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I've read and listened to some and agree with some of her points and disagree with others. One thing to point out is she does think therapy is important for certain extreme situations and I totally agree. Another important point she makes that I think people downplay is that therapy like all treatment can have side effects and I agree with that too. I think people forget that all treatments have side effects, the severity varies and they don't affect everyone. But yes I think putting kids into therapy can tell them they can't function on their own when that isn't the case and I can understand how it can turn into a dependence if it goes on for years.
In generally I dislike how a lot of our society has become so dependent on experts in general, which would include believing everything Shrier says too I think she makes good points and disagree with some of what she says. We all know stories of parents who advocated for their kids when doctors said there was nothing wrong and it turns out there was (i know this story can go the other way too). This doesn't mean I don't trust doctors but it does mean I understand I have information about my kid that a doctor doesn't and they do (hopefully) the best the can with their expertise and limited info and it's my job to decide what to do with their recommendation, this is why for serious issues many people get second or third opinions to weigh their options. So a therapist would be the same to me, a therapist is just a person with a certain kind of knowledge and training and experience but it doesn't mean they know how to deal with my kids better than I do necessarily, if my child had anorexia or ODD or something I wasn't equipped to help them with I would research a professional and get my child help. For something like losing a loved one that's a part of life and I am equipped to help my child through it, unless they stopped eating or displayed some other extreme behavior.
I do think you can over focus on emotions. Anecdotally my friends whose moms always focused on their feelings has never been equipped to deal with their own emotions, in my day those were the more "hippie dippie" parents of the time and my parents were more shake it off and think of other people's feelings and I can have a tendency to repress my feelings so I am trying for a happy medium where I acknowledge my kids feelings but don't let them use them as a reason to do or not do something or to act out. I know personally that dwelling on my feelings is not good for me and being active and productive does way more for my mental health than talking about my feelings past a certain point (which btw I am in therapy and my therapist also tells me not to dwell on things I can't control and take action when there are things I can change).
Anyway nothing really changes for me, we already try to parent lovingly but with an eye to making our children independent and emotionally regulated (which works well for us becuase my oldest loves being independent and my middle wants to do whatever her sister can do). It's a long and complex topic but if I would summarize it i would say we probably went from under treating and diagnosing kids and not allowing them to feel their feelings enough to over treating and diagnosing and sometimes teaching them to wallow in their feelings too much and hopefully we can navigate a happy middle somewhere.
The best critiques often come from outsiders. I work in western medicine, but I so feel the best critiques of western medicine have come from outside the field, and helped push us towards lifestyle medicine in primary care.
I just finished the book (it came out Tuesday) and it is definitely worth a read! I’ve always been skeptical of therapy but I think it’s a valuable book to those who tout its benefits. Shrier is really balanced in her approach to the subject.
I have two toddlers and very little time so the fact that I finished it in 4 days means it’s a page turner.
It is a page turner but I’d like to counsel you gently that her book is NOT balanced. She very neatly sidesteps and leaves out evidence of success in modern child therapy and pedagogy. She ridicules the assessments that provide statistics we deeply need (that she references!) and does not include any of the evidence that shows those surveys’ efficacy. As someone who “touts the benefits” of therapy (as in someone who was positively impacted by those surveys, and has grown up to see three of my loved ones’ lives changed immeasurably by therapy as well as my own), I found her POV to be that of a ragebait political writer who was offended that we have been trying to fix the problem and haven’t come up with a solution yet. She finally offers some anecdotal suggestions in one of the final chapters, and overall is just very anti-therapy in a way I think is rather extreme, not to mention unfair to the many humans who are genuinely struggling and benefit from therapeutic resources.
She mentions that therapy may have benefits for people with specific issues but therapy should always have an end date. I think the bigger point of the book is that parents should be the first to address behavior through punishments and rewards. Instead, many parents tiptoe through child rearing afraid to traumatize their children with a time out. Instead, they outsource parenting to “experts” - many of whom have no children.
Like I said, I’m incredibly biased and am very wary of the psychological industry.
The reason parents don't give their children spankings and time outs anymore is because decades of research show they are not effective. So we're trying something different and using more tools available to us. With new knowledge comes the responsibility to act differently.
This author is not an expert on anything to do with children, the medical field, or psychology. She's a Wall Street Journal columnist famous for being obsessed with hating trans people.
I don't need parenting advice from a woman who makes up fantasies to scare herself about trans children beating down the doors to terrorize our "real daughters."
Actually decades of research show time outs ARE effective and "experts" lie through their teeth about that because time outs aren't "in" right now so they pretend there is evidence they don't work when thats a bunch of bs.
I do actually agree with those points! I think just like with school, parents need to be actively involved in the therapeutic journey- including helping kids use thoughtful tools to manage emotions, and use [related-to-the-behavior] punishment and rewards to manage behavior. They also should be helping ensure there is SOME safe space in the child’s life where they can express/feel their feelings without worrying about trying to “fix” it right away. Some things need to be processed!
We do time ins- we talk about how feeling excited and silly is ok and throwing toys hurts. To show you feel excited you can do a super fast dance or you can make silly faces. Then the toddler is restricted to one piece of furniture for a timer duration while I stay in the room doing mom stuff. I want him to know I’m still there if he wants to talk, and I especially want to be close so I’m able to enforce the restriction by physically putting him back on the couch/bed/whatever if he gets up before the timer. This just helps the punishment actually stay connected to his misbehavior and our talk.
*> She very neatly sidesteps and leaves out evidence of success in modern child therapy and pedagogy.*
I've seen several comments to this effect with no further reading to back them up. Concretely, which relevant successes are being omitted?
*> She ridicules the assessments that provide statistics we deeply need.*
Doing harm in the name of analytics is everything that's wrong with our economy/society. This is the same class of argument police use to trample rights and expand surveillance - surveillance which [doesn't correlate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/07/25/security-surveillance-and-the-truth-about-going-dark/?sh=cd1a6e86106a) to improved security, much as expanded mental health surveillance hasn't translated to improved outcomes among ~~patients~~ clients).
*> not to mention unfair to the many humans who are genuinely struggling and benefit from therapeutic resources.*
This doesn't justify a shotgun approach. Tools like [NNT](https://thennt.com/) exist for a reason. There's a reason we don't give antibiotics to everyone just in case someone happens to benefit. That reason is that it's unfair to the many humans who may suffer more harm than benefit, like being forced to apologize to their attacker (what?!) or re-live their worst moments in front of classmates.
Not super on topic but just wanted to reply and say that I also think that's a really good plan. As long as stuff is well written and not obvious bullshit I try to get some input from all kinds of sources.
I'm towards the end of the book now. Definitely some food for thought, but I noted a common theme in her style.
1. Provide a set of anecdotal examples (simpering mom w/ violent tantrum kid, over indulgent pushover dad from some forum, SEL programs gone rogue, etc)
2. Make a few jokes making fun of how ridiculous said examples are
3. Provide research showing this stereotype of liberal parenting doesn't produce the best outcomes
4. Declare victory
While it's certainly great at getting the cheer section riled up, it's not really that logically sound. Are the anecdotes representative? I mean, I find them as hilarious as the next person. Having lived in a lot of urban areas full of the demographic this is poking fun I've run into these stereotypes...but they don't seem very representative.
Like one theme this chapter's been on is the pushober parent dealing with violent temper tantrums. The research cited is about *normal kids.* But she pretends the only thing you need to straighten out this kid's behavior is a quick pat on the but and send them to their room.
I have a kid who was on the more intense side of these behaviors. And others that are absolutely not. I'm not a pushover, my parenting style hasn't changed. So what's the difference? Well, sometimes parents just don't matter. Sometimes kids are who they are and parents just have to work with that. Now, he's gotten much better as he's aged. And the extremes never bled over into public, school, or social situations that would be completely inappropriate.
One thing I can assure you. When those tantrums come, in the moment, it's all about mitigation and harm reduction. Spanking absolutely does not work for some, just escalates. Then what? spank harder? hit harder? No. That's abuse. Period. Yell louder? Oh, they're game for that too.
So, for the atypical situation. I heard a lot of judgey judgey lip service from her, but no real insight in these areas.
One other note. I found it amusing she said parents "tolerate behavior from their kids no responsible dog owner would from their dog". I do agree. But there's a certain irony in that the overwhelming body of research in dog training makes two things very clear:
1. Punishment or coercive training is ineffective and can increase negative behaviors
2. Positive reinforcement and shaping are the best tactics by a very far shot for persistent behavior change.
If you read the modern, non-fad, non-psycho babble, control based experimental research on child behavior......it says the exact same thing.
In fact, that's what authoritative parenting IS. A system of consistent, predictably applied consequences for behavior. And the research says, unambiguously, positive reinforcement is stronger than punishment when choosing a consequence.
/end rant :)
About the dog stuff. Grew up around dogs and hunters. All those dogs were very well behaved and more or less no issues (except one who didn't listen at all but then it turned out he couldn't hear anything so I guess I give that a pass) and all those owners were super friendly with the dogs but if the dog did something it shouldn't do they were also super quick and clear with the dog that that behavior was not accepted at all. Also seen the same from anyone with a big dog that I would trust around my kids. Like 95 percent or more just fun positive learning but also super clear boundaries so that the dog knows what is expected.
Does that sound reasonable or do you have any links that say that's not really the ideal?
I haven't seen any research showing punishment doesn't work. I've seen a lot about the harms of CORPORAL punishment but that's entirely different. And I've actually looked and tried to find this research. I've come to the conclusion a lot of you saying this are just lying and reading blogs from "experts" and repeating what they said was true.
Trying to fix the problem?
Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
Because of this "therapy" culture and also "identity" jargon. I'm "Fat-bodied, I'm part of the X community, I'm neuro-divergent." Whatever the flavor of the month but in actually we're none of those things. We are a temporary personality in a temporary world. Stop identifying and grasping to ego
I disagree with the philosophical underpinning of therapy. Especially psychoanalysis. Fried, ego, superego, subconscious… all of it.
I am Eastern European so sitting around talking about your feelings just seems like laziness. It’s a different culture. It’s hard to pinpoint anything specific that I disagree with because I think it’s ridiculous down to its core.
With all respect- how old are you, and have you ever studied psychology or had therapy? At least in the US & Canada, no one has talked about Freud to a patient for several decades. Modern psychology is more based in biology than Freud. You are talking about theories well over 100 years old, that no one believes in anymore.
For instance. I see you posted - You made a student cry while tutoring them precalc? You must believe there is some value to sitting around talking about your emotions- because you yourself are doing it. You are doing it right here on reddit. You say you don’t see any use in sitting around talking about emotions, but here you are doing that in your other post, talking about emotions.
Do you think it may be of value to understand the emotion behind your student crying? You are asking for advice- can you see that understanding the student’s emotions will be beneficial in deciding how to move forward. Understanding how to better interact with the student, making that situation better, for both of you? As we all know it is a *lot* easier to teach and learn when the student is not so emotional. As a teacher, i have years of proving that to be true.
Even if you see no value in making a person’s mental health better, it is *certainly* more effective and requires less work for teacher *and* student when the student is not crying.
I don't necessarily agree that therapy (done well) can't be helpful for mentally well children coping with life challenges or children with minor mental health issues, but I do think we've kind of generationally tended to become really uncomfortable with negative emotions in ourselves and our children.
I think its worth remembering that sadness, anxiety, frustration, guilt and boredom are, unless abnormally persistent and/or severe, all normal parts of life that we should teach kids to worth through rather than avoid and that happiness is rarely an effective goal in itself and most people are more likely to be happy if they pursue healthy relationships, long-term goals, or a sense of purpose.
>generationally tended to become really uncomfortable with negative emotions in ourselves and our children.
Not only negative emotions but negative experiences overall.
In the US parents try way too hard to fend off anything negative or challenging for their kids.
They don't want them to get hurt, lose in a sports game or even walk alone to school without a tracker.
Those "bulldozer parents" are causing serious mental damage to their children instead of keeping them "safe".
Walking to school alone is a terrible idea in many many places in this world. I know many adults that wouldn't be caught out walking alone in their own neighborhoods after the police have been defunded....there's just too many creeps, criminals, and zombie junkies living in the strrets.
Yeah, sure. But every mom in suburbia is starting to over protect their kids. They read news headlines and think that crimes against children are MUCH MUCH more likely than they are. I had a very free and independent childhood and I couldn’t imagine growing up like the average kid today. The US has gotten safer, too.
True, we should not be making bad or upsetting emotions the centerpieces of a child's life, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be giving them the tools to cope with these sorts of emotions. While those events that you describe seem small as an adult, they are quite big and challenging for a child. Much of behavioral therapy is predicated on focusing on the present and NOT dwelling on past failures. A child unable to cope with guilt or shame is far worse off than a child who can confront those emotions, learn from them, and leave them in the past.
How do you get comfortable with negative emotions? By telling kids to suck up up and figure it out? That's what I did as a kid. I made straight A's and was top of my class while having daily panic attacks because I was so afraid of disappointing everyone by not being perfect all the time. But on the surface it looked like I was perfectly fine to most bc I was excelling academically.
Instead, I wish I had been taught the tools to handle these emotions, because when I got out of college and no longer had my studies to bury my emotions in I spiraled. I'm still really struggling into my 30s with my own kids.
What child therapy does is provide parents with the skills to help their kids manage their big, new emotions, and teach them the signs that their kids are struggling mentally. Then both the parents, and counselor as needed, can help teach their kids how to identify and regulate their emotions and behavior.
But I think the real reason this author doesn't like therapy for kids (unless it's what she deems a "real" issue) is that if they say they're LGBT they won't be told they're being groomed by the gays. Which this author has told to Congress and talked about in her other trans panic book
Trying to fix the problem?
Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
This is really good. I’m a newer practicing therapist that just listened to her podcast with Jordan Petersen and am considering buying the book.
I got out of grad school and primarily worked with kids, teens, and families who were on Medicaid or in foster care before transferring to a private practice that doesn’t take insurance (recently). It was a really jarring transition and I feel like I see a lot of people who don’t have problems as severe as children in the foster care system. Parents whose kids “just aren’t listening” are coming in and asking for help. And I’m like… okay, I don’t want to pathologize the hyperactivity of a 6 year old because they are… idk… 6??? How much caffeine are you giving them and how much screen time do they have? That doesn’t mean I need to label them as ADHD. It doesn’t mean that they have something wrong with them.
Other people come because they genuinely have issues that they want to work on. Others come because therapy is trending now for some reason. There are a lot of people that come for different reasons and I try to respect all of them, but also challenge them to use the coping skills and tools / social supports that they already have while learning new ones.
The majority of us in this field don’t want clients to become dependent on us. The goal is to eventually get out of therapy with more resource than you came in with feeling empowered, not worsening mental health and enabled behaviors…
I really hope that we see improvements over the years. I guess I can only do my due diligence as a clinician and educate myself more on topics like these so that I’m not aiding in creating a generation that lacks confidence in themselves.
Please take her book to hearth. I'm a Buddhist and much of the problems therapy does is concertize people's personalities and problems. I'm a traditional tibetan medicine doctor and one of our precepts is that not all patients are patients. Don't just take on a patient because they want therapy. Just like medical doctors, very few people actually need treatment, what they need are diet and lifestyle changes. Same with therapy.
It’s completely different than medicine in a way, though. It’s an hour a week verbally processing something that someone perceives as a problem. What may be a problem to one person might not be a problem to another. When it comes to practicing medicine as a doctor, someone can objectively state that someone is healthy by observing tests and results. With mental health, yeah we have assessments but just because someone scores high on a PHQ-9 doesn’t mean they have a disorder. Maybe they have a short term difficult issue that they’re facing. if someone is experiencing severely impairing problems, I normally don’t label it as a diagnosis. We talk through it and process it together. They try new skills and practice those outside of session. They report improvements over time. They utilize me as someone to talk to that’s more or less objective compared to their families or friends. I hope that makes sense. It is a job that is considered healthcare, but it’s very unique. People go to the doctor when they think they’re sick. Sometimes people to go therapy if they’re having relationship problems. I let them decide what they need more or less, unless they try self diagnosing or telling me how to do my job when I disagree with their self-proclaimed diagnoses lol
Agree, we have to be clear on negative emotions being normal it seems. In our own minds and for the sake of teaching our kids. In the podcast, they mention an instance of a kid's cat dying, and then sending the kid to therapy to "deal with it". They make the point that therapy has been seen as a zero downside deal. At best, it might help, at worst, it kinda does nothing. She's challenging that notion, for sure. I haven't decided yet at all if I can agree or disagree...
