. You go to the gym. You talk to children your age. And still if these thoughts come, you just tell them go away, come another day when I am 13, ok? 

She did just that and next week mind you she came and everything was fine and it to be fine till today, Aug 1998. What medicine I gave her? Plat 1M one dose was given on 7/9/98.

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