Why the Kids Aren’t Alright with Abigail Shrier
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So I think we got here through a lot of what I call bad therapy. Bad therapy is that any therapy that introduces new symptoms or makes existing symptoms worse than by that, I mean, we're teaching them over and over. Your feelings are the most important thing.

That's what we're broadcasting. When we constantly ask them how they're feeling, when we constantly ask them if they're happy, we're fighting over their happiness. So we've made happiness a goal, making happier. Ss, your goal is a way to make you unhappy or teaching kids that can never ignore any distress. You've never ignore any pain, and so they're not able to do IT.

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I wanna remind you that, as is the case with all of our guests, my job is to explore a subject through the eyes of our guests in a non judgmental way. If you have a real mental health issue, this episode is not for you. If, however, you have a nagging feeling that therapy isn't helping you or your kids as much as you thought I should, or you just want to learn more about the topic, sit back and listen.

today. My guest is avoca shire, author of the book bad therapy. In a world where mental health chAllenges are on the rise, particularly among youth, epic ales work offers a critical examination of the fAilings in our current approach to therapy.

In this episode, we use the counter intuitive question, how would we raise children to be as mentally unstable as possible? In order to explore the key principles and practices, there are essential for Fostering resilience and independence in our children and ourselves. We don't just talk about kids.

We also explore the concept of therapist as best friend for adults, questions you can ask before engaging a therapist and when IT timed, and your relationship with a therapies. We also discuss the societal trends contributing to the decline and mental health, the role of technology and social media, and the responsibility of parents and therapies. And addressing these issues, epic shares insights on how other cultures approach, shouldering differently and what we can learn from their successes.

Through out our conversation, we uncover problems in the mental heal fields, from the protocols that prioritize ideology over individual needs to the graduate schools that produce bad server. By listening to this episode, you will gain a deeper understanding of the complex factor shaping our children's mental well being and the steps we can take to redesign our approach to therapy and parenting. Epic s insights will empower you to make informed decisions and advocate for change in a system that, at least based on the numbers, is fAiling. Are you? It's time to listen and learn.

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Improve your hydration and your sleep, and become the best version of yourself. Get thirty percent off your order at protect dot com slash knowledge that's P R O T E K T dot com slash knowledge or use code knowledge at the checkout for thirty percent of I was thinking about how to start this conversation, and I think we should actually start with the inverse. Instead of talking about how to raise strong, healthy, capable children who are independent, how would we raise them to be as mentally unstable as possible?

That's something I looked at. And the answer seems to be, i'm a journalist. I interview you a lot of experts in terms of people who are familiar with the psychological research, so not the people who hold themselves out as mental health experts guiding everyone with people who are actually conducting and familiar with the psychological research.

And if we wanted to make kids this regulated, here's what we would do. We would obsess over their emotions. We would ask them constantly how they were feeling about things.

We would ask them to pay attention to their feelings so therefore broadcast that their feelings were an important and and reliable guide to um whether how they were doing in life um we would treat them as in isolation, treat them as very special and unique and isolated from everyone else unique in the world um never give them a sense that their actions had had an effect on others so therefore they had no responsibility to others to sort of be a good citizen whether that's on an airplane or in a classroom, but constantly talk about them as unique. We would give them diagnosis, diagnosis for ordinary behaviors. We would pathologies ordinary behaviors and treat them to see themselves as disordered.

Oh, that's just you know you have at oh, that's your oppositional defined disorder. That's why you acted out. So instead of using the sort of lay terms we've always use that have to do with character like you know being a jerking class or being inappropriate class, we would say know that your oppositional defined disorder.

So treat them to see IT as a brain problem, so that they never felt they had any agency to do anything about IT. And we would teach them to focus on happiness and wildness all the time. And I think if we did all those things, we would end up with what we have, which is a very diregus ted generation.

When you use the word is regulated, what do you mean?

We're seeing kids, high school students, university unions, who cannot control their emotions. So teachers report that elementary school kids and even high school kids are throwing tantrums in the classroom like theyve never seen before. And we're seeing, even as you know, the Young, this Young rising generation goes off to the workplace.

If if their feelings are hurt at the workplace, they will complain the hr and try to get their boss fire. That seems to them reasonable response to something not going the way they expected in the workplace. They want everything to stop for them.

How did we get here?

So I think we got here through a lot of what I call bad therapy. Bad therapy is this is any therapy that introduced new symptoms or makes existing symptoms worse by that. I mean, all these feelings focus with kids or teaching them over and over your feelings are the most important thing.

