Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
By Abigail Shrier
(Penguin Random House, 297 pages, $30)
Generation Z has a problem. In fact, several. The main culprit for their malaise and general unwillingness to take risks, according to Abigail Shrier in her new book Bad Therapy, is that their childhoods are plagued by society-wide “mom-agers.” These helpful minders take the form of therapists, school administrators and counselors, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and yes — even parents themselves.
If you are a member of Generation X, your childhood was likely marked by a few key features: your perception of your parents’ purported authoritarianism, a lack of smartphones, a smattering of latchkey kids in your neighborhood, and a far more opaque understanding of so-called mental health. When you grew up and became a parent, you resolved to be different; you promised to never spank, to make sure your child felt heard and loved, and to ensure they got the accommodations they needed. All you wanted? For your kids to like you in the end.
When parenting difficulties arose or Johnny wasn’t “sitting still in class,” you consulted the experts. First, you read all the parenting books you could find. Eventually, some of you took your children to the pediatrician or a psychiatrist. They got a diagnosis — ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, sensory processing disorder — and a prescription. You were relieved to finally know what was wrong with them. Then, the iatrogenic effects started to manifest themselves. It turns out that focusing on one’s feelings in therapy can lead to more bad feelings. Medications have side effects.
According to the author of Irreversible Damage, the trauma-aware soup that Gen Z has been swimming in has made them self-conscious and hyperaware of their internal troubles, which is a recipe for depression and anxiety. The constant presence of watchful eyes from adults on the playground, counselors in school, and coaches in extracurricular activities removed all possibility of childhood danger and scraped knees. If a child was known to come from a troubled home, she was watched even more intently and expectations for her performance were lowered. Trauma is forever, after all.
Today, social-emotional learning circles pervade schools and encourage children to divulge their trauma or to confront their bully. Everyone liberally speaks about their Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), their struggles with gender identity, and their feelings about their parents’ divorce. The children know that talking about their struggles is one surefire way to receive the attention they crave, and schools encourage it. Repression is out, dysregulation is in.
The news that repression is out is well met by pop psychologists, many of whom are profiting off the American people’s desire to plumb the depths of their childhood to find a cause for what is presently wrong with them. In chapter six, Shrier informs us that, contrary to popular notions, your body does not keep the score. In response to a potentially traumatic event, resilience is the norm, not brokenness. Some of the psychological studies on trauma are shaky at best, as Shrier details, and our memories, while powerful, can be quite fallible.
Meanwhile, back at your child’s school, parental authority is questioned at every turn. Children are dispatched to spy on their parents and detail their family’s dynamics. Secret surveys have been put forward to kids to ensure their attachment to their parents is healthy. If not, a call to Child Protective Services is not out of the question. These surveys ask students if they smoke, have had sex while still a minor, or have any plans to kill themselves.
Smartphones are absolutely everywhere, and kids are poorly behaved. If they are not acting out, many of them are zonked on antidepressants or must ask an adult for help to achieve simple tasks. Also, they can be vicious. The monitored have grown up and become the monitors — they keep screenshots of the problematic texts their friends send them, just in case they need dirt if their friend tattles on them first.
Who’s to blame?
Besides the “experts,” Shrier lays the blame at the feet of gentle parenting, a more maternal style of interaction that prioritizes a massive increase in the hours spent with the child, getting the child’s buy-in on the myriad of choices affecting their lives, and parents having unconditional positive regard. And boy, was it exhausting.
One particularly chilling example of the failings of gentle parenting comes in chapter nine, where Shrier tells of a battered mother who is struggling and bargaining with her little Pol Pot at a park. “Please be a good boy … and when we get home, I’ll let you do anything you want. What do you want?” The 6-year-old said plainly, “I want to punch you in the face.” There you have it. For all of the hours spent together, all of the soft voices, loose boundaries, and “consequences,” her child wanted to punch her in the face.
Unfortunately, gentle parents are not enjoying the children they’re raising. But they can’t yell, punish, or lay down firm rules — those are things the bad kind of parents do. And Dad telling the kid to knock it off or tough it out? Anathema. Plus, it’s too late. Perpetually accommodating the child’s sensitivity has already resulted in a sensitive child.
Much to the gentle parents’ surprise, when the children get older, some of them cut them off. According to Shrier, the young adults who repudiate their parents state that they felt “crushed by the burden of serving as the buttress for their parents’ emotional lives.” The kids were — are — miserable about having been put in charge of their lives at such a young age. They wanted an authoritative parent, not a permissive, smothering one.
Bad Therapy states that there is a way to fix this. It starts with leaving the kids alone. It means sometimes ignoring expert advice. It involves parents not running interference in their kids’ lives and not praising them for doing things that are not difficult. As Shrier says, “[T]hey never learn to do for themselves if we do everything for them.”
Shrier provides an anecdote from her own life: She stepped back from managing her kids to great success. She started by letting them walk home from the bus stop alone, then trusting them to keep track of their homework due dates, then sending them out to run errands on their bikes. Their confidence and desire for independence only grew, as did their street smarts.
In previous generations, teens were trusted to make a decision on whether to go to college, who to date, who to be friends with, and what and how many activities to be involved in. They should be allowed to make these decisions once more. However, it would behoove parents to make one critical decision to help their children flourish and that is getting rid of their smartphones, or at least social media. Adversity and hurt feelings will come for your children no matter what, and that can be healthy, but the human psyche is not built to be humiliated by thousands or millions.
If you are a mental health professional, teacher, or administrator, Bad Therapy is a must-read. It challenges many of the baked-in assumptions of the psychological field and their gradual descent into the classroom. It may also inculcate a healthy dose of humility on the part of experts and engender a greater collective pause before practitioners rush to diagnose or prescribe a remedy for a mental malady that may be transient — or not present at all.
If you are a Gen X or Millennial parent, you need this book. If you are a Gen Z kid, now grown up, it’s a good buy for you too. All generations will come away with a new understanding of their potential. For the parents, you will begin to trust yourself and your instincts with your child. You might trade the tower of gentle parenting books for a few more practical choices (that Shrier generously supplies). You will now realize what is actually happening in your child’s school. You will stop labeling your child and banish those from your life who call them disordered. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll take away that phone.
