Kids that are unmotivated, hypersensitive, and defined by their supposed mental defects — Is this the condition of today's children? One author says yes and she thinks she knows why.
Abigail Shrier's book, Bad Therapy: Why Aren't The Kids Growing Up, has gotten a lot of attention because it proposes that an increased focus on therapy has actually harmed the kids.
"…With treatment of illness, the more treatment there is, the more the point prevalence rate of a disorder should go down," Shrier tells Reason.com. "We saw this with breast cancer treatment and other things. The incidence of death from breast cancer went down with more pervasive treatment. Here, there's been vast expansion of (mental health) treatment and the rates of depression and anxiety have only gone up."
Quoting the Centers for Disease Control, Shrier says that by 2016 one in six children between the ages of 2 and 8 already had a mental health or behavior diagnosis. Today 40 percent have been in therapy.
"We're taking healthy kids who are a little bummed out, a little anxious, and we're loading them with intervention, as you say, much of it through school, through social-emotional learning and all the therapeutic techniques now going on in school."
Instead of sending the kids to therapy, Shrier says people should surround kids with family, give kids independence, teach them a skill and give them unmonitored time. Don't try to be a kid's pal. Be the authority in the home.
Shrier's book, which reached number 8 on the Amazon top book list, has been a no-show on the New York Times list, a fact that reflects the sentiment that her book is critical of liberal parenting. Slate reviewer Anna Nordberg wrote, "Shrier prefers parody, viewing liberal parenting through a fun house mirror as if she were describing robots awaiting the next ideological order from Dear Leader."