That's what we're broadcasting when we constantly ask them how they're feeling, when we constantly ask them if they're happy, we're fighting over their happiness. We've made happiness a goal, the researchers can tell you. And there's a lot of good researchers on research on this making happy and is your goal is a way to make you unhappy because most of life are not exactly happy, right?

We're thinking about the work we have were frustrated. We have a worry that's bothering. Maybe we have an h or an allergy or a slight pain that we have to repress to get on with the business of our lives.

And we're doing the opposite with that. We're teaching kids that can never ignore any distress. You've never ignore any pain. And so they're not able to do IT.

But how did that start? Like, how did this all come in to society? Like I didn't go slowly. And then all that wants slike.

Was this, you know, one bad actor or one person like seeded this idea? And IT took all like how to? Because IT seems like everybody's just following the protocol. But who's creating these protocols? Like how did this happen?

I think that we created a window or an opening, and parents, as a group, dead. How did we do this? We had lived through a lot of divorce.

We had had, we had a lot of broken homes ourselves, and we were really worried that we weren't going to do things properly. We need, in an expert and in an amErica in general, across the west, we've become more and more reliant on so called experts. Even for ordinary things.

We don't trust ourselves to handle our lives in the way that we used to, right? We think that basically, our lives require a certain amount of expertise. And childbearing especially, we will become totally unconfident in our ability to raise kids, even though the project of raising kids really hasn't changed in what kids need over you know, centuries.

I mean, kids need the same things from us, but instead we've convinced herself that is a highly technical project you need to know about a child, a middlin to do IT, right? And that's what the experts have been saying. It's not true.

IT flies in the face of all the good psychological research, but none there's I do think they've all these factors have undermined the confidence that we knew what we were doing. And so then we turn to really bad advice from a whole lot of people who I think very often mean well, but they're giving very bad advice in some of the times. Their science is just garbage.

And and and they've been promoting the idea of trauma, trauma everywhere in our world. This is their idea that anything we do to get anytime you are a kid that can trauma tize a kid, that injury, emotional injury, can be with them for our lifetime. It's not true. It's not with the best research has shown, but nevertheless, they peddle this in the popular culture and that makes parents striking and afraid to basically assert themselves as the authority and and really have any discipline .

with their kids. A lot of the issues you raised real sort of like in terms of resilience, weakening the application of parental responsibility, these are big legs social trends that are going on. How much of the problem do you think goes to therapy versus parenting practices versus you know, we're all just sort of like following the momentum.

So I think it's all essentially bad theri. This is why, because who's in charge, who's running the show? And today, with children, with families, IT really is the mental health experts.

If you doubt that, just think for a moment about the fact that the rising generation never says is shy. They say they have social phobia. They never say they are sad, is that depressed? They never say, gosh, they went through a tough time in middle school.

They say they have ptsd. They're speaking the language of psychopathology to understand themselves. And each other parents are practicing the techniques taken from therapies and psychologists.

Those are the technical they are aping when they talk to their children there. There's nothing natural about the way parents now behave with kids. They get down to eye level.

They constantly solicit their kid's feelings, and they talk in the language. I see you're having some big feelings now. They're they are reading a script and the script to supplied from therapist. And then in the final piece of schools where they are openly their Mandate as trauma informed care across public schools, social emotional learning and parent teachers and councillors, armies of councillors are playing shrink with the kids all day long.

Was talking ing to somebody recently who said, know, the worst thing you can do to which all your old is try to be their best friend. The worst thing you can do to a four year old, just try to parent them. Do you think that we're just trying to be our kid's friends? Or how do you see IT like as a parenting level?

Yes and no. So I think that's a piece of IT for sure. We're trying to be our kids friends, but we're also treating them as adults, right?

What that what that means when you say you're be trying to be your kind friends, you're say first, while you say i'm not the authority here. Great research showing that kids actually do need authority. They need their parents in charge. And if their parents aren't in charge, they go looking for authority elsewhere. Kids really need authority in terms for their mental health, for their stability, for everything, for success in life.

They really need their parents in charge, which doesn't, of course, mean being called in on loving and just means that parents are in charge and they have rules, you said being their friends, it's sort of in some ways it's it's worse than that because, yes, they're being their kids friends, but they're also assuming that the kids are little adults. So for instance, when they played the role of therapist with a child and say, i'm just here to confirm your emotions, remember that the kid is still figuring out which of his emotions make any sense at all, right of toda er will feel rage if you don't give him the you know the the snack he wanted and you have to teach a kid that's not appropriate. You can be, you know, you can be disappointed.

