: About Me

Hello.

Thanks for giving me a chance to introduce myself. I am a 60-year-old psychiatrist with lots on my mind. When I discovered Helium I realized that this was a place to share my ideas and hear yours.

I got to psychiatry by a rather convoluted route. I first studied biology and got a PhD in zoology after getting fascinated by evolutionary theory, the origins of complex social behaviors (initially I got into birds, White Ibises to be precise) and chronicled their breeding habits over five years. They were really cool. They set up monogamous pairs in order to raise highly dependent young and then the male and female were mutually promiscuous with their neighbors. I concocted a theory as to how such a mating "strategy" might evolve only to realize that my model seemed to apply equally well to Suburbiaso farewell zoology and hello anthropology. But who wants to hear what a zoologist has to say about people? After having great fun at Harvard rubbing elbows with some of the sharpest minds I've ever known (Richard Dawkins, Robert Trivers, Stephen J Gould - that crowd) I decided to become a psychiatrist, reasoning that my ideas might be heard better coming from a student of humans (and being a doctor, I figured, was bound to pay better).

Amazingly, I found out I really enjoy working with people with emotional problems, and I've spent 20 years being a clinician rather than the Great Thinker I'd fantasized about being. I don't regret that, but I still want to talk about my ideas, so hear I am. I hope you find my stuff interesting.

Thom

My passion is ...

understanding what makes humans tick

I know too much about ...

how little I actually know

My parents always told me ...

get good grades and behave

My childhood ambition ...

to play center field for the Philadelphia Phillies

My favorite memory ...

making eye contact with Emily, my first child, when she was one minute old

Why I write ...

I have stuff I want to say

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

stuff on human evolution and behavior, movies (with uplifting endings, mainly), and the Buena Vista Social Club

My first job ...

walking horses (until I got stepped-on)

My best moment ...

falling in love (boring, I know, but true)

My inspiration ...

trying to understand the things I do

Parenting & Pregnancy > Child Development Issues Children and catch-up growth

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As a psychiatrist, I have an unusual take on the notion of "catch-up growth". The development of a child, both his or her physical growth as well as the emergence of increased social mastery, depends upon nourishment from a variety of sources. We usually measure height and weight then plot the numbers on a graph to see how a child is progressing, and we have come to realize that a child who is "failing to thrive" physically can recover and "climb the charts" until he or she reaches an acceptable percentile once the necessary nutritional building blocks are supplied in sufficient quantities...

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