When undergraduates came through university education programs 30 years ago, professors drubbed into teacher candidates the importance of fostering in their students an internal locus of control, or the belief that one’s choices and actions drive one’s outcomes: If I choose not to do my homework, my grades will suffer because of my poor decision.
Today, however, children learn exactly the opposite: If my grades are low, it’s because I have trauma, a learning disability, an emotional disability, an unaccommodating learning environment, an emotionally absent parent, or I’m being bullied, yadda, yadda, yadda. In other words, kids today are taught to have an external locus of control: Their failures are always someone else’s fault, and they can’t be expected to overcome difficulties because they’re just too broken and fragile.
With her new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, Abigail Shrier uncovers the supposedly well-intentioned roots of this therapeutic model of childrearing and documents the havoc it wreaked.
A cultural shift away from overly authoritarian parenting and education toward a kinder, more considered hand from Mom and Dad and teacher may have begun with the admirable goal of caring well for children’s inner landscapes. But when we see among our adolescents and teens skyrocketing rates of depression, suicidal ideation, prescriptions for psychotherapeutic drugs, and a host of other mental health crises, it’s time to admit that something has gone awry since parents were told that spankings represented profligate child abuse.
“Gentle parenting” and “trauma-informed care” have displaced
