Now bold boys and girls have their own ‘syndrome’

A disobedient child used to be called ‘bold’ in Ireland, ‘naughty’ in Britain and ‘méchant’ – which can also mean ‘bad’ or ‘nasty’ – in France. Occasionally, the more forgiving term ‘contrary’ might be applied.

And bold children were slapped for their wilfulness or sent out of the classroom to be given a humiliating scolding. They were made to sit on ‘the naughty step’, to be stigmatised and excluded for their defiance.

As a former member of the bold and the naughty tribe of youngsters, I’ve been intrigued to learn that there is a newly-discovered ‘syndrome’ for our bad behaviour. It has now been formally labelled as ‘Pathological Demand Avoidance’.

Analysis

I first heard about PDA when a friend’s granddaughter was diagnosed with the condition. A nice kid, but she’d go into meltdown if she was directly ordered to do something. Normal school attendance became impossible, as did many ordinary activities: there was a public scene at an airport when compliance over some regulation was expected.

Authority is a necessary part of social organisation, but authority should sometimes be challenged”

Among an older generation, PDA might be scoffed at as a load of nonsense from the psychology profession. Yet I have quite a lot of sympathy for this trait, and I rather wish it had been better understood in the past. I think it’s a welcome step that books are now being published about understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance.*

My own analysis of a chronic attitude of disobedience is that it is socially useful, sometimes, for rebels to go against the grain of the accepted order.

Authority is a necessary part of social organisation, but authority should sometimes be challenged. Individuals who wouldn’t easily obey orders were sometimes dubbed ‘the awkward squad’.

Rogues

Frances McDormand’s character in the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was an example of a bolshie, PDA woman who pursues state officials over her daughter’s death. And when Ms McDormand was awarded an Oscar for her role, she said she was herself just like that – she had a problem with authority.

The French Resistance, during World War Two, got under way when it attracted odd-bods, according to the historian Rod Kedward: eccentrics, people who didn’t ‘fit in’, people who’d been expelled from respectable positions, the insolent and the challenging. They gave the Resistance its energy.

Surely it’s a genuinely Christian idea to recognise that offbeat and rogue personalities also bring something to the table? Everyone matters.

There can be overdiagnoses of mental conditions and syndromes these days, but there can also be help, and not necessarily always involving medication. The PDA youngster I encountered was greatly calmed down by the gift of an animal pet.

*Sally Cat and Brook Madera’s The Insider’s Guide to PDA explores the world of those who hate doing what they are told. Some psychologists have linked PDA with autism, but this link has not been established.

 

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The Taoiseach Michéal Martin may feel faced with a classic moral dilemma in going to Washington to present the traditional bowl of shamrock for St Patrick’s Day.

Does he tell President Trump that most of the Irish people really do object to the values and policies of this administration? Or does he stay prudently quiet, bearing in mind his responsibilities to protect jobs? Some people would even prefer if he didn’t go.

Perhaps one solution would be to speak about St Patrick himself: how he had been a slave and a migrant, but came to be a towering figure in the host society where he came to settle?

A lot can be achieved by telling stories.

Sadly, our political class blatantly instrumentalises St Patrick – forty government politicians fanning out all over the globe for March 17 – but seldom, if ever, refers to the Christian mission of the saint’s life.

 

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A controversy has blown up over the casting of the white Australian actor Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in the film Wuthering Heights.

It is nowadays suggested that Emily Brontë’s character should be played by an actor of colour, as the author described her hero as “swarthy”, “dark-skinned” and used terms which links him to a gypsy heritage.

Some years ago the literary academic Terry Eagleton, who has an Irish background, wrote that Heathcliff could have been Irish. The book was written between 1845 and 1846, when even before the worst depredations of the Famine, many impoverished Irish people were arriving into the North of England. In the story, Heathcliff was a foundling boy wandering the streets of Liverpool, the main port for Irish immigrants.

Emily Brontë’s father was himself Irish – the original surname having been Prunty – so Eagleton’s notion is at least as plausible as the contemporary suggestion that Heathcliff might have been black, or Indian.

Yet, it’s a fictional novel, not a social thesis, so people can project whatever interpretation they like, or whatever accords with the theories of the day.