Other lessons from child psychiatry:

1. Don’t sexually molest your kids. I am so serious about this.

2. Did you know there are whole institutions for dealing with kids who sexually molest other kids? And these institutions are always full? The world is much worse than anybody thinks and I cannot finish up my child psychiatry rotation quickly enough.

3. Seriously, sometimes (and I don’t endorse this, and trigger warning this is horribly offensive) I feel like passing out bingo cards with every conceivable relative and every conceivable form of abuse. “Stepfather molests stepdaughter” would be the free space in the center. But we could also have “Father beats mother”, “Mother beats father”, “Parents beat kid”, “Kid beats parents”, “Brother molests sister”, “Sister stabs brother”, and so on. I’m not saying you would go through the day with one of these cards. That would be too easy. I’m saying you would have to try to get a bingo with a single patient.

4. Seriously, don’t have kids with horrifying predatory criminals. THIS NEVER HELPS.

5. The weirder the spelling of a traditional name (”Aireene”, “Maichel”) the longer the kid’s criminal record. This is true regardless of race.

6. The more kids you have by age 16, the more likely it is that each one of those kids will grow up to be a fine upstanding citizen who contributes many useful things to society. Or at least that had better be true, for all of our sakes.

7. The prevalence of ADHD in Our Lady Of An Undisclosed Location Child Psychiatry Unit is holding steady at 100%.



8. HAVE I MENTIONED NOT HAVING KIDS WITH HORRIFYING PREDATORY CRIMINALS? I FEEL LIKE THIS IS A SURPRISINGLY UNDEREXPLORED STRATEGY.