But screaming and even feeling rage, that's not what we feel anger about. We feel anger about lots of things in life. But you can't feel rage and throw your curios across the floor because across the room, because you didn't get this neck you want. And they actually you have to sort of educate their emotions a little bit. You don't do that with adults, right?

You mostly you want to sort of, you know, as a therapies, therapies usually want to create a space where where adults feel comfortable opening up about emotions they might feel embarrassed about, right? But with kids, they're just trying to figure out which of these emotions make any sense. So the last thing we want to do is what we've been doing is a firm, every one of their emotions, no matter how extreme or just regulated, and then talk to them as if we're all just we're all just, you know, feelers here.

We're all just emotional feelers trying to understand each other. That's not actually what kids need. They need an adult in charge.

When you say parental authority, what does that mean specifically?

sure. So i'm using the language that dan obama and used that the a child psychologist, sorry, this is an academic researchers, psychologists of one thousand nine hundred sixties. And SHE was the first one to invent what was now what's now known as parenting styles.

But he didn't really vent IT SHE actually was curious, how were americans raising their kids and what was the result? And he went in with an open mind. And what he found that are roughly, you know, three types, authoritarian called unloving and obedience focused.

This basically doesn't exist in the west anymore. Authority tive, which just means parents are in charge. They set down rules.

Yes, they will punish if kids you know deliberately defy those rules, but they're loving and you know there to listen and care about their kids and even you know sympathy with them. But but the parents are ultimately in charge, and those kids always did the best. And this study has been replicated hundreds of times.

Authority tive parenting produces the best kids in terms of success, emotional, uh, well being and even a sss with mom and that and our parents, whoever the parents may be. And then then the other type which also doesn't exist anymore is permissive parenting. This was the parenting where I was sort of like anything goes, very lazy, fair parenting, that also had not great results.

But what we have today is, I argue a little worse because it's permissive parenting without at least the kids had independence, so they were able develop some confidence and capacity on their own. Today we have surveilLance parenting, parents literally monitoring their kids on their iphones, not trusting their judgment at all in our fearing with you, interested in with every teacher, eventually even interested in with their bosses in the workplace, and constantly running interference with kids, but never having any authority with them. So never saying to a kid avoiding the word no, so, you know, never punishing, never asserting a boundary with a kid in terms of his behavior or her behavior and what you expect from them, but then at the end, but then running interference with them, with all everybody else in their lives.

You mention the terms social, emotional learning. What is that?

So that is a project in schools, has been around for over fifteen years now, and it's across the west. They have various forms of IT a across the west. But the idea was to teach kids emotional regulation and IT specifically as a therapeutic intervention. IT doesn't use moral language, is not about character. It's always puts IT in terms of non judgmental coping techniques, or wellness techniques, or antibes techniques, or empathy education of various sorts.

And the problem with that is that, however intended and practice, IT does everything we would do if we are going to disregard ate children, like constantly asking them to check on their emotions, constantly talking to them about their bad feelings, constantly having them think about a time when they were sad, lonely, left out or disappointed. So IT becomes very much like a sort of group therapy and the other, and they've done these studies now. So we have some indication that that that, that absolutely is print leading to the results because they are actually able to do researchers, and australian, england actually tested this separate groups of researchers.

And they were able to show that the kids in the control group who didn't go through these practices ended up happier, Better adjust to Better in in terms of depression and anxiety and lower depression, lower anxiety and and also less alienated from parents. Because the other bad thing about IT is that teeth up. A criticism of parents because, of course, if you're going to sit around with kids ruminating about a time when they were sad, lonely, left out well, whose job was IT to keep them safe. So criticism of parents is almost inevitable.

I remember my mom never asked me how I felt as a kid or what I wanted, or where we should go for dinner or any of these things, but SHE also looks spanked me and had all these other disciplinary measures. Do you think we progressed in positive ways as parents? Or is that all sort of actually going back to that sort of classic, I would say, seventies and eighties parents is a Better thing for society.

Nobody wants to go back. Let me just say nobody wants to go back. I don't think we could were a lot more as sort of emotionally as a aware as IT works a society. We've decided that it's really important to be in tune with your kids emotionally, and we want that closely with our kids, and we want that affection. And I am not suggesting that we shouldn't have all those things.