This is a nice way to distill the point, and I agree it’s an interesting one. There definitely could be harmful side effects to therapy, especially extreme courses of treatment like that. But- I just don’t really see how the research she presented points to that? I read the book and checked nearly all the sources— a number of them were studies on adults, non-academic/opinion articles with further research of questionable source embedded in them, and simply bibliographic citations (one frequently repeated reference was the CDC suicide survey, which made it seem like she was introducing a bunch of new science but she was just… quoting the questionnaire).
What do you think about the theory that mass shootings increase likelihood of mental health diagnoses to a serious degree? She brushes it off, saying that in her (unspecified and uncredited/cited) interviews none of the kids brought that up. But here in a Stanford review they employed extensive research, and a large sample, to show that school shootings had an overwhelming effect on students. https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/health/surviving-school-shooting-impacts-mental-health-education-and-earnings-american
Thanks for initiating this thoughtful (though at times uncomfortable!) discussion.
It’s interesting, I mean mass shootings are horrible. I see this as a subset of the argument I hear that the world essentially is scarier than it used to be, and that combined with the fact that we hear about every bad thing that happens due to social media gives rise to higher anxiety.
But I think it’s worth remembering that prior generations sent their young people to fight and die in wars in large numbers, dealt with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation (hiding under their desk drills), and also dealt with higher rates of murder and crime than we have today. So what’s so special about school shootings? Or put another way, why can this generation not deal with school shootings, while prior generations could deal with a civil war, for example, without suicide? I just don’t think we objectively have a worse world. It’s just perceived as such… or the scary things feel even scarier.
I’m sure it doesn’t help
I’ve been thinking about those prior generations myself. They did live under a lot of threat, and were generally working harder to survive, more likely to experience intense and direct hardships. One thing that comes to me is that they lived in a world that moved a lot slower. There was time to process news as huge events happened and evolved- you weren’t being kicked up in a constant frenzy of breaking news. Discussions happened in person among limited circles in your community. Kids these days are being trained into hypervigilance for the “next thing”- whether its a superficial trend middle schoolers have to know or whether its a major global economic development that sends your 19 year old into a spiral. They take in not only the event/trend itself but also endless chatter and opinions about it. Not to mention— that info is also hitting the adults in their lives twice as fast, and causing plenty of anxiety, confusion, and polarization as well. I wonder if kids aren’t just becoming so saturated, so overburdened by “big shit” to process that they don’t feel like they can keep up with a lifetime of it. I think that idea is largely what drives parents to therapy for their children- is it a symptom or is it the problem?
Maybe the fact that there are fewer direct/physical perils facing kids is resulting in some weird short circuiting- the brain constructing/perceiving threats incorrectly. Like a harmless allergen that’s mistaken for enemy substance, the brain is mistaking some of these global phenomena for direct harm?
I’d also like to wonder… How does adult technology use impact kids? Are we missing some component of attention/connectedness to non-digital life that is leaving them feeling unsafe in the world?
no its the fact that they are all drugged and diagnosing themselves or by doctors to face anything in life more importantly do. Immigrants gonna have a hey day with your daughters guys
Just read an essay by Shrier in the WSJ. Full disclosure - I’m a parent and a clinical psychologist.
I read her argument as “it’s unhelpful to excessively talk to kids about their emotions.” Well, no $@/) - that’s a circular argument… doing anything excessively is excessive… We can also argue that excessively avoiding talking about emotions with kids is unhelpful, as there’s tons of research on the detrimental effects of emotional avoidance…
Like most things with parenting it’s about balance, and finding a middle path. Encourage emotional awareness AND focus on action and resourcefulness. The middle path is messy and imperfect and we will question ourselves and struggle, which makes self help books with the “right” answer so appealing and lucrative. Yet, many of these books tend to oversimplify things to make an argument and in so doing lose the nuance relevant to real life.
I’m glad you’re here. I’m gonna hit ya with some questions I’ve been thinking about.
How wide spread do you think this realization is (that over-focusing on our emotions or our kids emotions has negative outcomes)? In general, do you think this generation of parents is likely slipping into permissive parenting at a higher rate than previous generations? Do you think gentle parenting, or possibly the misinterpretation of gentle parenting, is having some negative consequences?
Thanks! Glad you made your post - and I am curious to read this book.
I have no idea about how many parents are aware of potentially unhelpful ways of engaging with emotions. Would be an interesting empirical question to evaluate - I didn’t find anything via a quick google scholar search. I work with many families where the parents are complicit in unhelpful emotional coping (e.g., worrying, ruminating, or avoiding emotionally triggering things with their kiddos). And I’m for sure guilty of this in my own life and parenting some times! In my view this is where therapy can help - a third party can help us observe if our behavior is moving us towards our goals. Of course we can do that on our own, too! And partners and kids give us explicit and implicit feedback on the efficacy of our behavior all the time!
And I could see how excessive emotion focus could relate to permissive parenting though I think plenty of permissive parenting comes from emotional avoidance (e.g., parents don’t want to tolerate kids tantrums when they set limits so they give in or retaliate with their own ineffective emotionally-driven behavior like yelling or threatening).
Ultimately , while it’s interesting to think about society wide trends, I tend to focus on the individual level of analysis - what does this kid, family, or parent need to be doing to reach their goals. For some it’s learn to be a bit more supportive and validating of emotions. For others it’s learning to set expectations and limits. And for many it’s a bit of both. This is less interesting for a book, yet pragmatic.
I think you need to read Alfie Kohn Myth of the Spoiled Child for some incredible research based information that will help answer your questions. Abigail Shrier is just a disgruntled lady clinging to some out dated and honestly harmful ideology.
So as a clinical psychologist do you not think that it is unreasonable to refer people to full blown mental health assessment and therapy for things that are just "the way the life is" and within an average person's ability to cope with, without clinical intervention?
I found the book to be incredibly unsubstantiated in the claims that it makes, as it tries to take a macro-approach to incredibly personal and circumstantial instances. While Shrier uses plenty of detailed anecdotes from therapists and behavioral psychologists, they are exactly that- anecdotes. Big claims about childhood development, medication, and cognitive psychology are made but she fails to provide enough DATA to back up these claims. Oftentimes, she is just making personal inferences on research and data that she did not conduct to create some causal relationship between things like cognitive behavioral therapy and childhood development.
Of the more unbelievable claims that she makes, I found one about medication and emotional "musculature" in children quite strange, "Placing your child on a stimulant for ADHD, or SSRI, or an anti-anxiety medication, is a profound and consequential choice that is not like putting an adult on those things at all. Placing a child in a state of emotional numbness when they are trying to develop emotional musculature, trying to handle the natural vicissitudes of life for the first time may set them up for a life in which they can never learn to cope with hardship or dissapointment." Abigail Shrier did NOT conduct any research on whether or not children who take these medications have issues developing coping mechanisms or "emotional musculature". She did NOT conduct any sort of study in children, and she ONLY relied on anecdotes and personal accounts from therapists and medical professionals. While that may seem sufficient, if you ever took a stats class, it is not! Children with ADHD have a deficit in seratonin, which affects their capacity to maintain focus or impulse control. Medication is often the only suitable choice to balance this out, and it is the same thing as putting on your glasses in the morning. Adults who have used these medications for long periods of time have not been found to have lower capacities of emotional intelligence or "musculature" as she claims. Shrier discounts data that unequivocally proves that children who use these medications (maybe not SSRI's) improve drastically, and that long-term use of these medications has a positive impact on development.
Sorry, but I really found the book infuriating. Especially with the ADHD stuff, I am not quite as familiar with SSRI's, but I found her claims to be just as "big" as the others. The only thing the book *really* does is push a narrative that modern medicine and approaches to children with disabilities or impairments are a net-negative, when the overwhelming majority of researchers and doctors have proven through DATA that these practices help children lead more normal and productive lives. Shrier tries to appeal to the heartstrings of "traditional" parents, but frankly just sounds more like a big quack. Don't even get me started about what she said about cognitive behavioral therapy and how its "bad" for children- the whole thing is riddled with cherry-picked anecdotes that often conflict with one another.
> as it tries to take a macro-approach to incredibly personal and circumstantial instances.
Ironically, I think that's her complaint against the mandatory-therapy-for-everyone approach.
> Abigail Shrier did NOT conduct any research..
Am I the only one who didn't expect a scientific, peer-reviwed, meta-analysis when I ordered a book from an opinion columnist in the "Political Commentary" section of Amazon?
> While that may seem sufficient, if you ever took a stats class, it is not!
Sufficient for what? For whom?
> and \[chronic daily amphetamine/amphetamine-analog consumption\] is the same thing as putting on your glasses in the morning
This is an alarming statement from someone who holds themselves out as having the credentials to evaluate this evidence.
Trying to fix the problem?
Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
Well…. These statistics are very true, and very sad. But we didn’t start employing these tools randomly in 2007. There WAS however, an enormous economic crises that resulted in massive housing/health/financial insecurities. If I were writing a book like Shrier, I would postulate that the recession placed strains on our cracking systems that impacted teens and young adults dramatically. I lost all of my college savings, and my best friend lost her father when his housing construction company failed and he lost his health insurance. It was an important event in American history that coincides very closely with these statistics, not to mention the Pandemic which is not even mentioned or alluded to in her book. However- I’m not going to write that book because although I have a lot of observations about it, and conversations that reinforce the point, I know that I’m only able to see a very small slice of this pie without a background in child psychology/economics/whatever.
Anecdotally though, this time it reminds me of the 70s when we saw all the vets coming home torn to pieces mentally after the war and massive cultural changes. When the red scare was really fucking with us and causing big political divisions. If we had had this compassionate view for our kids then like we do now, who knows what might’ve been different? Would we have seen fewer vet suicides and lower rates of alcoholism? (btw, Shrier cites an article three times in which the main premise is how it’s an issue that teens/young adults are not engaging in enough risky sex or alcohol use. That’s the kind of thing that makes the book so hard to take seriously.)
I didn't read this book but from the sample I just listened to it sounds like utter garbage and fear mongering. She is clearly antagonistic towards all forms of progress and almost seething at not calling her parent imposed consequences punishments. Get a grip woman, not everyone is out to get you. Her kid obviously had therapy and realized she's crazy and now she's got a chip on her shoulder about it.
Good input, thanks for that. I can imagine if you’ve seen good results you would feel like she may prevent otherwise needed intervention. Have you picked up anything you didn’t know or that you found interesting or useful amid the rest you detested?
Ok I read the book and highly recommend it. I’m sure I don’t agree with the authors politics, but this book caused me to stop and reflect on a few things.
1. Being state-oriented vs task-oriented. The schools where we live are now very into the social emotional learning and checking in on our kids feelings. Versus when we were kids our curriculum was more task-oriented and focused on achievement, neglecting the mental health awareness. The author comes off a little alarmist about the child psychology agenda, and that’s not where I’m at. Fair to say though that after reading this, as parents at home we’re steering back to tasks and going to focus on what we’re DOING more than how we’re FEELING to try and keep it balanced.
2. The possibility of iatrogenic risk for psych interventions should be considered. I admit I’d assume more therapy is better or that it “couldn’t hurt” before this read. She makes a compelling case that therapy for kids that don’t need it has risks.
3. For what’s it worth, this book is not “here are all the answers.” Reading it was thought-provoking and even more valuable, empowering to my parenting. I roll my eyes at authority and generally don’t like being in charge. Parenting can be hard, thankless, and can feel demoralizing and this was a reminder on the joys and honor of being our kids’ #1. It inspired me to reflect on my participation in the groupthink parenting subs (no offense Reddit :)) and inspire confidence to “own” parenting instead of insecurely handing authority over to Experts, because I think it’s true that it’s important for my kids that they know that their parents are in charge.
Thank you for this thoughtful book review. You seem pretty close to where I'm at, I'm not done with the book, I'm about halfway (trying to find time!). We have also changed our parenting a bit (not drastically) based on thinking about this book. A quick story to illustrate:
I have a four year that has (gasp!) been in therapy in the past year, but is not currently. He has trouble with emotional regulation and anxiety at his pre-school. His anxiety comes around difficulty when things change. For example, drop off. Or we hear from the teachers that when they change from one activity to another he will get "stuck" and seems to not be able to go with the flow and move to the next thing. At times this will lead to tears and claims of "I don't like school!" (which is not true, he raves about school 99% of the time and we know he has lots of friends there).
This doesn't happen daily, but maybe once a week, especially when showing up a few minutes late he will get super socially anxious and not want to join in (even after 2 years at this same place with mostly the same kids, who he gets along with really well). So this happened this past week, he melts down and won't go into school, claiming "I hate school". In the past, I would go down to his level, ask him about why he's feeling that way, what he's feeling right now, etc. It has literally never worked, what ends up happening is that he goes into the directors office for 10 mins and she gives him some task to distract him, so the parents can exit, and after 10 mins she says he'll feel better and join in. Ok, so what did I change. This time I just said, "Listen, you are OK right now. You are safe. I want you to be brave and join in." Well, that didn't work either, and he was in the directors office. But later that day on the way home we talked about it. I told him that it was "not ok" for him to cry and not join in at school. I told him that he's very brave and courageous boy, and that sometimes our brains have to be told by us what to do, because they misbehave. I told him that if he can be brave for one week, not cry at drop off, and join in with the others, I will take him for an ice cream cone. Well, so far so good. We've talked about his bravery each day and he has had zero trouble. He even explained to his sister how he's telling his brain what to do now. Did I teach him to "repress his emotions".... in a way I think I did... and we're all doing better. He's four so who knows what will happen next... so maybe I'm an example of being a parent that probably over "bought in" to tending to every emotion and maybe that was hurting more than helping in some cases.
>This time I just said, "Listen, you are OK right now. You are safe. I want you to be brave and join in." Well, that didn't work either, and he was in the directors office. But later that day on the way home we talked about it. I told him that it was "not ok" for him to cry and not join in at school. I told him that he's very brave and courageous boy, and that sometimes our brains have to be told by us what to do, because they misbehave. I told him that if he can be brave for one week, not cry at drop off, and join in with the others, I will take him for an ice cream cone.
I love this. How has it gone?
I've been doing something similar with my 3.5 year old. She has been having trouble falling asleep and staying in her bad at night. (Because she is afraid of "Pete" the extremely benign antagonist from the Mickey Mouse Funhouse 😂). I've done a lot of assuring her that she is safe, Pete won't get her, Mommy and Daddy protect her etc. But now I'm just trying the "you know what? you are brave. you can handle it," so we will see how that goes!
BTW just listened to this on Honestly and loved it, jived with a lot of what I have been thinking for a long time and haven't articulated.
I think people are missing the entire point. What Shrier harps on in the book is iatrogenesis. Meaning harm brought forth BY the healer. She’s merely suggesting that by introducing therapy or a therapeutic approach to deal with very regular childhood dilemma causes more harm than good.
Our kids are getting more and more therapy than they ever have, and not so coincidentally, they have the worst mental health they’ve ever had. This generation of kids is more anxious and less able to do for themselves than any generation before.
I thought it was a great read.
Anyone claiming that “this is the best way to do something” is usually a fraud. If I parented my children exactly the same I’d have one well disciplined child and a guerrilla rebel. Everyone is different.
There are a lot of successful parenting strategies, and each is different. This whole “the kids are not ok” idea is just fear mongering. The kids are ok, the parents are doing ok and if we just cut each other a little slack we’ll all be ok.
I take your point on treating kids as individuals, definitely. And she also makes the point several times, so as not to confuse anybody, that therapy is needed for kids who, well, need it. It's not an anti-therapy stance.
