"Taming Tiny Tigers", by Kali Miller: A Tale Told With Trepidation

Let me note first that the trepidation I’m talking about is my own, as Kali Miller does not seem to experience any. And my trepidation is about two things--  first, whether by discussing this at all I’m simply offering some unintentional paid advertisement for a disturbing attempt at intervention, and second, how well I can untangle the ideas so well braided in a document that mingles established concepts with fantasy.

The document I’m referring to is called “Taming Tiny Tigers”, by Debra “Kali” Miller, whose psychology license revocation I described in a post a few days ago. As I noted at that time, Miller is becoming a parenting coach now that her license has been revoked for her role in the treatment that culminated in a 12-year-old’s suicide attempt. As a coach, she will still be in a position to use the advice she has given in “Taming Tiny Tigers” (http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/opa.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/imported/E1%20Handout.pdf).

“Taming Tiny Tigers” is an excellent example of the Trojan Horse approach that brings unsubstantiated ideas into discussion under the cover of established information. For example, Miller provides some accurate (though not particularly relevant) material about brain development. She also quotes directly the diagnostic criteria for Reactive Attachment Disorder from DSM-IV; these have changed, of course, but what she uses was correct at the time “Taming Tiny Tigers” was written. She references the much-respected Dante Cicchetti in the documents bibliography. She also points out that physical and emotional abuse are not good for kids. All good stuff, right? She must know a lot about early emotional development and later mental illness--  or so you would think until you see what else is in there.

Now let’s look at what’s inside this handsome Trojan Horse (we’ll see that much of it is similar to something that’s inside real horses). I’ll just begin at the beginning and go on until I can’t stand it any more.

The first problem that comes into view is on pp. 3-4: the good old first-  and second-year bonding cycles. Once again, I will point out that these have no parallel in conventional, evidence-based views of the development of attachment. Naturally, if a baby is not fed or cared for regularly, both physical and mental development will suffer, but attachment develops as a result of pleasant social interactions with a caregiver, not because that caregiver feeds the baby. In real life, of course, chances will be great that a lot of pleasant interaction is mingled with feeding and other care routines, but it’s the interaction and not the care that brings about attachment (which, by the way, is a very robust phenomenon, and does not often fail to happen if a few adults regularly care for a baby). The “second-year attachment cycle” focuses on rage and capitulation as contributing to some unstated aspect of attachment, whereas established information focuses on sensitive, responsive parenting that helps the child tolerate the inevitable frustrations of  this period of development. A large but unstated difference between the “attachment cycle” approach and conventional thinking about early emotional development is that the “cyclists” equate toddler attachment with obedience and compliance, whereas conventional thinking focuses on attachment as a function that helps young children explore and learn. I’ve gone into some detail about this at http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com/2012/08/parsing-attachment-cycle-fox-terrier-of.html.

Let’s move on to p. 7 of “Taming Tiny Tigers”, where we’re given symptoms that are supposed to let us know that a child has Reactive Attachment Disorder by looking at events that may occur before six months of age. Here we have an interesting hint that what is being talked about here is not attachment in the conventional sense at all, but something else (undefined).  It is quite remarkable to claim that a child’s recognition or nonrecognition of the mother in the first six months tells something about Reactive Attachment Disorder, as attachment is not indicated behaviorally until after that age. Be that as it may, the symptoms Miller lists are serious problems indeed, including withdrawal, difficulty with touch, poor muscle tone, delayed motor development, and decreased vocalization. Any baby showing these symptoms does need early intervention for both physical and cognitive problems, there is no question about that . However, what they do NOT need is treatment for Reactive Attachment Disorder, especially the types of treatment Miller recommends later in the document. To tell parents of developmentally delayed toddlers or preschoolers that these early symptoms showed that they had Reactive Attachment Disorder all along is in my opinion little, if at all, short of criminal.

Slogging onward, we come to pp. 11-13. Having listed the DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder, Miller now turns right around and introduces the infamous checklists of Walter Buenning and Gregory Keck. These completely unvalidated lists include such items as poor eye contact, wanting to hold own bottle, and preferring Dad to Mom as indicating Reactive Attachment Disorder in infants and toddlers, and for older children list the usual Attachment Therapy-related group, such as being superficially charming, not making eye contact on parental terms, “crazy lying”, and abnormal speech patterns. These lists contain a number of items like lack of impulse control that are indeed of concern, but are not aspects of  attachment problems and are not likely to be treatable by the interventions Miller offers.

What are the interventions Miller recommends? On p. 15, she suggests “brain building activities” as suggested by Bruce Perry, and of course by Nancy Thomas. In typical Nancy Thomas fashion, the list of these activities is headed by the injunction that they must be led by the adult, not the child; this injunction reflects the belief that  displays of parental authority create attachment, and that a child’s obedience shows that he is attached to an adult. The activities include many that would ordinarily probably be fun for children, ping-pong, playing catch, and jumping on a trampoline. However, when these are to be done as recommended, five or six times each day, for ten minutes at a time, at the command of an adult caregiver, the “fun” aspects seem to be a good deal lessened.

To continue with the recommendations for intervention, we see on p. 14 of “Taming Tiny Tigers” a page that is startling in its simplicity. Without elaboration, and under the heading of “Therapeutic Continuum”, this page shows a line with the words “non-directive play therapy” at the left and “holding therapy” at the right. What can Miller mean? What is she recommending? She doesn’t come right out and tell, but a look at the bibliography shows publications by the heavy-duty masters of the intrusive and potentially dangerous holding therapy, Foster Cline and Martha Welch, and by Ronald Federici, who advises restraining adopted children in the dangerous prone position. And of course, it shows many publications by Nancy Thomas, the woman who recommends that foster children not be permitted to say grace at meals, “because you don’t know who they might be praying to.”

All in all, “Taming Tiny Tigers” is a pretty disconcerting package, but Miller doesn’t have to conform to any rules to be a parenting coach. What’s more, the First Amendment permits her to pass out all this disinformation. Fortunately, it also permits me and others to have our say about Miller and her “Tigers”.