The problem is, the question is, what do you want and what do the kids need? You can be as affection as you want, but you cannot give that be the authority in your home, because that turns out to be essential for their mental help. Thinking the people who love me the most are the ones in charge, not the therapist my mom hired, not the pediatrician who's bossing my mom around my mom or dad, or whether the parent is they're in charge.

The people who love me, no, what's best for me that basic idea is something kids need. So however, your style is beyond that, that's up to you, right? If you're a super lovely person, go for whatever. That's not the stuff. There's good research on what's good what there's good research on is then when you have an absence of authority, kids don't do very well.

Do you think this is like the stem c of sort of our generation, I assume, about the same edge I think our kids are are close enough that we can say that um where I used to see this in the workplace as well, where people would follow the protocol and they could never get in trouble following the protocol even if they knew IT LED to a dead end because it's like i'm just doing my job and they sort of like I I see a parallel here for parenting, which is i'm just relying on the experts. I'm just doing like there's no sort of agency of response. You know, it's almost a weird abdication of responsibility in the sense of i'm just following other people .

suggest I get that i'll say this parents are pouring and way more time to their kids than the previous generations. So it's hard for me. I don't personally blame parents, right? They have so little confident right now because we've done because the mental health industry has done everything, a candidate verst them of any sense that they know what ing right?

I mean, in school materials, they cut work for their parents is caregivers. They're telling the kids your parents are just service providers, their caregivers like any other service provider. And then they have trusted adults in the materials.

This is all across america, trusted adult who is a trusted adult. Any adult child can trust IT could be a school councillor. IT could be.

But it's definitely not assumed to be the parents and parents are so delegated in our society. So it's not surprising that they would feel ill equip to handle the kid. And also, we're not giving the kids to healthy his lives.

When you start out the day with an ipad with your kid, he's gonna trouble concentrating in school. That doesn't necessarily mean as a brain problem, we won't know if he has a brain problem unless we make his environment little cleaner, right? By which I mean less chaotic. Kids really do need structure, right? And they definitely don't need to be constantly titillate by things like an ipad, because I will make IT harder for them, have an attention span for school, which is more boring usually than an ipad.

So, you know, first thing we have to do is give kids a healthier environment, which goes from everything from exercise to time in person with extended family, all things kids need people who love them, and they love back over a lifetime that essential for our well being, whether its cousins, neighborhood kids and extended family. So first we have to give them a healthy life, but instead we give them an unhealthy life, and then we pour in mental health resources. And we don't notice you're getting .

worse and worse. How did parents so easily get convinced that were not the authority?

It's a good question. Why did we all buy in? I think you know of the culture shifted over time. So you sort of don't notice the temperature of the waters changing. You know like I i'll give you just one silly example.

But from my kid school, every time there's a national catastrophe or know a school shooting or anything else, I get an email from the kids, my school's guidance department telling me, informing me of the of the good tactics for how to talk to my children about this national event. We just accept that no one's ever asked me, how would you like me to talk to your children about the school shooting? No, they tell me how to talk to my own kids, and nobody bats.

And I now this school mental health staff may not have children. They may have not have raised any of them successfully to adult od. And we certainly never get to see what the product of their great tips are. But nonetheless, they feel totally comfortable marching into my home and telling me how I should be talking to my kids about a national atap ropy IT really is a slip that happened over time.

I mean, I took my son to an urgent care clinic for a bad stomach cake that wasn't going away after got home from summer camp and after we were done and they decided that was just dehydration IT wasn't appen decided as they said, oh, we're going to do our mental health screener. Uh, we asked the parents, leave the room and I got up to leave and I had already written this book and I still got up to leave. And IT was only because I like, what are you doing? Why are you getting up to leave? That I SAT back down and I said, could I please see your mental health screener? And I took a picture of IT with my phone, and I was, I was created by our national institute, mental help.

This is a federal government agency. And they decided, and this is part of the protocol, kids age aten up, they asked the parents to leave, and then they asked the children five escalating questions in alone, in a room with this person, about whether they might want to kill themselves IT. IT is so irresponsible to be doing this with kids.

It's so bananas. But I think we've gradually accepted their greater, greater role in society, by the way, which flies in the face of all kinds of research about suicide and suicide condition, which we have. But they don't seem to be paying any attention to the research, and they're doing things that are the opposite of what you would do if you're paying attention to the research.