I so wish I could be on your team with the "kids are ok"... but unfortunately there are a lot of hard data when you look at it from a population stand point (and not kid by kid) that tells a very different story. There is actually a declared mental health emergency in place from the government in the US, and many many researchers have been scratching their heads wondering why so many metrics are pointing to the kids "not being all right". I'm very sympathetic to not want to fall for fear-mongering, but the "kids aren't all right" is actually the consensus take from those that study child development.
Have you talked to anyone that actually studies child development? Like a therapist/psychologist/teacher? Because this woman is none of those things. She's a professional opinion haver that thinks being too nice to your kids makes them trans
Why do you keep getting downvoted? This is not my domain, but I have had longitudinal access to an expert in this field and your posts are the only ones that are cutting through the anecdotal arguments with evidence-based medicine and relevant self experience.
>This whole “the kids are not ok” idea is just fear mongering.
Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising a mind-blowing 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
The hard data shows, you have no idea what you are talking about. The kids are NOT okay.
I listened to the podcast with Bari Weiss because a friend posted it with a reference to the dangers of gentle parenting. I thought she made interesting points, especially how we use the word anxious instead of nervous air depressed instead of sad to describe normal everyday emotions. I appreciated that she did emphasize that therapy is necessary and helpful for kids who really need it.
My main issue was how she doesn’t accurately represent gentle parenting, or at least the best version of it. Gentle parenting does seem to have a wide range of meanings to different people, but parenting with no discipline and no consequences as she describes is more accurately described as permissive parenting. So she is setting up a straw man in this interview in my view. I’d be interested if she goes into more detail about exactly what gentle parenting entails in the book. I have heard on other podcasts Bari making the point of taking the best and most fair version of a viewpoint and engaging with that so I felt it was odd she didn’t push back or engage on that at all.
Abigail mentioned a study that shows that an authoritative parenting style leads to the best outcomes for kids, which led me to google and I feel it lines up more with the gentle parenting resources I’ve encountered (tbh mostly on Instagram and a few blogs)
https://parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style/
This was actually a really helpful read for me as I have a 3 yr old and a newborn and have been struggling to feel confident in my parenting choices.
Thank you for this insight. I think you're right, many gentle parenting experts are not afraid of clear boundaries and enforcing them. It's just so easy to slip from gentle parenting to permissive parenting. Having another voice in my head to help avoid that is helpful for me at least.
Gentle parenting is authoritative parenting with a different name! It often gets a bad rap but people are thinking of permissive parenting in that case. Gentle parenting when done well is not permissive?
I very much agree with this criticism. Bari is generally a good interviewer who tries to steelman but they botched it with Gentle Parenting which is *not* permissive parenting. Janet Lansbury, one of the biggest Gentle Parenting Gurus, spends a lot of time explaining how important it is to be a leader to kids and make sure they know what the boundaries are, what the consequences are, and who is in charge. Punishments that are unrelated consequences, yelling and escalation, corporal punishment - these tactics are simply not effective when it comes to helping a child learn how to self regulate and adjust their behavior. That to me is what gentle parenting is all about.
*However* I think a lot of times Gentle Parenting holds the door open for permissive parenting. There's an article in *The Cut* (https://www.thecut.com/article/gentle-parenting-and-the-accidentally-permissive-parent.html) that covers it well. It's hard to GP and still be authoritative. It's hard to hold boundaries in general! Especially for people who are uncomfortable being authority figures. But that is less of a criticism with Gentle Parenting and more of an issue with people doing it wrong.
Sorry but they're not doing it wrong. They're reading the scripts word for word and the fact is that what the gentle parents call "boundaries" tend to be more like suggestions because they are not truly enforced except in the most simplistic circumstances. Particularly in situations where kids are violent, gentle parenting is almost always permissive and is against any true negative consequences, instead giving HORRIBLE advice such as giving your child a hug after they have hit you.
idk man. i’m sure they can point to some crappy gentle parenting influencers. but they IMO are the minority, and the truth is that most people who are entranced by the rhetoric of gentle parenting just don’t have the stones to follow-through what on its face is solid advice (as highlighted by the article i linked to)
by cherry picking crappy GP influencers and ignoring major leaders like angela lansbury is strawmanning and it’s lazy. which i do think is doing it wrong.
and yeah, i tell my kid if she hits me that it’s not ok, that it hurts me, and that i want space from her. if we’re doing something fun it ends when she hits. but hell yeah im going to hug her after if i think it would benefit her.
>over-focusing on ones own emotional state, which is championed by therapists, SEL advocates, and modern school counselors, leads to more instances of anxiety, emotional weakness, and depression.
What constitutes "over-focusing on ones own emotional state"? Which therapists are championing this?
Everything I've experienced about therapy is learning how to deal with uncomfortable emotional situations and experiences, not avoiding them. Therapy is for processing emotions, not just sitting there and thinking about them. I'm not sure what this author's background is but it definitely sounds like it isn't psychology.
I guess you could argue that the very fact of sitting there and talking about yourself and your emotions is "focusing" on them. But again, she makes the point over and over, so as not to confuse anybody, that therapy is NEEDED and is good, for cases where trauma has happened. She's just arguing (I think) that the bar for "trauma" has gotten way too low.
I didn't go through a huge trauma, but I did have horrible daily panic attacks as a child while making straight As and holding 2 jobs in highschool. Despite my success academically and having friends I still spent much of my 12 and up years in agony with depression and anxiety. It only got better after college when I took myself to therapy and started medication.
I would have preferred my parents seek help from a professional early on. Bc you don't get a psych degree when they hand you the baby at the hospital. And this author doesn't have one either
I'm so glad you're doing better, that sounds really hard. It's impossible to know counter-reality of you receiving intervention earlier, but what do you think? Do you value those hard things you overcame in any way? Does it worry you that a kid may develop, very early, a sense that they are "broken", and intake the mental narrative that they'll just never be OK, and thereby (for some kids, maybe depending on how good their intervention is?) it may not actually still help? The last thing we want is unnecessary suffering, but how do we find the line between unnecessary suffering, and over-intervention? The author does make clear that some kids do need the help, it's quite possible you were one of those that would've been better off. IDK, not trying to say I do. Thanks for sharing your experience.
But then what is the line of "focusing" versus "over-focusing"? And is it simply just thinking and talking too much about emotions? Is the implication that talking about anxiety with a therapist increases that anxiety? And what exactly is "emotional weakness" because that sounds pretty subjective and immeasurable.
I could maybe see the justification behind this argument if therapy was just having people restate their emotional toils and there wasn't any action taken to challenge, process, or heal from those situations. But to me this sounds akin to someone saying "People should only be using bandaids for gaping wounds, if there's a cut then toughen up and deal with it yourself instead of being a weak pussy".
Good thoughts, thank you.
I think one concern is that what is actually happening is exactly what you describe in the 2nd paragraph, where we focus our kids on emotions but not in a healthy way that helps them progress. It brings up a separation in her arguments that may be helpful to pull apart.
1) Parents are untrained therapists, and acting as "armchair" therapists we may inadvertently do exactly as you describe, and over-focus on emotions without the follow-through of challenging those emotions. Some of the language may need to be modified to avoid this.. instead of "your emotions are valid"... its maybe more "I understand you feel that way, but have you considered..." in a way of challenging the notion that every emotion is expected to be tended to and has a valid power over us.
2) Professional therapists, and whether they can actually be harmful in intervening with an otherwise "normal" or emotionally developing healthy kid.
I guess those are two different things... I'm more concerned about number 1 because its my day-to-day job to be a parent and I'd like to be as good of a parent as I can be (as we all would). Number 2 is interesting and important, I am completely undecided, but would like to learn more.
I appreciate you being open to evaluating the legitimacy of the content you posted about. I can align with you on point 1 and the fact that as parents, it's beneficial to make sure that we are helping kids *process* the emotions and problem solve on how to move past difficult emotions.
I think child therapists who are properly credentialed have a high level of specialty within child development so I would trust them to be able to appropriately evaluate proper intervention in children and distinguishing what is typical development versus atypical.
I find comments and thoughts like this really disappointing.
It doesn’t pass the “so what” test. We love our kids and I don’t care if a donkey from Timbuktu comes up with the right (or partially right) answer as to why this generation is so struggling, I want to know the truth more than I want to support stupid tribalism. These are kids that are struggling, and we want to keep searching to find better ways to parent! I’m not accepting we’ve just “solved parenting” with these stats our society is putting up in the USA.
None of what I said means this author has solved it, it’s just a statement to stop closing your mind by first trying to figure out if a person is “on my team” before you’ll consider a word they say. Futhermore, I don’t actually know if she is actually conservative? But like I said, I don’t actually care since this is not related closely at all to normal left / right dynamics.
My comment does not come from whether this person is on my team- it’s based on this person being an imbecile who delivers anecdotes based on their own personal feelings that aren’t remotely backed up by studies
There are at least three problems with this statement:
1. It forces politics into a conversation about psychology and parenting, where it is unnecessary
2. It assumes that anyone with a conservative opinion is wrong (imagine replacing 'conservative' with 'liberal' and expecting everyone to agree liberals are wrong 100% of the time) \[this is also known as a 'poisoning the well' fallacy, instead of critiquing the ideas themselves, you simply attack the person that voiced them\]
3. You do not actually know what the author's full views on life and world affairs are any more than the next reader.
You are using "vibes" to base your presumption that she's a conservative, when I have never seen her identify as one. Ironically, meaning you are using "vibes" to dismiss what someone says because you think they are too much of a "vibes-based" person.
Fair- I only use “vaguely” because she’s in that sect of people who present themselves as cool Brooklyn liberals but spread almost exclusively right wing talking points- probably a better word for it.
She's never presented herself as anything other than a journalist, a parent, and a concerned citizen. That is it. Stop projecting your insecurity onto other people.
The thing is, she doesn't have a lot of "science that backs it up" - she has a whole lot of anecdotes and personal interviews, not substantially meaningful data analysis or meta-analyses of multiple studies. She has stories, and some of them make my extremely progressive, gentle-parenting, in-touch-with-my-feelings ass dubious about those particular situations, for sure. She's acting like she's reporting on the front lines of the dangers of SEL and therapy but what she's mostly talking about is the expected awkwardness and growing pains of integrating those things in our culture and finding out how to do them well and most effectively.
But just like with her other book, she's fanning tiny flames of doubt into an inferno, and it's just not that deep, tbh. I'm not changing the way I parent based on the middling journalism of a political commentator with an agenda, nah - just like I wouldn't change the way I parent based on one, singular scientific study, or one anecdote from my aunt, or something I saw another parent do successfully one time.
There's not a lot of Science™ because not only would it be inconvenient to the Mental Health Industrial Complex or the researchers' own careers, but also the kids haven't quite grown up yet, so longitudinal studies simply aren't ready. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I'd love to know when the popular attitude changed from considering the preponderance of evidence to "meta-analysis or GTFO". I'm guessing it was moments after learning what a meta-analysis was.
So *we don't know* if this is dangerous or just "awkwardness and growing pains" - presumably you have a meta-analysis that supports your claim and simply forgot to post it.
Anecdotes (aka "case studies") are not without value, especially in emerging and under-researched topics. They're what build pressure for more research, and that push is definitely needed, considering this field of under-qualified practitioners and their internet fans aggressively deny even the *possibility* of negative outcomes - flying in the face of one of the most basic tenets of medicine.
I find your claim about only making decisions on meta-analyses to be dubious, because mostly everyone I know will try to replicate study findings (however rigorously) to see if they work in their life. If I hear a clever anecdote I think might work in my situation, I'm likely to try it. Thankfully, there are lots of people who try to replicate findings, else we wouldn't have the precious meta-analyses at all.
In fact, I think you're the first person I've ever seen state that they don't ever experiment or change their mind based on anything but a meta-analysis. Are you kidding me? Did you wait for the meta-analyses on the vaccine? Do you need one for [the parachute](https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2019/02/breakthrough-research-reveals-parachutes-dont-prevent-death-when-jumping-from-a-plane/)?
Thanks for calling out the amount of science that backs it up as a concern. Hard to tell from the podcast, I'm planning to read the book and then I'll have a better understanding of how much data there is around this (I hope). On-going topic of research I hope too!!
I would also research the author and see if you feel her advice is worth your time. I did not see anything in her background that would tell me she's equipped to write this book or give broad medical advice about children.
She's an opinion columnist writing an opinion piece; having opinions on the society one lives in (however informed) is not a crime, last I checked.
Also, none of the various teachers, social workers, and other pseudopractitioners are qualified to give medical advice either, yet here we are.
The thing to consider is that the author is not an expert on anything related to child psychology or health. She's not a teacher, or a doctor. She's a professional opinion haver.
Part of her saying "stop listening to experts so much" is because she is not an expert in this topic. Pretty much everything she says seems obvious, or wrong.
Her other book is trans panic about how all our daughters are becoming trans bc they're being groomed by the gays. Which pretty much invalidates her as a resource of any parenting advice for me.
The thing to consider is that you are for some reason assblasted about those that do not want to castrate minors. The “experts” she is talking about are the ones who are getting minors hooked on drugs and over-diagnosing mental disorders. This is an actual issue.
Also she is a mother, which you will never be.
Thanks for making this post. I want to teach my children to be strong, independent, and open-minded. I hope they grow up to be confident, functional, and well-adjusted, with or without therapy. I like that this author isn’t an expert and isn’t afraid to ask some difficult questions that go against the zeitgeist.
"We've turned every parent into a "mini-therapist", resulting in over-intervention in our kids otherwise normal emotional development, and stunting their ability to deal themselves with negative emotions in a healthy way."
Yup. This.....in spades. Don't really need to say more than that right there.
Yes- I agree with this point as well! I think overall she makes a lot of fair points, tbh.
Parents being therapists is not the way. Preventing age-appropriate “trauma” or microtrauma or whatever (can we have some more nuanced words for this concept PLEASE? It’s english, we have words for everything) can absolutely stunt growth and resourcefulness.
But, there IS more to say: real therapists can bring a lot of value to kids lives by providing A SPACE for them to feel free to express themselves and process/talk through very complex emotions (the intensity is so real!!) without judgement or needing to please. This can be really valuable, especially in cultures where you are constantly being judged either worthy or unworthy. As a teenager sometimes all you need is someone to hear you, and not all teens have that relationship with their parents or a peer. A therapist can be like a great coach in your child’s life, in my experience.
Interesting, so you feel this validates what you've already been thinking in a way? Are you against therapy in general, not meant to be a leading question, just wondering.
Absolutely. Look at the number of parents coming on this very sub daily in a fit of anxiety because their child experienced some minor emotional discomfort due to a social/family incident. Now they want to know "what to do about it!"
The advice pours in....."sit and talk to them about it", "get therapy," "call the other kid's parents," "give them a mental health day off school," etc. etc. etc.
Now what should have been a minor incident and a chance to develop some emotional coping skills, has been elevated into days or weeks of a flurry of activity in their child's life. What are you really teaching them? You're teaching them that what should have been a small discomfort is actually a HUGE emotional event in their life, and that they should spend days or weeks or months ruminating, fixating, and focusing on it.
This is how you end up with 18 year old college kids who think they need 2 weeks off school and 6 months of intensive therapy when their cat dies. They are non-functional members of society because their entire life from the day they were born they were taught not how to cope with minor emotional discomfort, but instead that the entire world around them should drop everything and fixate on nothing but their emotional needs ad nauseum every time they stub their toe. It's sick, and as my grandmother would say: "the proof is in the pudding": teenage suicide is at an all time high.
Oh goodness we're dealing with this in our own house rn, and it is so annoying. Kiddo was playing at school with his friends in the kind of way that a group of 12yo boys often play together, but THAT day one of the kids was having a rough go of it and had a little meltdown. Now I was getting a phone call from the AP telling me about how my son committed battery and bullying. He didn't, that's ridiculous. So he's out of school for *three days.*
And what isn't happening here? The kids aren't just... working it out... nor are they learning about boundaries in the natural way kids tend to understand them around that age. The focus on *feelings* and *subjectivity* means that kids aren't *actually* even learning "social and emotional" skills, they're being taught to soapbox about their *feelings* which then gets them their way (and can even get other kids punished). Meanwhile, they learn nothing of use other than how to manipulate authority figures.
