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Treating Kids Who Play With Fire : Experts Probe the Angry Mix of a Firesetter’s Emotions

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Times Staff Writer

It was a trap. But Robert didn’t know that. Or that he was being watched.

The one-way windows hid the adults peering out at the small boy, alone, crouching and crying in the shrubbery lining a walled patio.

Locked in his immobilizing misery, he ignored--for the moment--the toys invitingly scattered on a bench. Hidden among the stuffed animals and other playthings were more ominous temptations--matches, candles, a lighter.

For those behind the blank-eyed windows of the hospital, the issue was simple: Would Robert, 5, yield to his fascination with fire? As a toddler he had turned on the kitchen stove and was rescued by his mother seconds before grease from a frying pan splattered all over the room. One Halloween he had created a waxy mess trying to light a jack-o’-lantern. Just before last Christmas he set his brother’s bed on fire, the final proof to his family that Robert was indeed a different sort of child.

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Superficially, Robert (not his real name) is easy to pigeonhole. He is a firesetter, one of a troubled group of children--mainly withdrawn males from all social and economic levels, and often as young as 2 or 3--who have a seemingly primeval relationship with fire. Setting fires bolsters their emotionally dwarfed lives by demonstrating and/or dealing with turmoils they cannot express otherwise.

Some estimate that children and juveniles, many with troubles like Robert’s, are responsible for up to half or more of the 1 million arson fires in this country each year. Others guess that children set 10 times as many fires as are ever reported. But no one really knows the size of the problem because firesetting, though much publicized in recent years, is still a malady in search of an early diagnosis and precisely defined social dimensions.

Over the last two or three years, however, the firesetting syndrome has begun to receive systematic attention from the mental health establishment. Six- to eight-week programs aimed at rechanneling firesetters’ errant behavior have been developed at a few psychiatric hospitals, supplementing earlier programs set up by parents’ groups and fire departments. All of these hospital programs, three or four at most, are located on the West Coast, including one at the CPC (Community Psychiatric Centers) Horizon Hospital in Pomona that started in January.

Designed for the most severely affected children--whose firesetting behavior is only the brightest strand in a tangle of difficulties--most of these programs are still in their early stages. Even so, a more detailed profile of the firesetter is beginning to emerge. It is a complicated picture, a mosaic of anger and depression that is being pieced together with clinical techniques like those at Pomona where Robert is being treated.

It was there that Robert, the program’s first patient, recently underwent what the staff calls “the patio test,” an intentional re-creation of the emotional climate that leads to firesetting. By bringing submerged anxieties to the surface, therapists hoped to make Robert aware of his behavior, giving him at least some understanding of his emotional makeup. Also, they hoped to lead him into discussing his feelings rather than acting out his frustrations. It is always appropriate to talk, but not to vent feelings through destructive behavior, said child psychologist Lynne Perry Ph.D.

A few minutes before he was left by himself on the patio, his mother had told him she was leaving the hospital to spend the day with his father and older brother at an amusement park. It was the kind of message meant to summon up Robert’s jealousy and anger, the blurred mass of emotions that he had learned to focus with flame. A couple of minutes later Perry, using a spurious phone call as an excuse, had left too. Perry’s exit was intended to be the final spark to Robert’s volatile state. Above all else, his mother said, Robert hates to be alone.

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At first he cried and cowered in a corner. Then he took out his feelings on a punching bag hanging from a tree, showing the frustration and rage that have marked his life. At one point he picked up a pair of scissors and jabbed the bag, an action reminiscent of the time he cut up drapes at home.

This was the third time Robert had been subjected to the test. In the other exercises he had not played with fire, had, in fact, tossed matches away, a sign that his treatment was going well.

But now he could not resist flirtation with his old friend.

He picked up a match and made a half-hearted attempt to strike it before dropping it on the ground.

The action was eloquent evidence that Robert, though making progress, had not yet broken the spell that grips him.

Perry returned to the patio to confront Robert about his action. At first he denied it but after being reassured that, while what he had done was wrong, he would not be punished, Robert admitted he had handled a match. Later, during a session with his mother and Perry, Robert also said that his reaction was spurred partly by feelings of separation from his mother and anger because he had been left out of the trip to the amusement park. Other ingredients in his firesetting personality include sexual confusion and curiosity, indicated by Robert’s talk about genital areas in the session, Perry said.

Dr. Michael S. Geffen, director of psychological services at the Pomona hospital, said that firesetting typically occurs after such an upset.

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“It could be a conflict with a sibling,” Geffen said, “it could be discipline from the parents, it could be a conflict between the parents that the kid is watching. Instead of talking about that and dealing with that, the firesetting kid goes out and sets fires.

“It is a mood-altering experience. Setting the fire takes away the bad feelings and they start to feel some excitement, some pleasure, from it. Adults would use alcohol, perhaps, in the same way. . . . One of the things we look for is the mood-altering process. Kids sometimes attribute magical qualities to fire. That’s a dangerous sign. It’s powerful (they say) , it can do wonderful things, it’s exciting, it’s fun.

When Robert set his brother’s bed on fire, he probably was expressing his jealousy of his brother, or he may have picked that object because his parents have a water bed, Geffen said.

