Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up

Ok I have to preface my review with the caveat that I didn't realize who the author was before picking up this book and that I was very predisposed to agree with her given my habit of being critical and suspicious of psychology and psychiatry as industries thanks to both my personal and professional experiences. Even with that in mind it was an underwhelming read, to put it politely.

I have several pages of notes detailing minor issues I had with this book which I am far too lazy to organize in a proper review and this book is, frankly, not worth the effort since it's both lazy and disingenuous.

Shrier puts research (which she always bring up free of actual citations) on the same standing as anecdotes which often sound entirely made up in their excess. Even when I agreed with her (after all a lot of her takes validate certain aspects of my parenting style which I now have to question) I had to cringe at how poorly supported her opinions were. The few times she provides sources to support her assertions they range from dubious (why would The New Yorker be your source regarding the prevalence of teen suicide?) and questionable (let's not talk about considering Peterson as a valid source) to passable but uncited.

She seems to have a strange fixation on Israel and inserting the fact that someone is Jewish in the conversation even when seemingly irrelevant.

Even when she comes close to recognizing that hyper-individualism and the lack of community are a big part of why both parents and children seem to be so miserable, she remains determined to ignore what incentivizes these situations and why individualized action are unlikely to solve them. She also appears to be entirely oblivious to the many ways in which she affirms one thing and its opposite whenever convenient for her arguments.

Ultimately my conclusion regarding this book, in a move that will surprise exactly no one who knows me, is: Citation needed!

I want to read INTELLIGENT perspectives that differ from my own, and this is not that. I was curious about the title and had never heard of the author… I made it 3 chapters before I said “that’s enough nonsense.”

Imagine if someone dared to ask questions or suggest a Karen’s kid might benefit from therapy. Now create an atom bomb of that ignorance, lack of self-awareness and defensiveness. And that’s just the preface.

She appears to extrapolate her own (lackluster) experience with a single therapist into a massive pile of bad faith arguments and calls it a book. Again, I only made it to chapter 3, so take my review with a grain of salt.

This book is a case study in how to cherry pick anecdotes. The example that sticks in my mind is when she mentions a principal who doesn’t want to take kid’s phones away because it “keeps them calm.” WTF. Where’s the rest of his statement? Point me to any single school administration official who LIKES kids to have phones in class. She wants to cherry pick? Ok, well I just read about a school district who completely banned phones. And my kid’s school has had to send emails saying kids should never have phones in class. So there’s two, lady, your move. This is the level of intelligent discussion you might have with this book. So none.

Assuming she ever got around to making any valid points I wouldn’t have been able to take her seriously because of the rest of it. Even with the small amount I read she still managed to rant about lockdowns, claims of systemic racism, and climate ("But is climate anxiety—dare I ask—rational?")

Don’t waste your time with this rage bait. I should note this is coming from someone who does not agree with our helicopter parenting, intense child optimization culture. There are things I probably do agree with her on (emotions change, don’t make happiness the goal, for example), but even then I would expect actual valid sources for those conclusions. This book was written purely to massage the ego of a certain type of person, nothing more.

This book is a breath of fresh air in the quagmire of bad advice that has stemmed from self prescribed mental health and parenting professionals.

I don't think she has everything right but that's a matter of opinion.

If you have young kids, read this.