And when we met with the APs and I moreorless said the above? They knew their top-down policy was bad for the kids but they couldn't do anything since it comes down from the district. And for the love of everything good in this world, these kids are *already* developmentally-emotionally behind because of covid so maybe this approach isn't the best. And heck, down here we got them back to school pretty darn quick, too! We still have swaths of 6th graders who basically act like 4th/5th graders, which is an issue because they're starting to get bigger and stronger and the problems that come from that strength/size coupled with an immature mentality causes a lot of bad outcomes. Heck, my little guy ain't so little anymore. He's taller, weighs more, is stronger, etc., than me and has been for a little while now. It can be a little frightening when he gets little-kid energy and goes a little bonkers without much awareness of other people (as stuff like the above story demonstrates they're getting shielded from development milestones that could be conceived as 'negative').
I find it interesting that you don't think kids should be "coddled by therapy" yet your 12 year old hurt another boy enough to get 3 days of suspension but you think that's a normal minor incident?? I thought you would be like "4 yo hurt a finger, call the therapist ". That's a huge incident in your kids life!
Are you talking to your kid about the situation at all, and how he feels having (maybe accidentally) hurt a friend?
If not, I think you're doing him a great disservice. Acceptable behavior for men does not include not apologizing and reflecting when you hurt someone.
It’s an interesting idea I guess if it jives with you, and you feel it works well with your children’s development but the Bari Weiss/Joe Rogan seal of approval you say? What is this, a book on parenting saying we should pump our kids full of ivermectin lest they start using kitty litter in schools?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Shrier
> In 2020, Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters[5][6] was published by Regnery Publishing. The book supports the proposed but unproven[7] hypothesis of socially mediated gender dysphoria.[8][9]: ch 2 Shrier has previously criticised individuals who use the singular they, comparing it to idol worship;
> In 2024, Shrier published Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, which details her thoughts on the origins and solution to the American mental health crisis.[1][23][24] Elon Musk posted on X "Good Book" with a link to the Apple audio version.
This is unrelated to trans issues, and as such it should have no bearing on your thoughts on this current book and ideas, since it doesn't come up at all and is a completely different topic.
The passage he quoted doesn’t mention ivermectin. It talks about how parents are giving hormones to minors, which even European countries like Sweden are turning away from.
>i’m nb and my gf is trans
Ah, you’re one of those freaks. In that case, I will ignore your feedback.
That's just patently false. You don't understand the human mind very well.
I guess we shouldn't have learned anything in manufacturing because Henry Ford was a racist?
Or maybe Steve Jobs was an overall idiot because he thought he could heal his cancer through his diet?
Or maybe because Gandhi was a sex addict, we can't learn about non-violent protests from him?
OR OR OR... such a stupid take, I can't even.
Yes, they are completely different. Someone having an interest in child development and looking at completely different arenas within that interest is normal. People with high critical thinking skills are able to separate ideas from people.
For anybody interested in upping your game, Tim Urban does a fantastic job of explaining how to engage in better discourse in order to learn, like he does with many things. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxtJxRvzA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxtJxRvzA4)
I get I may be the one making a category error by expecting this on REDDIT. haha.
Bud, these analogies are terrible.
Henry Ford innovated in a very specific way that's been emulated and powerfully shaped society, sure. But his racism absolutely influenced the way assembly line technology was developed, used, and the role it has played in society.
Steve Jobs also innovated in very specific ways that we can learn from, but it's certainly pertinent to consider the ways in which he thought he was exceptional and what his particular blind spots were. That, too, is instructive.
Considering Gandhi's misogyny and racism are extremely pertinent when evaluating his work as well as what his lasting political and cultural legacy has been for India as well as how his particular fanwork for non-violent protest was studied and used after him.
It's like you're resistant to the idea that people are flawed and those flaws aren't pertinent to studying their work. The whole "learn from exceptional geniuses" model is so tired, anyway.
On the other hand, Shrier isn't even an innovator so the comparison is deeply strained to begin with - she's a journalist and political commentator. She's not coming up with innovative solutions to problems, she's hand-wringing and tapping into a "new" developing wave of moral panic straight out of the culture wars, round one million.
1) Come up with your own examples if you don't like mine, they're literally everywhere.
2) Every person is flawed. That's **my** point. We seem to agree.
3) I try to learn from anyone that has interesting ideas, or compiles info and research supporting a compelling idea. You believe in judging a person as part of a tribe, then ignoring them if you don't like their tribe. Good luck with that.
4) Like I said, pick your own examples, there's nothing I've said that claims she's an innovator. I think of her as a journalist, compiling information and reporting on an interesting possibly "missed" angle to our modern society. I don't know if I even agree with her, but I certainly find it a story worth reading about.
5) You keep calling this a "moral panic", which implies you don't know about the data surrounding kids mental health or maybe you don't care? In any case, I am not "panicked" in any sense personally, but our kids are not launching too successfully, so maybe you should err on the side of more concern and not less. But do you, of course, I don't care.
This woman’s whole job is as a journalist and book writer. How she has previously evaluated data and ideas and how conservative or liberal she has been in sticking to data/information definitely has relevance on how she does that from one topic to the next.
If you’ve previously trotted out a catastrophizing if not fear mongering account of a specific sector of childhood development that’s thick on anecdote and *extremely thin* on corroborating research that’s definitely relevant to her new endeavor of a new catastrophizing account of childhood development!
reasonable to question authority and knowledge≠we can't ever learn anything ever from a person with shitty takes. weird how invested you are in using logical fallacies to defend a book you haven't even read, though🤨
No we're saying take manufacturing advice from Henry Ford not not parenting advice . Bc he's not an expert on parenting advice.
I would Google the author and see if you feel she has any expertise in this area that she's broadly giving parents medical advice in
That’s a very flawed epistemology. Jordan Peterson is an excellent psychologist, but can’t reason himself out of a paper bag when it comes to cultural issues, you’re epistemology says we should either trust him at both or neither, that’s not how the world works.
>She says that over-focusing on ones own emotional state, which is championed by therapists, SEL advocates, and modern school counselors, leads to more instances of anxiety, emotional weakness, and depression.
I don’t think it can be argued that therapists encourage ruminating (Try Googling “child therapist ruminating”). Secondly, I think encouraging children, especially boys, to be more in touch with their emotions is a good thing.
I have much to say about this book, of which most is negative. I think that she conflates everything from cops to teachers as being therapists when they fundamentally are not. She alleges that most kids get their first diagnosis in school without citing a source for this, and *despite the fact* that school counselors *are not qualified to diagnose* kids. Nor has the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) endorsed the idea that school counselors should provide long term therapy, or even short term therapy to treat a diagnosis (at least dating back to 2015). She alleges that DARE is an example of bad therapy when it was never made to be that, and it's delivered by police. She applies population level data to individuals. She interviewed the authors of an article that seemingly would have agreed with proactive screening which Shrier starts the book off lamenting about.
She's right to bring to attention iatrogenesis. This is real. It happens. 5% of people do get worse, or don't get better. But this context means that 5 in 100 people are going to see symptoms get worse. Moreover, she doesn't ever explain what *good therapy* looks like. Even in her discussions on iatrogenesis, she leans on interviews without explaining why *some* symptoms *would* get worse. She leaves the reader to connect dots that they've been primed to connect with little further analysis.
That’s some really well thought out criticism. I appreciate the balance with praise for calling out what you see as a solid point with iatrogenesis. Not pointing out what “good therapy” is does seem like a major short coming. Like a lot of people with a point, she takes it too far at times, and stretches where it isn’t necessary to stretch. It sells more books to be so one sided, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to more persuasion to your point as much as an honest balance of pros and cons would. Thank you!
We need to see more clinical data and evidence on what she claims. There is a spectrum as it relates to the quality of a therapist as well as the different modalities. It's possible there aren't enough good therapists that actually help solve issues . Some may be keeping you in a never ending rabbit hole of questioning with no solutions. Also, you can gain tools/training in therapy to deal with negative emotions in a healthy way. Developing emotional intelligence. I don't see how i.e. mastering CBT for a specific anxiety would make things worse. You're supposed to be catching, checking and changing your thought process to help.
Teaching coping skills for normal emotions of sadness, anger and anxiety is to be commended. The trend I see of identifying any trauma as an integral part of your persona I find disconcerting.
love the book and as a health care practitioner from traditional tibetan medicine background I have always been very reluctant to suggest therapy for most people and the points I use are the exact same in her book. Of course therapy is good for certain, small cases but this modern thought that everyone would benefit from therapy is ludicrous and causes more harm than good, especially with children. I've seen it in my own family.
After listening to her NPR interview, i now have deeper understanding of wanting to use the sarcastic phrase “Uhh, OK Boomer.”
I am sure her book will do very well with a particular audience that in general sees the world and its problems as very black & white place instead of complicated and nuanced, have never *actually* experienced or had therapy, and in general feel victimized by other imaginary enemies when trying to deal with their own lives.
Anyone can cherry-pick scientific research, which she admits doing. She repeatedly draws her own conclusion from a *single* research paper, without addressing the larger picture & metadata, which of course any real researcher knows is the only scientifically valid way to do research.
But just in general, who the hell thinks it is a good idea to take advice on psychology from a lawyer???
I’m a teacher and am currently listening to the book on Spotify. It all rings so true. The districts are spending a lot of money on social emotional learning and I have to say it’s garbage. The resources are crap. Just a waste of instructional time. Kids are running to the counselor all the time, group counseling for kids who just need to refocus on learning. My favorite part of the book so far: what you focus on is what grows. And too many kids are running to the counselor for petty stuff.
Better late than never! My current take is that like a lot of people with a point to make, she often goes to far, stretches for data, and will take a biased stance against data that doesn't support her argument. Careful readers and analyzers will take issue with a lot of that, and it doesn't support her arguments. However, going full scale tilted on "therapy" gets her attention and book sales, and more charitably, brings some attention to her point.
I think there is a point worth considering in her work, despite her going too far in many instances. The point for me is "don't let your emotional distress that is derived from your children's emotional hurt allow you to overprotect them, and thereby disallow their normal emotional development." I think my framing isn't that specific to therapy... it's just don't be a permissive parent, a lawnmower parent, or a helicopter parent. Let them experience bumps and bruises physically and emotionally. It can help them grow and learn to deal with the world. "Too much therapy" is more of a symptom than a cause in my view. Therefore I'm not that convinced its the therapy that is a problem... but I'm quite convinced that overprotecting children and treating them as fragile glass that will break at any tiny danger is large issue. It could just be that over-use of therapy is correlated with this type of parenting. Cause/correlation... always hard to untangle.
I teach middle school, and I definitely see a kernel of truth in the idea that therapy has become such a part of our discourse that kids are prone to pathologizing normal adolescent distress. But that's a far cry from "therapy is actively hurting people," which is what the book argues. Shrier also has laughably bad standards of evidence. Early on she claims that "most therapists" advise against separating adolescents from their smartphones. If you read the footnote, the evidence for this claim is a whopping two op-eds by therapists, one of which doesn't actually say what she says it does. There are numerous other odd claims throughout, especially the idea that attending to your emotions actually makes them worse. I see kids fall apart all the time precisely because they don't understand how their feelings are informing their actions. Personally, as an endurance cyclist, I think monitoring my emotions is fundamental to performance--if I'm feeling bad, I know I need to rest or eat. It doesn't lead to collapse, like she says. It helps me do what I need to do to keep going. Just a terrible screed all around. There's no reason to write a book arguing that people should shut up and deal with things the way we did back in the day. This book should have been a Twitter post, not a whole trade publication!
hey, I stumbled here cause i was curious about other people's take for Abigail Shriers book promotion/ interview with Joe Rogan( my husband was like look at this and tell me what you think?)
Like you i agree about not ruminating the past/hurtful instances and memories will do us good. I also like that joe rogan would ask back questions that made her clarify or elaborate on what she said.
But on the other hand, she also said something about grandparents resilience and being happy after because they go to work, work hard,have a family etc.. etc.. How do you know theyre happy?
When she was saying that i remembered my mum. She was born after ww2. Our whole village where pillaged and burned (our place is where the japanese bombed after pearl harbor) and my grandparents started from scratch. Yes theyre resilient. Yes, hardworking. Yes grandma made sure my mum and her siblings graduated college. She worked hard, earn a very good position in another country managed to built a house with 7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms complete with vases as tall as 4 feet. But is she happy? No. Not really. And i know that because my grandmother explained her gradual change of attitude.she said mum used to be a sweet and helpful little girl, would help her out in the wet market after class.We started from nothing she would make plastic bottles (cocacola,pepsi) cut and decorate and turn them into a makeshift vase. She had been miserable, not content and it made her renters leave early, always saying shes dying soon despite being healthier than her peers and even my MIL. (She does the same to me,she always used to tell me get alot of money cause your an only child, that means you'll die alone or lets change you a rhinoplasty cause you got your dad's flat nose).
She had been chasing her dream house and Big china vases for thirty,fourty,fifty years and forgot her family.
Nothing. The superwoke crowd doesn’t like that tbh why want to keep pornography and ideology out of schools. Essentially, they are advocating for separation of church and state, the religion being “woke”.
Could we argue that there seems to be some intimidation about the fact that we are simply building stronger emotional intelligence and communication skills in our children than ever before?
This concept she’s promoting is ridiculously based on her opinion. She’s a journalist and has no mental health training.
That would be great, if it were true. Are children more emotionally intelligent than in the past?
Why are so many afraid of social situations?
Why are so many afraid to hear things they don’t agree with (calling hurt feelings “violence”, for example)?
Why are so many depressed and/or suicidal?
Are all these things related?
I don’t think she has a complete answer. But we need to keep asking these questions and make sure we aren’t screwing up kids by over doing (or misunderstanding) gentle parenting.
I actually looked up emotional intelligence fairly recently and ability to control emotions is one aspect of eq. I think the author has a point that at times I may over indulge emotions of my kids and it can inhibit their growth in the dimension of emotional control.
What parts of her hypothesis do you disagree with?
Because our children are faced with generational trauma we have faced AND have exposures to more than ever before —news at their finger tips, more judgement, being videoed at any moment, blasted on Snapchat, fear of school shootings, surviving a pandemic,… should I go on?
I LARGELY disagree that it’s the mental health professionals screwing our kids up when quite frankly, in many situations, they are saving them. Parents want to be their kids “bestie” not their parent. They aren’t setting appropriate boundaries. There is a different between gentle parenting and positive parenting, enabling and encouraging.
I’m not sure you understand generational trauma… this is the trauma we naturally endure by the people who raise us. Each generation experiences the impact of the previous generations trauma and so on and so forth. Generational trauma is not limited to the person who experienced it. It can influence children, grandchildren and their community around them.
So YES, our children have experienced the trauma that impacted their caring adults.
And I will happily live my life knowing I can still express my emotions and grow as a person by doing so and going to therapy to better myself. Clearly, you won’t.
