My inspiration for this post comes from a good friend of mine that appreciates my tilt on parenting. He is expecting a son in a few months himself and both of us are suspicious of the “crunchy granola” approach to parenting. He sent me a podcast titled “Why the Kids Aren’t Alright.” The podcast is from the series “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” and in this episode Weiss interviews journalist and author Abigail Shrier. While promoting her new book Bad Therapy, Shrier shares her concern that parents are focusing too much on normal emotional responses in their children, undermining their inherent emotional resilience, and being quick to pathologize them. She claims parents are all too quick to send their children to therapists, not understanding the possible risks of unwarranted therapy, and then are left with children that are unable to grow up and assume the responsibilities of adulthood. She is also concerned about the undermining of parental authority by schools, counselors, and other mental health professionals. I listened with an open mind and appreciated some of her viewpoints.
I sent the podcast over to my brother-in-law who is a clinical psychologist to get his take. He took a listen and cautioned against taking too much heed from someone who herself is not a mental health professional, and to be wary of the conflation of pop-psychology and actual clinical psychology. He did, however, as a parent appreciate her takes on parental authority and maintaining stable relationships. He in turn recommended another podcast (published on the same day interestingly enough) from Andrew Huberman’s podcast, where he speaks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy. Reading the show notes I got the impression that Dr. Kennedy would be coming in from a diametrically opposite position from Shrier, and after reading about them, they certainly come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But after actually listening to Dr. Kennedy, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they in fact agree on more than they disagree. Dr. Kennedy advocates for what she calls “sturdy parenting” and the maintenance of certain behavioral boundaries. She encourages that parents maintain the assumption that children do not act out out of malice but rather naïveté. They literally don’t know how to behave, and so they rely on us to teach them. Where she breaks away from Shrier is that she does not believe in corrective actions like punishments, but rather the validation and then the exploration and explanation of a child’s outburst in the moment.
I listened to both of these podcasts intently, and with more interest than I would have thought. But clearly it is because I am thinking about how I want to raise my son. It is interesting to me that there is still ongoing debate on how it is best raise children, since humans have successfully created raised for millennia. But I also appreciate our modern environment, with it’s very unique and addictive trappings, are unlike anything we have seen before as a species.
I’m left with more questions perhaps than answers, but what I do know is that the answers are for Meredith and me to decide. Our goal is to raise Luca to become a self sufficient human being. In pursuit of this, he will have times in his life that are hard and frustrating, and even times when things are painful. This will be part of him growing up. I will not call it trauma. He will have times when he is super excited about something, this will not be ADHD. Other times he will be nervous or worried, this will not be labeled anxiety. There will also definitely be times when he is sad, and this will not be labeled depression.
I am cautious of pathologizing children because they are so impressionable. It will be my responsibility to show him that ultimately humans are incredibly resilient, and that more often than not we can persevere life’s greatest stressors and come out stronger on the other side.
I will not allow anyone to undermine us in this regard. Not a school counselor, not a teacher, not a pediatrician, not a therapist, and certainly not the government.
I am not by any means minimizing the fact that there are some children who have true psychopathology, and that they may require intervention, but I do not believe this needs to be the default approach with each and every child.
My outlook on life has changed plenty since my son was born, and some have said that I’ve become more “conservative”, but I reject such labels. Life is too complex for me to be placed in one little box. American society’s current factions don’t work for me in the slightest. My driving principles are based first and foremost in my lived reality, and I base my decisions on facts, whenever they are available. And when they are not, I trust my judgment.
I will do everything in my power to provide Luca the structure he needs to become an emotionally resilient and self sufficient man.
In closing, I’d like to share this quote from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an essayist and statistician, famous for his book Black Swan:
“I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will”