What we're almost encouraging IT in a very subtlety and sounds like.

yeah, that's right. I mean the obsession with suicide with children and when I say obsession, I don't mean privately being concerned as adult and and working on this problem, which is real, but telling the kids all the time cure the suicide headlines. We put them around the school in a constantly giving them surveys about suicide.

What you're doing is your telegraphing kids kill themselves, and also it's Normal to kill themselves, to kill yourself. L. S, and also here are techniques you might be tempted to use. All this stuff is in the mental health surveys. It's the opposite of what you would do if you are being responsible about, you know, mental health concerns with with Young kids.

I remember reading about this this study they did A A long time ago. If i'm getting IT right, there is sort of litter in the forest. And they found the spot where people would just leave a little bit of litter. And then they put up a sign saying, no littering, and the amount of litter increased because sort of a reminded people that they could litter. In a way, I don't know that IT was a really weird finding, but what you were saying reminded me of .

that the cdc has great research on this, which is that if you present, if you Normalize suicide de with kids, if you presented as a means of coping with this stress, you know, basically telegraphing this is something other kids are doing.

When they are feel sad, you constantly ask them, how are they feeling and also present the idea that if you're struggling, this is something some kids do if you um make a hero of kids who are going through mental health struggles, right? If you validate ze IT, we know it's valium zed today. And if you're repetitive, if you're repetitive in your mention, then you're going to increase suicide in the population. And that's we're doing in schools.

Do we validate ze other things?

Well, we definitely don't. Various ze grit. We don't valise putting your emotions to one side and getting on with life, deciding that on a tough day you're gonna still come show up for practice on time, do a great job for the team.

We don't variation that anymore, right? We don't various agency making A A turnaround in your life, even though you've been through something hard. And the sad thing is kids can these are all things were born with the ability to overcome adversity.

Instead we tell the is the opposite. Your parents are divorced. You've had trauma. Let's talk about IT.

It's the worst thing we could do for a kid had been through something hard. We should be telling them the opposite. Listen in your family.

Do you know your grandfather went through? Do you know your great grandfather went through? You shouldn't feel bad about that.

You shouldn't so proud, because that's what people in our line have got, have overcome. And you can overcome tough things. Do I know you can .

is this mostly like a canada U S. Problem or is this like a worldwide western? Definitely.

amErica is always the worst of everything and I think canada right along with us seems to be you know for these cultural fads. We're just all in together for a whatever reason. Um but but I do have some indication that it's it's you know not insignificant in europe.

And that is that while I was writing the book trying to put together the psychological research in what IT showed and how what we were doing in schools was actually counterproductive, what I found, literally, after I was done with the book, was that two teams of researchers were looking into the same things with their own schools, with their own coping techniques and social emotional techniques and their own schools. And they we're testing IT. So the fact that they were testing IT with a control group both in the U.

K. And in australia made me realized, oh, this social, emotional learning thing, this feelings focus, this obsessing over kids feelings and and therapy with kids. It's not just an american or north american problem.

And the therapy isn't just with kids. I mean, there's a lot of adults to, I don't know IT like they're continuously in therapy like it's not an I go to therapy, I work on an issue. I solve that issue and I leave. It's like you become my best friend and I go every two weeks for years.

right? I mean there's the interesting research on this is a few things when they found that um people tend to feel urged after they leave A I uh therapies office. So they tend to think the therapy is helping even when objectively when they research check IT isn't.

So sometimes, of course, therapy can be very helpful and very useful and even lifesaving. But very often we feel Better when we leave a therapies office and we never check that IT by objective markers. We may be doing no Better or even worse. So um so our own feeling about IT isn't a good guide. And when they do do these experiments with things like um and and they look into the iata genc effects, meaning when the healer introduces the harm in therapy, there's a whole body of research that shows you people have gone through natural barrie's ment. The loss of a loved one often feel worse after therapy they did these controlled studies, a control group who didn't who lost to everyone who didn't go to therapy, they did Better than the one who went to therapy. Same thing with um in breast cancer survivors anxiety about IT, depression about IT they did worse if they had gone to therapy and also alienation from a spouse, alignment from parents all these are classic I attrition ic effects of therapy and there's a whole body of researches on and the problem I are not saying no one to go to therapy but is very troubling to me that while the researchers are very aware of these risks, the practitioners of there be very often either minimized or deny them and they seem totally unaware that sit in around with someone weekly can encourage rumination or dwelling on bad feelings which of course is the biggest symptom of depression .

how do we tackle this as a parent and you know, let's say, our kid is in therapy now what conversation should we be having with the therapist about how like we're sort of pushed to the outside of that, right? Like what happens in this room is none of your concern, but this kid is your responsibility.