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I've read and listened to some and agree with some of her points and disagree with others. One thing to point out is she does think therapy is important for certain extreme situations and I totally agree. Another important point she makes that I think people downplay is that therapy like all treatment can have side effects and I agree with that too. I think people forget that all treatments have side effects, the severity varies and they don't affect everyone. But yes I think putting kids into therapy can tell them they can't function on their own when that isn't the case and I can understand how it can turn into a dependence if it goes on for years. In generally I dislike how a lot of our society has become so dependent on experts in general, which would include believing everything Shrier says too I think she makes good points and disagree with some of what she says. We all know stories of parents who advocated for their kids when doctors said there was nothing wrong and it turns out there was (i know this story can go the other way too). This doesn't mean I don't trust doctors but it does mean I understand I have information about my kid that a doctor doesn't and they do (hopefully) the best the can with their expertise and limited info and it's my job to decide what to do with their recommendation, this is why for serious issues many people get second or third opinions to weigh their options. So a therapist would be the same to me, a therapist is just a person with a certain kind of knowledge and training and experience but it doesn't mean they know how to deal with my kids better than I do necessarily, if my child had anorexia or ODD or something I wasn't equipped to help them with I would research a professional and get my child help. For something like losing a loved one that's a part of life and I am equipped to help my child through it, unless they stopped eating or displayed some other extreme behavior. I do think you can over focus on emotions. Anecdotally my friends whose moms always focused on their feelings has never been equipped to deal with their own emotions, in my day those were the more "hippie dippie" parents of the time and my parents were more shake it off and think of other people's feelings and I can have a tendency to repress my feelings so I am trying for a happy medium where I acknowledge my kids feelings but don't let them use them as a reason to do or not do something or to act out. I know personally that dwelling on my feelings is not good for me and being active and productive does way more for my mental health than talking about my feelings past a certain point (which btw I am in therapy and my therapist also tells me not to dwell on things I can't control and take action when there are things I can change). Anyway nothing really changes for me, we already try to parent lovingly but with an eye to making our children independent and emotionally regulated (which works well for us becuase my oldest loves being independent and my middle wants to do whatever her sister can do). It's a long and complex topic but if I would summarize it i would say we probably went from under treating and diagnosing kids and not allowing them to feel their feelings enough to over treating and diagnosing and sometimes teaching them to wallow in their feelings too much and hopefully we can navigate a happy middle somewhere.
Talk about not over-relying on experts. Why would anyone take advice on psychology from a lawyer?
The best critiques often come from outsiders. I work in western medicine, but I so feel the best critiques of western medicine have come from outside the field, and helped push us towards lifestyle medicine in primary care.
I just finished the book (it came out Tuesday) and it is definitely worth a read! I’ve always been skeptical of therapy but I think it’s a valuable book to those who tout its benefits. Shrier is really balanced in her approach to the subject. I have two toddlers and very little time so the fact that I finished it in 4 days means it’s a page turner.
It is a page turner but I’d like to counsel you gently that her book is NOT balanced. She very neatly sidesteps and leaves out evidence of success in modern child therapy and pedagogy. She ridicules the assessments that provide statistics we deeply need (that she references!) and does not include any of the evidence that shows those surveys’ efficacy. As someone who “touts the benefits” of therapy (as in someone who was positively impacted by those surveys, and has grown up to see three of my loved ones’ lives changed immeasurably by therapy as well as my own), I found her POV to be that of a ragebait political writer who was offended that we have been trying to fix the problem and haven’t come up with a solution yet. She finally offers some anecdotal suggestions in one of the final chapters, and overall is just very anti-therapy in a way I think is rather extreme, not to mention unfair to the many humans who are genuinely struggling and benefit from therapeutic resources.
She mentions that therapy may have benefits for people with specific issues but therapy should always have an end date. I think the bigger point of the book is that parents should be the first to address behavior through punishments and rewards. Instead, many parents tiptoe through child rearing afraid to traumatize their children with a time out. Instead, they outsource parenting to “experts” - many of whom have no children. Like I said, I’m incredibly biased and am very wary of the psychological industry.
The reason parents don't give their children spankings and time outs anymore is because decades of research show they are not effective. So we're trying something different and using more tools available to us. With new knowledge comes the responsibility to act differently. This author is not an expert on anything to do with children, the medical field, or psychology. She's a Wall Street Journal columnist famous for being obsessed with hating trans people. I don't need parenting advice from a woman who makes up fantasies to scare herself about trans children beating down the doors to terrorize our "real daughters."
Actually decades of research show time outs ARE effective and "experts" lie through their teeth about that because time outs aren't "in" right now so they pretend there is evidence they don't work when thats a bunch of bs.
I do actually agree with those points! I think just like with school, parents need to be actively involved in the therapeutic journey- including helping kids use thoughtful tools to manage emotions, and use [related-to-the-behavior] punishment and rewards to manage behavior. They also should be helping ensure there is SOME safe space in the child’s life where they can express/feel their feelings without worrying about trying to “fix” it right away. Some things need to be processed! We do time ins- we talk about how feeling excited and silly is ok and throwing toys hurts. To show you feel excited you can do a super fast dance or you can make silly faces. Then the toddler is restricted to one piece of furniture for a timer duration while I stay in the room doing mom stuff. I want him to know I’m still there if he wants to talk, and I especially want to be close so I’m able to enforce the restriction by physically putting him back on the couch/bed/whatever if he gets up before the timer. This just helps the punishment actually stay connected to his misbehavior and our talk.
*> She very neatly sidesteps and leaves out evidence of success in modern child therapy and pedagogy.* I've seen several comments to this effect with no further reading to back them up. Concretely, which relevant successes are being omitted? *> She ridicules the assessments that provide statistics we deeply need.* Doing harm in the name of analytics is everything that's wrong with our economy/society. This is the same class of argument police use to trample rights and expand surveillance - surveillance which [doesn't correlate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/07/25/security-surveillance-and-the-truth-about-going-dark/?sh=cd1a6e86106a) to improved security, much as expanded mental health surveillance hasn't translated to improved outcomes among ~~patients~~ clients). *> not to mention unfair to the many humans who are genuinely struggling and benefit from therapeutic resources.* This doesn't justify a shotgun approach. Tools like [NNT](https://thennt.com/) exist for a reason. There's a reason we don't give antibiotics to everyone just in case someone happens to benefit. That reason is that it's unfair to the many humans who may suffer more harm than benefit, like being forced to apologize to their attacker (what?!) or re-live their worst moments in front of classmates.
Are there any well-balanced books out there? (Or is it just a matter of needing to read different books to get different POVs?)
Not super on topic but just wanted to reply and say that I also think that's a really good plan. As long as stuff is well written and not obvious bullshit I try to get some input from all kinds of sources.
I'm towards the end of the book now. Definitely some food for thought, but I noted a common theme in her style. 1. Provide a set of anecdotal examples (simpering mom w/ violent tantrum kid, over indulgent pushover dad from some forum, SEL programs gone rogue, etc) 2. Make a few jokes making fun of how ridiculous said examples are 3. Provide research showing this stereotype of liberal parenting doesn't produce the best outcomes 4. Declare victory While it's certainly great at getting the cheer section riled up, it's not really that logically sound. Are the anecdotes representative? I mean, I find them as hilarious as the next person. Having lived in a lot of urban areas full of the demographic this is poking fun I've run into these stereotypes...but they don't seem very representative. Like one theme this chapter's been on is the pushober parent dealing with violent temper tantrums. The research cited is about *normal kids.* But she pretends the only thing you need to straighten out this kid's behavior is a quick pat on the but and send them to their room. I have a kid who was on the more intense side of these behaviors. And others that are absolutely not. I'm not a pushover, my parenting style hasn't changed. So what's the difference? Well, sometimes parents just don't matter. Sometimes kids are who they are and parents just have to work with that. Now, he's gotten much better as he's aged. And the extremes never bled over into public, school, or social situations that would be completely inappropriate. One thing I can assure you. When those tantrums come, in the moment, it's all about mitigation and harm reduction. Spanking absolutely does not work for some, just escalates. Then what? spank harder? hit harder? No. That's abuse. Period. Yell louder? Oh, they're game for that too. So, for the atypical situation. I heard a lot of judgey judgey lip service from her, but no real insight in these areas. One other note. I found it amusing she said parents "tolerate behavior from their kids no responsible dog owner would from their dog". I do agree. But there's a certain irony in that the overwhelming body of research in dog training makes two things very clear: 1. Punishment or coercive training is ineffective and can increase negative behaviors 2. Positive reinforcement and shaping are the best tactics by a very far shot for persistent behavior change. If you read the modern, non-fad, non-psycho babble, control based experimental research on child behavior......it says the exact same thing. In fact, that's what authoritative parenting IS. A system of consistent, predictably applied consequences for behavior. And the research says, unambiguously, positive reinforcement is stronger than punishment when choosing a consequence. /end rant :)
About the dog stuff. Grew up around dogs and hunters. All those dogs were very well behaved and more or less no issues (except one who didn't listen at all but then it turned out he couldn't hear anything so I guess I give that a pass) and all those owners were super friendly with the dogs but if the dog did something it shouldn't do they were also super quick and clear with the dog that that behavior was not accepted at all. Also seen the same from anyone with a big dog that I would trust around my kids. Like 95 percent or more just fun positive learning but also super clear boundaries so that the dog knows what is expected. Does that sound reasonable or do you have any links that say that's not really the ideal?
I haven't seen any research showing punishment doesn't work. I've seen a lot about the harms of CORPORAL punishment but that's entirely different. And I've actually looked and tried to find this research. I've come to the conclusion a lot of you saying this are just lying and reading blogs from "experts" and repeating what they said was true.
Trying to fix the problem? Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
Because of this "therapy" culture and also "identity" jargon. I'm "Fat-bodied, I'm part of the X community, I'm neuro-divergent." Whatever the flavor of the month but in actually we're none of those things. We are a temporary personality in a temporary world. Stop identifying and grasping to ego
Such gentle counsel.
Why exactly have you been skeptical of therapy? What exactly in your experience, or specifically *what* about therapy are you skeptical of?
I disagree with the philosophical underpinning of therapy. Especially psychoanalysis. Fried, ego, superego, subconscious… all of it. I am Eastern European so sitting around talking about your feelings just seems like laziness. It’s a different culture. It’s hard to pinpoint anything specific that I disagree with because I think it’s ridiculous down to its core.
With all respect- how old are you, and have you ever studied psychology or had therapy? At least in the US & Canada, no one has talked about Freud to a patient for several decades. Modern psychology is more based in biology than Freud. You are talking about theories well over 100 years old, that no one believes in anymore. For instance. I see you posted - You made a student cry while tutoring them precalc? You must believe there is some value to sitting around talking about your emotions- because you yourself are doing it. You are doing it right here on reddit. You say you don’t see any use in sitting around talking about emotions, but here you are doing that in your other post, talking about emotions. Do you think it may be of value to understand the emotion behind your student crying? You are asking for advice- can you see that understanding the student’s emotions will be beneficial in deciding how to move forward. Understanding how to better interact with the student, making that situation better, for both of you? As we all know it is a *lot* easier to teach and learn when the student is not so emotional. As a teacher, i have years of proving that to be true. Even if you see no value in making a person’s mental health better, it is *certainly* more effective and requires less work for teacher *and* student when the student is not crying.
I don't necessarily agree that therapy (done well) can't be helpful for mentally well children coping with life challenges or children with minor mental health issues, but I do think we've kind of generationally tended to become really uncomfortable with negative emotions in ourselves and our children. I think its worth remembering that sadness, anxiety, frustration, guilt and boredom are, unless abnormally persistent and/or severe, all normal parts of life that we should teach kids to worth through rather than avoid and that happiness is rarely an effective goal in itself and most people are more likely to be happy if they pursue healthy relationships, long-term goals, or a sense of purpose.
>generationally tended to become really uncomfortable with negative emotions in ourselves and our children. Not only negative emotions but negative experiences overall. In the US parents try way too hard to fend off anything negative or challenging for their kids. They don't want them to get hurt, lose in a sports game or even walk alone to school without a tracker. Those "bulldozer parents" are causing serious mental damage to their children instead of keeping them "safe".
Walking to school alone is a terrible idea in many many places in this world. I know many adults that wouldn't be caught out walking alone in their own neighborhoods after the police have been defunded....there's just too many creeps, criminals, and zombie junkies living in the strrets.
Yeah, sure. But every mom in suburbia is starting to over protect their kids. They read news headlines and think that crimes against children are MUCH MUCH more likely than they are. I had a very free and independent childhood and I couldn’t imagine growing up like the average kid today. The US has gotten safer, too.
True, we should not be making bad or upsetting emotions the centerpieces of a child's life, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be giving them the tools to cope with these sorts of emotions. While those events that you describe seem small as an adult, they are quite big and challenging for a child. Much of behavioral therapy is predicated on focusing on the present and NOT dwelling on past failures. A child unable to cope with guilt or shame is far worse off than a child who can confront those emotions, learn from them, and leave them in the past.
How do you get comfortable with negative emotions? By telling kids to suck up up and figure it out? That's what I did as a kid. I made straight A's and was top of my class while having daily panic attacks because I was so afraid of disappointing everyone by not being perfect all the time. But on the surface it looked like I was perfectly fine to most bc I was excelling academically. Instead, I wish I had been taught the tools to handle these emotions, because when I got out of college and no longer had my studies to bury my emotions in I spiraled. I'm still really struggling into my 30s with my own kids. What child therapy does is provide parents with the skills to help their kids manage their big, new emotions, and teach them the signs that their kids are struggling mentally. Then both the parents, and counselor as needed, can help teach their kids how to identify and regulate their emotions and behavior. But I think the real reason this author doesn't like therapy for kids (unless it's what she deems a "real" issue) is that if they say they're LGBT they won't be told they're being groomed by the gays. Which this author has told to Congress and talked about in her other trans panic book
Trying to fix the problem? Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
This is really good. I’m a newer practicing therapist that just listened to her podcast with Jordan Petersen and am considering buying the book. I got out of grad school and primarily worked with kids, teens, and families who were on Medicaid or in foster care before transferring to a private practice that doesn’t take insurance (recently). It was a really jarring transition and I feel like I see a lot of people who don’t have problems as severe as children in the foster care system. Parents whose kids “just aren’t listening” are coming in and asking for help. And I’m like… okay, I don’t want to pathologize the hyperactivity of a 6 year old because they are… idk… 6??? How much caffeine are you giving them and how much screen time do they have? That doesn’t mean I need to label them as ADHD. It doesn’t mean that they have something wrong with them. Other people come because they genuinely have issues that they want to work on. Others come because therapy is trending now for some reason. There are a lot of people that come for different reasons and I try to respect all of them, but also challenge them to use the coping skills and tools / social supports that they already have while learning new ones. The majority of us in this field don’t want clients to become dependent on us. The goal is to eventually get out of therapy with more resource than you came in with feeling empowered, not worsening mental health and enabled behaviors… I really hope that we see improvements over the years. I guess I can only do my due diligence as a clinician and educate myself more on topics like these so that I’m not aiding in creating a generation that lacks confidence in themselves.
Please take her book to hearth. I'm a Buddhist and much of the problems therapy does is concertize people's personalities and problems. I'm a traditional tibetan medicine doctor and one of our precepts is that not all patients are patients. Don't just take on a patient because they want therapy. Just like medical doctors, very few people actually need treatment, what they need are diet and lifestyle changes. Same with therapy.
It’s completely different than medicine in a way, though. It’s an hour a week verbally processing something that someone perceives as a problem. What may be a problem to one person might not be a problem to another. When it comes to practicing medicine as a doctor, someone can objectively state that someone is healthy by observing tests and results. With mental health, yeah we have assessments but just because someone scores high on a PHQ-9 doesn’t mean they have a disorder. Maybe they have a short term difficult issue that they’re facing. if someone is experiencing severely impairing problems, I normally don’t label it as a diagnosis. We talk through it and process it together. They try new skills and practice those outside of session. They report improvements over time. They utilize me as someone to talk to that’s more or less objective compared to their families or friends. I hope that makes sense. It is a job that is considered healthcare, but it’s very unique. People go to the doctor when they think they’re sick. Sometimes people to go therapy if they’re having relationship problems. I let them decide what they need more or less, unless they try self diagnosing or telling me how to do my job when I disagree with their self-proclaimed diagnoses lol
Agree, we have to be clear on negative emotions being normal it seems. In our own minds and for the sake of teaching our kids. In the podcast, they mention an instance of a kid's cat dying, and then sending the kid to therapy to "deal with it". They make the point that therapy has been seen as a zero downside deal. At best, it might help, at worst, it kinda does nothing. She's challenging that notion, for sure. I haven't decided yet at all if I can agree or disagree...
This is a nice way to distill the point, and I agree it’s an interesting one. There definitely could be harmful side effects to therapy, especially extreme courses of treatment like that. But- I just don’t really see how the research she presented points to that? I read the book and checked nearly all the sources— a number of them were studies on adults, non-academic/opinion articles with further research of questionable source embedded in them, and simply bibliographic citations (one frequently repeated reference was the CDC suicide survey, which made it seem like she was introducing a bunch of new science but she was just… quoting the questionnaire). What do you think about the theory that mass shootings increase likelihood of mental health diagnoses to a serious degree? She brushes it off, saying that in her (unspecified and uncredited/cited) interviews none of the kids brought that up. But here in a Stanford review they employed extensive research, and a large sample, to show that school shootings had an overwhelming effect on students. https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/health/surviving-school-shooting-impacts-mental-health-education-and-earnings-american Thanks for initiating this thoughtful (though at times uncomfortable!) discussion.