“There’s often a message to what gets burned, a fire under a sibling’s bed or under a parent’s bed,” he explained. “Some kids have set their stuffed animals on fire. . . . We’ve had kids who’ve set them on fire and thrown them out the window. I think what the kid is saying is that ‘even something inanimate I should be able to hold for comfort, I can’t even feel comfortable with it. There is no comfort in my life anywhere.’ ”

In an interview, Robert’s mother said, “He has been different from my older son since the day he came home from the hospital.” But while she sensed the differentness of her youngest child, for a long time she was perplexed as to its nature.

“He’s had a problem for a long time, but doctors were unable to really tell me what it was, or if there was something we could do to change his problem.”

And as he got older he rapidly got worse. During the last few months of 1984 “he was becoming more out of control in everyday incidents,” his mother recalled. “And then there was a firesetting incident three days before Christmas. It made me realize that we had lost all control of the situation and that something had to be done.”

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A short time later, through one of the firemen who came to their home, Robert’s family learned of the Pomona program. The child was admitted after interviews with him and his family and completion of detailed questionnaires about the family life and Robert’s history, including such items as bed-wetting, temper tantrums and previous therapy, if any.

In the case of Robert’s family--as it is with most others in which firesetting is diagnosed--it was immediately obvious that Robert did not bear sole responsibility for his behavior, Geffen said. Robert’s father had not spent much time with his son because of a demanding work schedule. Robert had become jealous of the time his mother and father spent alone or that they devoted to his older brother.

Geffen said children with problems such as Robert’s may either be quiet or hyperactive, but the common thread is that they’re not good at “expressing their feelings directly.”

Robert’s mother added that her son didn’t begin talking until he was almost 3, was a poor sleeper, did not play well with other children and “always seemed really angry.”

Because Robert’s home life seems to be a factor in his behavior, as it is with most firesetters, his mother and father are required by the hospital to participate in his therapy. The program includes several hours per week of therapy sessions with Robert, work with staff and group therapy with other families and parents. “We’re trying to teach them how to interact with their children,” Geffen said. The parents also are in a marriage counseling program.

Robert’s history may make his problem seem obvious, but it excludes one key element--denial by the family that firesetting behavior is a problem, and a dangerous one at that.

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Said Geffen: “It’s interesting that often parents don’t want to believe there’s a real problem. ‘I set fires when I was a kid, too. It’s no big deal. I always played with matches.’ They try to write it off as nothing of any great consequence. So when you sit down and say, ‘I wish I could tell you that, but I’m very concerned about having you spend another night in your house,’ they don’t believe that.”

Since the program began in January, CPC Horizon has had 17 referrals but only Robert’s family and one other chose hospitalization, Geffen said.

At the very least, a family with a firesetter should buy a smoke detector, said Capt. Joe Day, a fire safety specialist with the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “I know of a firesetter who got up in the middle of the night and lit a newspaper from the stove and walked through the house with it,” he said.

Day, a nationally recognized expert on firesetting, noted that 37% of all persons arrested for arson last year were juveniles. But he doubts that current reporting techniques accurately gauge the extent of firesetting. His office, he said, averages 70 to 100 calls a year from families concerned about their children. Acknowledging that “this doesn’t sound like a lot,” he noted that it doesn’t include contacts with other agencies such as the sheriff’s department and police. Greater coordination between agencies, already under way, will go a long way toward defining the scope of the problem, he said.

The same point was made by Dr. Doug Meyer, a Portland, Ore., psychologist, who developed the firesetting treatment model on which the Pomona program is based. Oregon is currently amending its fire reporting system to take into account the possibility of juvenile arson, he said. A preliminary analysis of recent fires in the Portland area indicated that there may be as many as 1,400 active firesetters in a population of slightly more than 1.2 million, he said.

In addition, Meyer said he has two researchers probing various facets of firesetting because he believes that the available information “isn’t very good.”

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However, Day, Geffen and others are quick to note that not every child who plays with fire is a firesetter, or requires hospitalization.

“In almost every case we see there’s a problem of some sort, but it may not be firesetting,” Geffen said. “We may determine that the firesetting was normal curiosity. We may suggest that they go back to the fire department and have a fire department officer talk with the kid about the dangers of fire. Or we’ll make appropriate referrals for other counseling.”

Many cases can be handled on an outpatient basis, both Geffen and Meyer said. Day adds that the majority of children and juveniles he has interviewed during the years have set fires either accidentally or out of curiosity. The curiosity seekers usually stop when they learn about the harm they can do, he said.

Thus far the success rate for these new programs seems promising. Of the 100 or so patients he has treated in the last two years, Meyer said, no relapses have been reported.

Some fundamental questions remain. Why do children choose fire as the outlet for their unhappiness? Some experts believe that children associate positively with pleasant uses of fire, such as in fireplaces and barbecues. But that answer seems glib to Meyer and Geffen. Both said the reasons lie deep in the psyche and that further research is needed.

Robert’s mother recalled that she was burned badly as a child and has had a “terrible fear” of fire ever since. Her son may know this and use it against her, she said.

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