Bad Therapy Review: Bad Parenting

Clickbait title: You'll Never Guess Who Is REALLY The Bad Parent!

[Previously.]

I don’t know anything about Abigail Shrier personally, but judging by her book Bad Therapy she’s a terrible parent.

Parenting books recommend a number of practices that Abigail Shrier thinks are terrible and might permanently screw up your child:

• Not spanking.

• Explaining why you want your child to do something.

• Explaining the reasons behind particular rules and punishments.

• Putting children in time-out.

• Referring to punishments as consequences.¹

• Teaching children to take deep breaths when they’re upset.

• Naming your child’s feelings and providing suggestions of safe ways to express them.

• Empathizing with your child’s suffering instead of telling them to shake it off.

• Getting your child a dysgraphia diagnosis and occupational therapy instead of scolding them for their bad handwriting.

• Getting your child with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder a diagnosis instead of rounding them off to a picky eater.

  • This angered me because I know people with ARFID. It’s a crippling disorder that can’t be fixed by willpower and that can cause severe malnourishment. Some people might be irresponsibly diagnosing picky eaters with ARFID, but in general people only get an ARFID diagnosis if they have actual health problems related to their restrictive diet.

  • “Yeah, my kid’s starving to death, but at least he isn’t a special snowflake, and that’s what really matters.”

• Tolerating children jumping on the couch.

• Letting your teenager dye their hair whatever color.

• Letting your teenager have a smartphone.

• Buying tag-free clothing for your child who finds tags itchy.

• Giving a sound machine to your child who wakes up in the night.

• Reading your child books about feelings.

• Asking what your child’s drawing represents to them.

• Asking your child questions like “how are you feeling today?” or “are you excited about school tomorrow?” or “are you enjoying your ice cream?”

If you implement these horrible, awful, no-good parenting strategies, then:

Successful parenting became a function with a single coefficient: our kids’ happiness at any given instant. An ideal childhood meant no pain, no discomfort, no fights, no failure—and absolutely no hint of “trauma.”

You know, I think there is plenty of discomfort in the average childhood even without spanking, noises waking you up in the night, and clothing tags? Why does Shrier like things being bad when they could be easily fixed?

Bizarrely, another parenting technique Shrier thinks will screw up your child is reading parenting books. You see, experts are going around saying that they know more than parents about what’s good for kids, “which ought to be met with derision, contempt, the creeps.” If you read a parenting book and implement some of the advice, then you lose your parental authority, and then your children will get depression and never get a job and you won’t have grandkids and an entire generation will wind up joining the Black Lives Matter movement.

This “if you read a book about how to do something you’re no longer in charge” theory is going to be a revelation to home cooks everywhere.