It’s interesting, I mean mass shootings are horrible. I see this as a subset of the argument I hear that the world essentially is scarier than it used to be, and that combined with the fact that we hear about every bad thing that happens due to social media gives rise to higher anxiety. But I think it’s worth remembering that prior generations sent their young people to fight and die in wars in large numbers, dealt with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation (hiding under their desk drills), and also dealt with higher rates of murder and crime than we have today. So what’s so special about school shootings? Or put another way, why can this generation not deal with school shootings, while prior generations could deal with a civil war, for example, without suicide? I just don’t think we objectively have a worse world. It’s just perceived as such… or the scary things feel even scarier. I’m sure it doesn’t help
I’ve been thinking about those prior generations myself. They did live under a lot of threat, and were generally working harder to survive, more likely to experience intense and direct hardships. One thing that comes to me is that they lived in a world that moved a lot slower. There was time to process news as huge events happened and evolved- you weren’t being kicked up in a constant frenzy of breaking news. Discussions happened in person among limited circles in your community. Kids these days are being trained into hypervigilance for the “next thing”- whether its a superficial trend middle schoolers have to know or whether its a major global economic development that sends your 19 year old into a spiral. They take in not only the event/trend itself but also endless chatter and opinions about it. Not to mention— that info is also hitting the adults in their lives twice as fast, and causing plenty of anxiety, confusion, and polarization as well. I wonder if kids aren’t just becoming so saturated, so overburdened by “big shit” to process that they don’t feel like they can keep up with a lifetime of it. I think that idea is largely what drives parents to therapy for their children- is it a symptom or is it the problem? Maybe the fact that there are fewer direct/physical perils facing kids is resulting in some weird short circuiting- the brain constructing/perceiving threats incorrectly. Like a harmless allergen that’s mistaken for enemy substance, the brain is mistaking some of these global phenomena for direct harm? I’d also like to wonder… How does adult technology use impact kids? Are we missing some component of attention/connectedness to non-digital life that is leaving them feeling unsafe in the world?
no its the fact that they are all drugged and diagnosing themselves or by doctors to face anything in life more importantly do. Immigrants gonna have a hey day with your daughters guys
You're a disgusting creep.
fa g beta disgrace to race
Piss off back to Stormfront.
ok pussies.
Just read an essay by Shrier in the WSJ. Full disclosure - I’m a parent and a clinical psychologist. I read her argument as “it’s unhelpful to excessively talk to kids about their emotions.” Well, no $@/) - that’s a circular argument… doing anything excessively is excessive… We can also argue that excessively avoiding talking about emotions with kids is unhelpful, as there’s tons of research on the detrimental effects of emotional avoidance… Like most things with parenting it’s about balance, and finding a middle path. Encourage emotional awareness AND focus on action and resourcefulness. The middle path is messy and imperfect and we will question ourselves and struggle, which makes self help books with the “right” answer so appealing and lucrative. Yet, many of these books tend to oversimplify things to make an argument and in so doing lose the nuance relevant to real life.
I’m glad you’re here. I’m gonna hit ya with some questions I’ve been thinking about. How wide spread do you think this realization is (that over-focusing on our emotions or our kids emotions has negative outcomes)? In general, do you think this generation of parents is likely slipping into permissive parenting at a higher rate than previous generations? Do you think gentle parenting, or possibly the misinterpretation of gentle parenting, is having some negative consequences?
Thanks! Glad you made your post - and I am curious to read this book. I have no idea about how many parents are aware of potentially unhelpful ways of engaging with emotions. Would be an interesting empirical question to evaluate - I didn’t find anything via a quick google scholar search. I work with many families where the parents are complicit in unhelpful emotional coping (e.g., worrying, ruminating, or avoiding emotionally triggering things with their kiddos). And I’m for sure guilty of this in my own life and parenting some times! In my view this is where therapy can help - a third party can help us observe if our behavior is moving us towards our goals. Of course we can do that on our own, too! And partners and kids give us explicit and implicit feedback on the efficacy of our behavior all the time! And I could see how excessive emotion focus could relate to permissive parenting though I think plenty of permissive parenting comes from emotional avoidance (e.g., parents don’t want to tolerate kids tantrums when they set limits so they give in or retaliate with their own ineffective emotionally-driven behavior like yelling or threatening). Ultimately , while it’s interesting to think about society wide trends, I tend to focus on the individual level of analysis - what does this kid, family, or parent need to be doing to reach their goals. For some it’s learn to be a bit more supportive and validating of emotions. For others it’s learning to set expectations and limits. And for many it’s a bit of both. This is less interesting for a book, yet pragmatic.
I think you need to read Alfie Kohn Myth of the Spoiled Child for some incredible research based information that will help answer your questions. Abigail Shrier is just a disgruntled lady clinging to some out dated and honestly harmful ideology.
So as a clinical psychologist do you not think that it is unreasonable to refer people to full blown mental health assessment and therapy for things that are just "the way the life is" and within an average person's ability to cope with, without clinical intervention?
I found the book to be incredibly unsubstantiated in the claims that it makes, as it tries to take a macro-approach to incredibly personal and circumstantial instances. While Shrier uses plenty of detailed anecdotes from therapists and behavioral psychologists, they are exactly that- anecdotes. Big claims about childhood development, medication, and cognitive psychology are made but she fails to provide enough DATA to back up these claims. Oftentimes, she is just making personal inferences on research and data that she did not conduct to create some causal relationship between things like cognitive behavioral therapy and childhood development. Of the more unbelievable claims that she makes, I found one about medication and emotional "musculature" in children quite strange, "Placing your child on a stimulant for ADHD, or SSRI, or an anti-anxiety medication, is a profound and consequential choice that is not like putting an adult on those things at all. Placing a child in a state of emotional numbness when they are trying to develop emotional musculature, trying to handle the natural vicissitudes of life for the first time may set them up for a life in which they can never learn to cope with hardship or dissapointment." Abigail Shrier did NOT conduct any research on whether or not children who take these medications have issues developing coping mechanisms or "emotional musculature". She did NOT conduct any sort of study in children, and she ONLY relied on anecdotes and personal accounts from therapists and medical professionals. While that may seem sufficient, if you ever took a stats class, it is not! Children with ADHD have a deficit in seratonin, which affects their capacity to maintain focus or impulse control. Medication is often the only suitable choice to balance this out, and it is the same thing as putting on your glasses in the morning. Adults who have used these medications for long periods of time have not been found to have lower capacities of emotional intelligence or "musculature" as she claims. Shrier discounts data that unequivocally proves that children who use these medications (maybe not SSRI's) improve drastically, and that long-term use of these medications has a positive impact on development. Sorry, but I really found the book infuriating. Especially with the ADHD stuff, I am not quite as familiar with SSRI's, but I found her claims to be just as "big" as the others. The only thing the book *really* does is push a narrative that modern medicine and approaches to children with disabilities or impairments are a net-negative, when the overwhelming majority of researchers and doctors have proven through DATA that these practices help children lead more normal and productive lives. Shrier tries to appeal to the heartstrings of "traditional" parents, but frankly just sounds more like a big quack. Don't even get me started about what she said about cognitive behavioral therapy and how its "bad" for children- the whole thing is riddled with cherry-picked anecdotes that often conflict with one another.
> as it tries to take a macro-approach to incredibly personal and circumstantial instances. Ironically, I think that's her complaint against the mandatory-therapy-for-everyone approach. > Abigail Shrier did NOT conduct any research.. Am I the only one who didn't expect a scientific, peer-reviwed, meta-analysis when I ordered a book from an opinion columnist in the "Political Commentary" section of Amazon? > While that may seem sufficient, if you ever took a stats class, it is not! Sufficient for what? For whom? > and \[chronic daily amphetamine/amphetamine-analog consumption\] is the same thing as putting on your glasses in the morning This is an alarming statement from someone who holds themselves out as having the credentials to evaluate this evidence.
>Am I the only one who didn't expect a scientific...book No, and that's the problem.
Her other book is trans panic about how the gays are coming for our kids. So. I wouldn't look to this woman for parenting advice.
Trying to fix the problem? Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance.
Well…. These statistics are very true, and very sad. But we didn’t start employing these tools randomly in 2007. There WAS however, an enormous economic crises that resulted in massive housing/health/financial insecurities. If I were writing a book like Shrier, I would postulate that the recession placed strains on our cracking systems that impacted teens and young adults dramatically. I lost all of my college savings, and my best friend lost her father when his housing construction company failed and he lost his health insurance. It was an important event in American history that coincides very closely with these statistics, not to mention the Pandemic which is not even mentioned or alluded to in her book. However- I’m not going to write that book because although I have a lot of observations about it, and conversations that reinforce the point, I know that I’m only able to see a very small slice of this pie without a background in child psychology/economics/whatever. Anecdotally though, this time it reminds me of the 70s when we saw all the vets coming home torn to pieces mentally after the war and massive cultural changes. When the red scare was really fucking with us and causing big political divisions. If we had had this compassionate view for our kids then like we do now, who knows what might’ve been different? Would we have seen fewer vet suicides and lower rates of alcoholism? (btw, Shrier cites an article three times in which the main premise is how it’s an issue that teens/young adults are not engaging in enough risky sex or alcohol use. That’s the kind of thing that makes the book so hard to take seriously.)
I didn't read this book but from the sample I just listened to it sounds like utter garbage and fear mongering. She is clearly antagonistic towards all forms of progress and almost seething at not calling her parent imposed consequences punishments. Get a grip woman, not everyone is out to get you. Her kid obviously had therapy and realized she's crazy and now she's got a chip on her shoulder about it.
Good input, thanks for that. I can imagine if you’ve seen good results you would feel like she may prevent otherwise needed intervention. Have you picked up anything you didn’t know or that you found interesting or useful amid the rest you detested?
Do journalists typically conduct scientific research for their writing? This is news to me.
Ok I read the book and highly recommend it. I’m sure I don’t agree with the authors politics, but this book caused me to stop and reflect on a few things. 1. Being state-oriented vs task-oriented. The schools where we live are now very into the social emotional learning and checking in on our kids feelings. Versus when we were kids our curriculum was more task-oriented and focused on achievement, neglecting the mental health awareness. The author comes off a little alarmist about the child psychology agenda, and that’s not where I’m at. Fair to say though that after reading this, as parents at home we’re steering back to tasks and going to focus on what we’re DOING more than how we’re FEELING to try and keep it balanced. 2. The possibility of iatrogenic risk for psych interventions should be considered. I admit I’d assume more therapy is better or that it “couldn’t hurt” before this read. She makes a compelling case that therapy for kids that don’t need it has risks. 3. For what’s it worth, this book is not “here are all the answers.” Reading it was thought-provoking and even more valuable, empowering to my parenting. I roll my eyes at authority and generally don’t like being in charge. Parenting can be hard, thankless, and can feel demoralizing and this was a reminder on the joys and honor of being our kids’ #1. It inspired me to reflect on my participation in the groupthink parenting subs (no offense Reddit :)) and inspire confidence to “own” parenting instead of insecurely handing authority over to Experts, because I think it’s true that it’s important for my kids that they know that their parents are in charge.
Thank you for this thoughtful book review. You seem pretty close to where I'm at, I'm not done with the book, I'm about halfway (trying to find time!). We have also changed our parenting a bit (not drastically) based on thinking about this book. A quick story to illustrate: I have a four year that has (gasp!) been in therapy in the past year, but is not currently. He has trouble with emotional regulation and anxiety at his pre-school. His anxiety comes around difficulty when things change. For example, drop off. Or we hear from the teachers that when they change from one activity to another he will get "stuck" and seems to not be able to go with the flow and move to the next thing. At times this will lead to tears and claims of "I don't like school!" (which is not true, he raves about school 99% of the time and we know he has lots of friends there). This doesn't happen daily, but maybe once a week, especially when showing up a few minutes late he will get super socially anxious and not want to join in (even after 2 years at this same place with mostly the same kids, who he gets along with really well). So this happened this past week, he melts down and won't go into school, claiming "I hate school". In the past, I would go down to his level, ask him about why he's feeling that way, what he's feeling right now, etc. It has literally never worked, what ends up happening is that he goes into the directors office for 10 mins and she gives him some task to distract him, so the parents can exit, and after 10 mins she says he'll feel better and join in. Ok, so what did I change. This time I just said, "Listen, you are OK right now. You are safe. I want you to be brave and join in." Well, that didn't work either, and he was in the directors office. But later that day on the way home we talked about it. I told him that it was "not ok" for him to cry and not join in at school. I told him that he's very brave and courageous boy, and that sometimes our brains have to be told by us what to do, because they misbehave. I told him that if he can be brave for one week, not cry at drop off, and join in with the others, I will take him for an ice cream cone. Well, so far so good. We've talked about his bravery each day and he has had zero trouble. He even explained to his sister how he's telling his brain what to do now. Did I teach him to "repress his emotions".... in a way I think I did... and we're all doing better. He's four so who knows what will happen next... so maybe I'm an example of being a parent that probably over "bought in" to tending to every emotion and maybe that was hurting more than helping in some cases.
>This time I just said, "Listen, you are OK right now. You are safe. I want you to be brave and join in." Well, that didn't work either, and he was in the directors office. But later that day on the way home we talked about it. I told him that it was "not ok" for him to cry and not join in at school. I told him that he's very brave and courageous boy, and that sometimes our brains have to be told by us what to do, because they misbehave. I told him that if he can be brave for one week, not cry at drop off, and join in with the others, I will take him for an ice cream cone. I love this. How has it gone? I've been doing something similar with my 3.5 year old. She has been having trouble falling asleep and staying in her bad at night. (Because she is afraid of "Pete" the extremely benign antagonist from the Mickey Mouse Funhouse 😂). I've done a lot of assuring her that she is safe, Pete won't get her, Mommy and Daddy protect her etc. But now I'm just trying the "you know what? you are brave. you can handle it," so we will see how that goes! BTW just listened to this on Honestly and loved it, jived with a lot of what I have been thinking for a long time and haven't articulated.
I think people are missing the entire point. What Shrier harps on in the book is iatrogenesis. Meaning harm brought forth BY the healer. She’s merely suggesting that by introducing therapy or a therapeutic approach to deal with very regular childhood dilemma causes more harm than good. Our kids are getting more and more therapy than they ever have, and not so coincidentally, they have the worst mental health they’ve ever had. This generation of kids is more anxious and less able to do for themselves than any generation before. I thought it was a great read.
Thanks for centering that. It is really central to the book.
Anyone claiming that “this is the best way to do something” is usually a fraud. If I parented my children exactly the same I’d have one well disciplined child and a guerrilla rebel. Everyone is different. There are a lot of successful parenting strategies, and each is different. This whole “the kids are not ok” idea is just fear mongering. The kids are ok, the parents are doing ok and if we just cut each other a little slack we’ll all be ok.
I take your point on treating kids as individuals, definitely. And she also makes the point several times, so as not to confuse anybody, that therapy is needed for kids who, well, need it. It's not an anti-therapy stance. I so wish I could be on your team with the "kids are ok"... but unfortunately there are a lot of hard data when you look at it from a population stand point (and not kid by kid) that tells a very different story. There is actually a declared mental health emergency in place from the government in the US, and many many researchers have been scratching their heads wondering why so many metrics are pointing to the kids "not being all right". I'm very sympathetic to not want to fall for fear-mongering, but the "kids aren't all right" is actually the consensus take from those that study child development.
Have you talked to anyone that actually studies child development? Like a therapist/psychologist/teacher? Because this woman is none of those things. She's a professional opinion haver that thinks being too nice to your kids makes them trans
Why do you keep getting downvoted? This is not my domain, but I have had longitudinal access to an expert in this field and your posts are the only ones that are cutting through the anecdotal arguments with evidence-based medicine and relevant self experience.
She is also a woman, which you are not.
>This whole “the kids are not ok” idea is just fear mongering. Teenage suicide is at an all time high, rising a mind-blowing 62% since 2007. In the 13-14 year old age bracket it DOUBLED in that time. 60% of all college students now have at least one diagnosed mental health problem. In a 2022 study, 83 percent of college students reported that emotional or mental difficulties had impaired their academic performance. The hard data shows, you have no idea what you are talking about. The kids are NOT okay.
> The kids are NOT okay. Which says a lot about modern day parenting in the US.
I listened to the podcast with Bari Weiss because a friend posted it with a reference to the dangers of gentle parenting. I thought she made interesting points, especially how we use the word anxious instead of nervous air depressed instead of sad to describe normal everyday emotions. I appreciated that she did emphasize that therapy is necessary and helpful for kids who really need it. My main issue was how she doesn’t accurately represent gentle parenting, or at least the best version of it. Gentle parenting does seem to have a wide range of meanings to different people, but parenting with no discipline and no consequences as she describes is more accurately described as permissive parenting. So she is setting up a straw man in this interview in my view. I’d be interested if she goes into more detail about exactly what gentle parenting entails in the book. I have heard on other podcasts Bari making the point of taking the best and most fair version of a viewpoint and engaging with that so I felt it was odd she didn’t push back or engage on that at all. Abigail mentioned a study that shows that an authoritative parenting style leads to the best outcomes for kids, which led me to google and I feel it lines up more with the gentle parenting resources I’ve encountered (tbh mostly on Instagram and a few blogs) https://parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style/ This was actually a really helpful read for me as I have a 3 yr old and a newborn and have been struggling to feel confident in my parenting choices.
Thank you for this insight. I think you're right, many gentle parenting experts are not afraid of clear boundaries and enforcing them. It's just so easy to slip from gentle parenting to permissive parenting. Having another voice in my head to help avoid that is helpful for me at least.
Gentle parenting is authoritative parenting with a different name! It often gets a bad rap but people are thinking of permissive parenting in that case. Gentle parenting when done well is not permissive?
I very much agree with this criticism. Bari is generally a good interviewer who tries to steelman but they botched it with Gentle Parenting which is *not* permissive parenting. Janet Lansbury, one of the biggest Gentle Parenting Gurus, spends a lot of time explaining how important it is to be a leader to kids and make sure they know what the boundaries are, what the consequences are, and who is in charge. Punishments that are unrelated consequences, yelling and escalation, corporal punishment - these tactics are simply not effective when it comes to helping a child learn how to self regulate and adjust their behavior. That to me is what gentle parenting is all about. *However* I think a lot of times Gentle Parenting holds the door open for permissive parenting. There's an article in *The Cut* (https://www.thecut.com/article/gentle-parenting-and-the-accidentally-permissive-parent.html) that covers it well. It's hard to GP and still be authoritative. It's hard to hold boundaries in general! Especially for people who are uncomfortable being authority figures. But that is less of a criticism with Gentle Parenting and more of an issue with people doing it wrong.
Sorry but they're not doing it wrong. They're reading the scripts word for word and the fact is that what the gentle parents call "boundaries" tend to be more like suggestions because they are not truly enforced except in the most simplistic circumstances. Particularly in situations where kids are violent, gentle parenting is almost always permissive and is against any true negative consequences, instead giving HORRIBLE advice such as giving your child a hug after they have hit you.
idk man. i’m sure they can point to some crappy gentle parenting influencers. but they IMO are the minority, and the truth is that most people who are entranced by the rhetoric of gentle parenting just don’t have the stones to follow-through what on its face is solid advice (as highlighted by the article i linked to) by cherry picking crappy GP influencers and ignoring major leaders like angela lansbury is strawmanning and it’s lazy. which i do think is doing it wrong. and yeah, i tell my kid if she hits me that it’s not ok, that it hurts me, and that i want space from her. if we’re doing something fun it ends when she hits. but hell yeah im going to hug her after if i think it would benefit her.
>over-focusing on ones own emotional state, which is championed by therapists, SEL advocates, and modern school counselors, leads to more instances of anxiety, emotional weakness, and depression. What constitutes "over-focusing on ones own emotional state"? Which therapists are championing this? Everything I've experienced about therapy is learning how to deal with uncomfortable emotional situations and experiences, not avoiding them. Therapy is for processing emotions, not just sitting there and thinking about them. I'm not sure what this author's background is but it definitely sounds like it isn't psychology.
I guess you could argue that the very fact of sitting there and talking about yourself and your emotions is "focusing" on them. But again, she makes the point over and over, so as not to confuse anybody, that therapy is NEEDED and is good, for cases where trauma has happened. She's just arguing (I think) that the bar for "trauma" has gotten way too low.
I didn't go through a huge trauma, but I did have horrible daily panic attacks as a child while making straight As and holding 2 jobs in highschool. Despite my success academically and having friends I still spent much of my 12 and up years in agony with depression and anxiety. It only got better after college when I took myself to therapy and started medication. I would have preferred my parents seek help from a professional early on. Bc you don't get a psych degree when they hand you the baby at the hospital. And this author doesn't have one either
I'm so glad you're doing better, that sounds really hard. It's impossible to know counter-reality of you receiving intervention earlier, but what do you think? Do you value those hard things you overcame in any way? Does it worry you that a kid may develop, very early, a sense that they are "broken", and intake the mental narrative that they'll just never be OK, and thereby (for some kids, maybe depending on how good their intervention is?) it may not actually still help? The last thing we want is unnecessary suffering, but how do we find the line between unnecessary suffering, and over-intervention? The author does make clear that some kids do need the help, it's quite possible you were one of those that would've been better off. IDK, not trying to say I do. Thanks for sharing your experience.
But then what is the line of "focusing" versus "over-focusing"? And is it simply just thinking and talking too much about emotions? Is the implication that talking about anxiety with a therapist increases that anxiety? And what exactly is "emotional weakness" because that sounds pretty subjective and immeasurable. I could maybe see the justification behind this argument if therapy was just having people restate their emotional toils and there wasn't any action taken to challenge, process, or heal from those situations. But to me this sounds akin to someone saying "People should only be using bandaids for gaping wounds, if there's a cut then toughen up and deal with it yourself instead of being a weak pussy".
Good thoughts, thank you. I think one concern is that what is actually happening is exactly what you describe in the 2nd paragraph, where we focus our kids on emotions but not in a healthy way that helps them progress. It brings up a separation in her arguments that may be helpful to pull apart. 1) Parents are untrained therapists, and acting as "armchair" therapists we may inadvertently do exactly as you describe, and over-focus on emotions without the follow-through of challenging those emotions. Some of the language may need to be modified to avoid this.. instead of "your emotions are valid"... its maybe more "I understand you feel that way, but have you considered..." in a way of challenging the notion that every emotion is expected to be tended to and has a valid power over us. 2) Professional therapists, and whether they can actually be harmful in intervening with an otherwise "normal" or emotionally developing healthy kid. I guess those are two different things... I'm more concerned about number 1 because its my day-to-day job to be a parent and I'd like to be as good of a parent as I can be (as we all would). Number 2 is interesting and important, I am completely undecided, but would like to learn more.
I appreciate you being open to evaluating the legitimacy of the content you posted about. I can align with you on point 1 and the fact that as parents, it's beneficial to make sure that we are helping kids *process* the emotions and problem solve on how to move past difficult emotions. I think child therapists who are properly credentialed have a high level of specialty within child development so I would trust them to be able to appropriately evaluate proper intervention in children and distinguishing what is typical development versus atypical.
Their background is vaguely conservative vibes-based journalism
I find comments and thoughts like this really disappointing. It doesn’t pass the “so what” test. We love our kids and I don’t care if a donkey from Timbuktu comes up with the right (or partially right) answer as to why this generation is so struggling, I want to know the truth more than I want to support stupid tribalism. These are kids that are struggling, and we want to keep searching to find better ways to parent! I’m not accepting we’ve just “solved parenting” with these stats our society is putting up in the USA. None of what I said means this author has solved it, it’s just a statement to stop closing your mind by first trying to figure out if a person is “on my team” before you’ll consider a word they say. Futhermore, I don’t actually know if she is actually conservative? But like I said, I don’t actually care since this is not related closely at all to normal left / right dynamics.
My comment does not come from whether this person is on my team- it’s based on this person being an imbecile who delivers anecdotes based on their own personal feelings that aren’t remotely backed up by studies
There are at least three problems with this statement: 1. It forces politics into a conversation about psychology and parenting, where it is unnecessary 2. It assumes that anyone with a conservative opinion is wrong (imagine replacing 'conservative' with 'liberal' and expecting everyone to agree liberals are wrong 100% of the time) \[this is also known as a 'poisoning the well' fallacy, instead of critiquing the ideas themselves, you simply attack the person that voiced them\] 3. You do not actually know what the author's full views on life and world affairs are any more than the next reader. You are using "vibes" to base your presumption that she's a conservative, when I have never seen her identify as one. Ironically, meaning you are using "vibes" to dismiss what someone says because you think they are too much of a "vibes-based" person.
Not vaguely conservative. She's huge in the trans panic space right now. Look at her last book, or really any of her columns.
Most people oppose castrating minors, Mr. 41%.
Your gaslighting attempts of the author are as obvious as your need to satiate your own self-aggrandizement.
Fair- I only use “vaguely” because she’s in that sect of people who present themselves as cool Brooklyn liberals but spread almost exclusively right wing talking points- probably a better word for it.
She's never presented herself as anything other than a journalist, a parent, and a concerned citizen. That is it. Stop projecting your insecurity onto other people.
The thing is, she doesn't have a lot of "science that backs it up" - she has a whole lot of anecdotes and personal interviews, not substantially meaningful data analysis or meta-analyses of multiple studies. She has stories, and some of them make my extremely progressive, gentle-parenting, in-touch-with-my-feelings ass dubious about those particular situations, for sure. She's acting like she's reporting on the front lines of the dangers of SEL and therapy but what she's mostly talking about is the expected awkwardness and growing pains of integrating those things in our culture and finding out how to do them well and most effectively. But just like with her other book, she's fanning tiny flames of doubt into an inferno, and it's just not that deep, tbh. I'm not changing the way I parent based on the middling journalism of a political commentator with an agenda, nah - just like I wouldn't change the way I parent based on one, singular scientific study, or one anecdote from my aunt, or something I saw another parent do successfully one time.
There's not a lot of Science™ because not only would it be inconvenient to the Mental Health Industrial Complex or the researchers' own careers, but also the kids haven't quite grown up yet, so longitudinal studies simply aren't ready. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I'd love to know when the popular attitude changed from considering the preponderance of evidence to "meta-analysis or GTFO". I'm guessing it was moments after learning what a meta-analysis was. So *we don't know* if this is dangerous or just "awkwardness and growing pains" - presumably you have a meta-analysis that supports your claim and simply forgot to post it. Anecdotes (aka "case studies") are not without value, especially in emerging and under-researched topics. They're what build pressure for more research, and that push is definitely needed, considering this field of under-qualified practitioners and their internet fans aggressively deny even the *possibility* of negative outcomes - flying in the face of one of the most basic tenets of medicine. I find your claim about only making decisions on meta-analyses to be dubious, because mostly everyone I know will try to replicate study findings (however rigorously) to see if they work in their life. If I hear a clever anecdote I think might work in my situation, I'm likely to try it. Thankfully, there are lots of people who try to replicate findings, else we wouldn't have the precious meta-analyses at all. In fact, I think you're the first person I've ever seen state that they don't ever experiment or change their mind based on anything but a meta-analysis. Are you kidding me? Did you wait for the meta-analyses on the vaccine? Do you need one for [the parachute](https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2019/02/breakthrough-research-reveals-parachutes-dont-prevent-death-when-jumping-from-a-plane/)?
Thanks for calling out the amount of science that backs it up as a concern. Hard to tell from the podcast, I'm planning to read the book and then I'll have a better understanding of how much data there is around this (I hope). On-going topic of research I hope too!!
I would also research the author and see if you feel her advice is worth your time. I did not see anything in her background that would tell me she's equipped to write this book or give broad medical advice about children.
She's an opinion columnist writing an opinion piece; having opinions on the society one lives in (however informed) is not a crime, last I checked. Also, none of the various teachers, social workers, and other pseudopractitioners are qualified to give medical advice either, yet here we are.
No one knows much is what I have come to conclude. Which is frustrating.
👏
The thing to consider is that the author is not an expert on anything related to child psychology or health. She's not a teacher, or a doctor. She's a professional opinion haver. Part of her saying "stop listening to experts so much" is because she is not an expert in this topic. Pretty much everything she says seems obvious, or wrong. Her other book is trans panic about how all our daughters are becoming trans bc they're being groomed by the gays. Which pretty much invalidates her as a resource of any parenting advice for me.
The thing to consider is that you are for some reason assblasted about those that do not want to castrate minors. The “experts” she is talking about are the ones who are getting minors hooked on drugs and over-diagnosing mental disorders. This is an actual issue. Also she is a mother, which you will never be.
Thanks for making this post. I want to teach my children to be strong, independent, and open-minded. I hope they grow up to be confident, functional, and well-adjusted, with or without therapy. I like that this author isn’t an expert and isn’t afraid to ask some difficult questions that go against the zeitgeist.
Thanks for that comment, I agree. We just want to do the best by them that we can, more info and discussion is what I'm looking for!
"We've turned every parent into a "mini-therapist", resulting in over-intervention in our kids otherwise normal emotional development, and stunting their ability to deal themselves with negative emotions in a healthy way." Yup. This.....in spades. Don't really need to say more than that right there.
Yes- I agree with this point as well! I think overall she makes a lot of fair points, tbh. Parents being therapists is not the way. Preventing age-appropriate “trauma” or microtrauma or whatever (can we have some more nuanced words for this concept PLEASE? It’s english, we have words for everything) can absolutely stunt growth and resourcefulness. But, there IS more to say: real therapists can bring a lot of value to kids lives by providing A SPACE for them to feel free to express themselves and process/talk through very complex emotions (the intensity is so real!!) without judgement or needing to please. This can be really valuable, especially in cultures where you are constantly being judged either worthy or unworthy. As a teenager sometimes all you need is someone to hear you, and not all teens have that relationship with their parents or a peer. A therapist can be like a great coach in your child’s life, in my experience.
Interesting, so you feel this validates what you've already been thinking in a way? Are you against therapy in general, not meant to be a leading question, just wondering.
Absolutely. Look at the number of parents coming on this very sub daily in a fit of anxiety because their child experienced some minor emotional discomfort due to a social/family incident. Now they want to know "what to do about it!" The advice pours in....."sit and talk to them about it", "get therapy," "call the other kid's parents," "give them a mental health day off school," etc. etc. etc. Now what should have been a minor incident and a chance to develop some emotional coping skills, has been elevated into days or weeks of a flurry of activity in their child's life. What are you really teaching them? You're teaching them that what should have been a small discomfort is actually a HUGE emotional event in their life, and that they should spend days or weeks or months ruminating, fixating, and focusing on it. This is how you end up with 18 year old college kids who think they need 2 weeks off school and 6 months of intensive therapy when their cat dies. They are non-functional members of society because their entire life from the day they were born they were taught not how to cope with minor emotional discomfort, but instead that the entire world around them should drop everything and fixate on nothing but their emotional needs ad nauseum every time they stub their toe. It's sick, and as my grandmother would say: "the proof is in the pudding": teenage suicide is at an all time high.
Oh goodness we're dealing with this in our own house rn, and it is so annoying. Kiddo was playing at school with his friends in the kind of way that a group of 12yo boys often play together, but THAT day one of the kids was having a rough go of it and had a little meltdown. Now I was getting a phone call from the AP telling me about how my son committed battery and bullying. He didn't, that's ridiculous. So he's out of school for *three days.* And what isn't happening here? The kids aren't just... working it out... nor are they learning about boundaries in the natural way kids tend to understand them around that age. The focus on *feelings* and *subjectivity* means that kids aren't *actually* even learning "social and emotional" skills, they're being taught to soapbox about their *feelings* which then gets them their way (and can even get other kids punished). Meanwhile, they learn nothing of use other than how to manipulate authority figures. And when we met with the APs and I moreorless said the above? They knew their top-down policy was bad for the kids but they couldn't do anything since it comes down from the district. And for the love of everything good in this world, these kids are *already* developmentally-emotionally behind because of covid so maybe this approach isn't the best. And heck, down here we got them back to school pretty darn quick, too! We still have swaths of 6th graders who basically act like 4th/5th graders, which is an issue because they're starting to get bigger and stronger and the problems that come from that strength/size coupled with an immature mentality causes a lot of bad outcomes. Heck, my little guy ain't so little anymore. He's taller, weighs more, is stronger, etc., than me and has been for a little while now. It can be a little frightening when he gets little-kid energy and goes a little bonkers without much awareness of other people (as stuff like the above story demonstrates they're getting shielded from development milestones that could be conceived as 'negative').
I find it interesting that you don't think kids should be "coddled by therapy" yet your 12 year old hurt another boy enough to get 3 days of suspension but you think that's a normal minor incident?? I thought you would be like "4 yo hurt a finger, call the therapist ". That's a huge incident in your kids life! Are you talking to your kid about the situation at all, and how he feels having (maybe accidentally) hurt a friend? If not, I think you're doing him a great disservice. Acceptable behavior for men does not include not apologizing and reflecting when you hurt someone.
Grandma's preaching right there
It’s an interesting idea I guess if it jives with you, and you feel it works well with your children’s development but the Bari Weiss/Joe Rogan seal of approval you say? What is this, a book on parenting saying we should pump our kids full of ivermectin lest they start using kitty litter in schools? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Shrier > In 2020, Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters[5][6] was published by Regnery Publishing. The book supports the proposed but unproven[7] hypothesis of socially mediated gender dysphoria.[8][9]: ch 2 Shrier has previously criticised individuals who use the singular they, comparing it to idol worship; > In 2024, Shrier published Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, which details her thoughts on the origins and solution to the American mental health crisis.[1][23][24] Elon Musk posted on X "Good Book" with a link to the Apple audio version.
The passage you quoted doesn’t mention ivermectin. It talks about how parents are giving hormones to minors.
Regnery is such a red flag
This is unrelated to trans issues, and as such it should have no bearing on your thoughts on this current book and ideas, since it doesn't come up at all and is a completely different topic.
if somebody employs questionable or outright flawed logic on one topic, it's reasonable to question their authority and knowledge on another topic.
The passage he quoted doesn’t mention ivermectin. It talks about how parents are giving hormones to minors, which even European countries like Sweden are turning away from. >i’m nb and my gf is trans Ah, you’re one of those freaks. In that case, I will ignore your feedback.
That's just patently false. You don't understand the human mind very well. I guess we shouldn't have learned anything in manufacturing because Henry Ford was a racist? Or maybe Steve Jobs was an overall idiot because he thought he could heal his cancer through his diet? Or maybe because Gandhi was a sex addict, we can't learn about non-violent protests from him? OR OR OR... such a stupid take, I can't even.
Two books feeding into moral panics about children and young people are not exactly very different realms of human endeavour, are they?
Yes, they are completely different. Someone having an interest in child development and looking at completely different arenas within that interest is normal. People with high critical thinking skills are able to separate ideas from people. For anybody interested in upping your game, Tim Urban does a fantastic job of explaining how to engage in better discourse in order to learn, like he does with many things. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxtJxRvzA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxtJxRvzA4) I get I may be the one making a category error by expecting this on REDDIT. haha.
Bud, these analogies are terrible. Henry Ford innovated in a very specific way that's been emulated and powerfully shaped society, sure. But his racism absolutely influenced the way assembly line technology was developed, used, and the role it has played in society. Steve Jobs also innovated in very specific ways that we can learn from, but it's certainly pertinent to consider the ways in which he thought he was exceptional and what his particular blind spots were. That, too, is instructive. Considering Gandhi's misogyny and racism are extremely pertinent when evaluating his work as well as what his lasting political and cultural legacy has been for India as well as how his particular fanwork for non-violent protest was studied and used after him. It's like you're resistant to the idea that people are flawed and those flaws aren't pertinent to studying their work. The whole "learn from exceptional geniuses" model is so tired, anyway. On the other hand, Shrier isn't even an innovator so the comparison is deeply strained to begin with - she's a journalist and political commentator. She's not coming up with innovative solutions to problems, she's hand-wringing and tapping into a "new" developing wave of moral panic straight out of the culture wars, round one million.
1) Come up with your own examples if you don't like mine, they're literally everywhere. 2) Every person is flawed. That's **my** point. We seem to agree. 3) I try to learn from anyone that has interesting ideas, or compiles info and research supporting a compelling idea. You believe in judging a person as part of a tribe, then ignoring them if you don't like their tribe. Good luck with that. 4) Like I said, pick your own examples, there's nothing I've said that claims she's an innovator. I think of her as a journalist, compiling information and reporting on an interesting possibly "missed" angle to our modern society. I don't know if I even agree with her, but I certainly find it a story worth reading about. 5) You keep calling this a "moral panic", which implies you don't know about the data surrounding kids mental health or maybe you don't care? In any case, I am not "panicked" in any sense personally, but our kids are not launching too successfully, so maybe you should err on the side of more concern and not less. But do you, of course, I don't care.
This woman’s whole job is as a journalist and book writer. How she has previously evaluated data and ideas and how conservative or liberal she has been in sticking to data/information definitely has relevance on how she does that from one topic to the next. If you’ve previously trotted out a catastrophizing if not fear mongering account of a specific sector of childhood development that’s thick on anecdote and *extremely thin* on corroborating research that’s definitely relevant to her new endeavor of a new catastrophizing account of childhood development!
reasonable to question authority and knowledge≠we can't ever learn anything ever from a person with shitty takes. weird how invested you are in using logical fallacies to defend a book you haven't even read, though🤨
I do need to read it!!
No we're saying take manufacturing advice from Henry Ford not not parenting advice . Bc he's not an expert on parenting advice. I would Google the author and see if you feel she has any expertise in this area that she's broadly giving parents medical advice in
That’s a very flawed epistemology. Jordan Peterson is an excellent psychologist, but can’t reason himself out of a paper bag when it comes to cultural issues, you’re epistemology says we should either trust him at both or neither, that’s not how the world works.
I agree 100%! I remember your post. You asked a fascinating question. The discussion was terrific!
Good username
>She says that over-focusing on ones own emotional state, which is championed by therapists, SEL advocates, and modern school counselors, leads to more instances of anxiety, emotional weakness, and depression. I don’t think it can be argued that therapists encourage ruminating (Try Googling “child therapist ruminating”). Secondly, I think encouraging children, especially boys, to be more in touch with their emotions is a good thing.
I have much to say about this book, of which most is negative. I think that she conflates everything from cops to teachers as being therapists when they fundamentally are not. She alleges that most kids get their first diagnosis in school without citing a source for this, and *despite the fact* that school counselors *are not qualified to diagnose* kids. Nor has the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) endorsed the idea that school counselors should provide long term therapy, or even short term therapy to treat a diagnosis (at least dating back to 2015). She alleges that DARE is an example of bad therapy when it was never made to be that, and it's delivered by police. She applies population level data to individuals. She interviewed the authors of an article that seemingly would have agreed with proactive screening which Shrier starts the book off lamenting about. She's right to bring to attention iatrogenesis. This is real. It happens. 5% of people do get worse, or don't get better. But this context means that 5 in 100 people are going to see symptoms get worse. Moreover, she doesn't ever explain what *good therapy* looks like. Even in her discussions on iatrogenesis, she leans on interviews without explaining why *some* symptoms *would* get worse. She leaves the reader to connect dots that they've been primed to connect with little further analysis.
That’s some really well thought out criticism. I appreciate the balance with praise for calling out what you see as a solid point with iatrogenesis. Not pointing out what “good therapy” is does seem like a major short coming. Like a lot of people with a point, she takes it too far at times, and stretches where it isn’t necessary to stretch. It sells more books to be so one sided, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to more persuasion to your point as much as an honest balance of pros and cons would. Thank you!
We need to see more clinical data and evidence on what she claims. There is a spectrum as it relates to the quality of a therapist as well as the different modalities. It's possible there aren't enough good therapists that actually help solve issues . Some may be keeping you in a never ending rabbit hole of questioning with no solutions. Also, you can gain tools/training in therapy to deal with negative emotions in a healthy way. Developing emotional intelligence. I don't see how i.e. mastering CBT for a specific anxiety would make things worse. You're supposed to be catching, checking and changing your thought process to help.
Teaching coping skills for normal emotions of sadness, anger and anxiety is to be commended. The trend I see of identifying any trauma as an integral part of your persona I find disconcerting.
you have no idea whats coming for all of you whether you change it or not
Ominous words from no interaction.
love the book and as a health care practitioner from traditional tibetan medicine background I have always been very reluctant to suggest therapy for most people and the points I use are the exact same in her book. Of course therapy is good for certain, small cases but this modern thought that everyone would benefit from therapy is ludicrous and causes more harm than good, especially with children. I've seen it in my own family.
After listening to her NPR interview, i now have deeper understanding of wanting to use the sarcastic phrase “Uhh, OK Boomer.” I am sure her book will do very well with a particular audience that in general sees the world and its problems as very black & white place instead of complicated and nuanced, have never *actually* experienced or had therapy, and in general feel victimized by other imaginary enemies when trying to deal with their own lives. Anyone can cherry-pick scientific research, which she admits doing. She repeatedly draws her own conclusion from a *single* research paper, without addressing the larger picture & metadata, which of course any real researcher knows is the only scientifically valid way to do research. But just in general, who the hell thinks it is a good idea to take advice on psychology from a lawyer???
This provided me with some clarity on the topichttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671?i=1000651854762
I’m a teacher and am currently listening to the book on Spotify. It all rings so true. The districts are spending a lot of money on social emotional learning and I have to say it’s garbage. The resources are crap. Just a waste of instructional time. Kids are running to the counselor all the time, group counseling for kids who just need to refocus on learning. My favorite part of the book so far: what you focus on is what grows. And too many kids are running to the counselor for petty stuff.
Late to the game, but this book is so full of distortions, misreadings, and straw men that I had to put it down. Deeply disappointing.
Better late than never! My current take is that like a lot of people with a point to make, she often goes to far, stretches for data, and will take a biased stance against data that doesn't support her argument. Careful readers and analyzers will take issue with a lot of that, and it doesn't support her arguments. However, going full scale tilted on "therapy" gets her attention and book sales, and more charitably, brings some attention to her point. I think there is a point worth considering in her work, despite her going too far in many instances. The point for me is "don't let your emotional distress that is derived from your children's emotional hurt allow you to overprotect them, and thereby disallow their normal emotional development." I think my framing isn't that specific to therapy... it's just don't be a permissive parent, a lawnmower parent, or a helicopter parent. Let them experience bumps and bruises physically and emotionally. It can help them grow and learn to deal with the world. "Too much therapy" is more of a symptom than a cause in my view. Therefore I'm not that convinced its the therapy that is a problem... but I'm quite convinced that overprotecting children and treating them as fragile glass that will break at any tiny danger is large issue. It could just be that over-use of therapy is correlated with this type of parenting. Cause/correlation... always hard to untangle.
I teach middle school, and I definitely see a kernel of truth in the idea that therapy has become such a part of our discourse that kids are prone to pathologizing normal adolescent distress. But that's a far cry from "therapy is actively hurting people," which is what the book argues. Shrier also has laughably bad standards of evidence. Early on she claims that "most therapists" advise against separating adolescents from their smartphones. If you read the footnote, the evidence for this claim is a whopping two op-eds by therapists, one of which doesn't actually say what she says it does. There are numerous other odd claims throughout, especially the idea that attending to your emotions actually makes them worse. I see kids fall apart all the time precisely because they don't understand how their feelings are informing their actions. Personally, as an endurance cyclist, I think monitoring my emotions is fundamental to performance--if I'm feeling bad, I know I need to rest or eat. It doesn't lead to collapse, like she says. It helps me do what I need to do to keep going. Just a terrible screed all around. There's no reason to write a book arguing that people should shut up and deal with things the way we did back in the day. This book should have been a Twitter post, not a whole trade publication!
hey, I stumbled here cause i was curious about other people's take for Abigail Shriers book promotion/ interview with Joe Rogan( my husband was like look at this and tell me what you think?) Like you i agree about not ruminating the past/hurtful instances and memories will do us good. I also like that joe rogan would ask back questions that made her clarify or elaborate on what she said. But on the other hand, she also said something about grandparents resilience and being happy after because they go to work, work hard,have a family etc.. etc.. How do you know theyre happy? When she was saying that i remembered my mum. She was born after ww2. Our whole village where pillaged and burned (our place is where the japanese bombed after pearl harbor) and my grandparents started from scratch. Yes theyre resilient. Yes, hardworking. Yes grandma made sure my mum and her siblings graduated college. She worked hard, earn a very good position in another country managed to built a house with 7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms complete with vases as tall as 4 feet. But is she happy? No. Not really. And i know that because my grandmother explained her gradual change of attitude.she said mum used to be a sweet and helpful little girl, would help her out in the wet market after class.We started from nothing she would make plastic bottles (cocacola,pepsi) cut and decorate and turn them into a makeshift vase. She had been miserable, not content and it made her renters leave early, always saying shes dying soon despite being healthier than her peers and even my MIL. (She does the same to me,she always used to tell me get alot of money cause your an only child, that means you'll die alone or lets change you a rhinoplasty cause you got your dad's flat nose). She had been chasing her dream house and Big china vases for thirty,fourty,fifty years and forgot her family.
The author is a supporter of Moms for Liberty so I won’t purchase anything she produces.
Never heard of it.... googled... looked at website for 2 mins. What'd they do?
They do not want porn in elementary school classrooms, and for some reason the alphabet people took offense to it.
Nothing. The superwoke crowd doesn’t like that tbh why want to keep pornography and ideology out of schools. Essentially, they are advocating for separation of church and state, the religion being “woke”.
Could we argue that there seems to be some intimidation about the fact that we are simply building stronger emotional intelligence and communication skills in our children than ever before? This concept she’s promoting is ridiculously based on her opinion. She’s a journalist and has no mental health training.
That would be great, if it were true. Are children more emotionally intelligent than in the past? Why are so many afraid of social situations? Why are so many afraid to hear things they don’t agree with (calling hurt feelings “violence”, for example)? Why are so many depressed and/or suicidal? Are all these things related? I don’t think she has a complete answer. But we need to keep asking these questions and make sure we aren’t screwing up kids by over doing (or misunderstanding) gentle parenting. I actually looked up emotional intelligence fairly recently and ability to control emotions is one aspect of eq. I think the author has a point that at times I may over indulge emotions of my kids and it can inhibit their growth in the dimension of emotional control. What parts of her hypothesis do you disagree with?
Because our children are faced with generational trauma we have faced AND have exposures to more than ever before —news at their finger tips, more judgement, being videoed at any moment, blasted on Snapchat, fear of school shootings, surviving a pandemic,… should I go on? I LARGELY disagree that it’s the mental health professionals screwing our kids up when quite frankly, in many situations, they are saving them. Parents want to be their kids “bestie” not their parent. They aren’t setting appropriate boundaries. There is a different between gentle parenting and positive parenting, enabling and encouraging.
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I’m not sure you understand generational trauma… this is the trauma we naturally endure by the people who raise us. Each generation experiences the impact of the previous generations trauma and so on and so forth. Generational trauma is not limited to the person who experienced it. It can influence children, grandchildren and their community around them. So YES, our children have experienced the trauma that impacted their caring adults.
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Exploring our emotions isn’t helpful?
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And I will happily live my life knowing I can still express my emotions and grow as a person by doing so and going to therapy to better myself. Clearly, you won’t.
And again, the author states this seems to be a mental health issue. I believe it’s a parenting issue.
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And is that the mental health professionals fault? Or is that basic parenting?