And so like what conversations are wondering, practically speaking, in parents have with their therapies, bit like, okay, how longer are we going to be here? What are we working on? What is she's very talking about? Like how are we solving this specific problem so that we can get out? Is that a fair conversation to have with a therapies .

is an essential conversation to have? Here's the thing, when you drop your kid off to therapy, very often able undermine your authority with your kids, because now you have someone who is an adult who seems to be above the parent, who sits around with the child, basically judging your interactions with the kid.

And very often kids will leave with the sense of cash that was you know my mother was emotionally abusive or that was wrong of my mother to say or whatever. That's a very common side of effect of therapy. Now um by the way, with adults, adults can handle that.

Adults can brush things off. But but a kid doesn't have a context for evaluating. Was that abusive of my father? D, L, at me is IT abuse when a father yells at a kid, look a kitchen.

Be there, be, unless they have a real need, first of all. So if they have a real need, then the therapy should focus on that need, whatever the problem is. And IT should be confined to that.

If they have phobia right, then there be should be confined to getting them as that phobia, so they can function in life, not to create this perma hand holder who also interferes with the parent child relationship for your kid and passes judgment on the job mom and dad are doing or you know, dad and that however, their family arrangement, right, that's not helpful situation. And here's what I want parents to know. okay.

And i'm not speaking to if your child's aneroid ic bug for god, say, get them help. I am not proposing therapy for all kinds of things that a child may have need for. What what I want parents to know is dropping off their Katherine, that's not neutral.

And what you want to do, of course, is to get your kid out the door eventually, not to create a permanent situation where this person is constantly overseeing your parenting and making the child feel. And this is either either demoralized, convincing the child that they have a diagnosis, a brain problem, that they'll never get passed because they're rehearsin IT once a week, right, or a bad incident, they're rehearsin once a week. And now it's it's gone from a middle school crush to a giant trauma in their lives that they think they have P, T, S, D.

from. These are all really common sight effects, but I want you to know, or something else, to, if a child brings his or her problem to an ant, to an uncle, to a grandmother, at some point that person will say, or even to a friend. Okay, we've talked about this enough.

Go play. A therapies will never say that to a child. Now there are therapists who really good, who will who will say, we're here for ten sessions.

We're going to work on this phobia. We're going to get your kid passed IT. And let's measure, let's actually track that the anxiety is getting Better.

But I talk to kids who had been in therapy since age six because their parents divorced. There was no need, there was nothing wrong with the child, except the parents divorce. So they figured, oh, well, then I have to take my get into therapy. This girl, this one human woman I profile on the book was now seventeen, and you and I asked her what you.

Was working on SHE had been in therapy and he was six called her back up in the book and I said, what are you working with your therapy on now? He said, I am leaving for college in the fall, and right now we're working on getting me ready to make friends in college. That is a classic effect of therapy is is called treatment dependency, where you don't feel like you can make a move as an adult, things we all learned how to do without checking in with an another adult or expert or your therapy. So we're really undermining kids agency by sticking them in in a kind therapy or kind of emotions check in situation for their whole lives.

So we do that as parents to, like we have the best intentions, right? So we get divorce somewhere like, oh, I want to provide the best environment I can for my kid. So i'm gonna see and act.

I'm going to get them to see a therapist. And then IT sort of spirals and and like, maybe keeps going beyond and maybe that temperatures sort of rises slowly. But how do we get out of that thinking that like, oh, no, you know there's no obvious sign my kids is that like we're trying to be a marder in somewhere as a parent or you. We're trying to create the situation where we I don't know i'm struggling with this.

but I think you know what I mean, yeah I know I do. I think that we have believe that, that is the protocol. You always take your kid in therapy. There is such thing as preventive mental health, by the way, there isn't right. We can deal with actual problems, but preventatives ly, we've never been good.

There's no good study showing preventive mental health works unless you're talking about things like a good life, like connection, doing things for others, getting involved in community, dancing, you know, exercising, eating right. Those are great, great having relationships in person, relationships we we know all that good for you, right? But but a preventive mental health, sitting with a therapist and talking through your parents divorce, I don't think there are is good in studies showing that, that is necessarily good for kids.

And there are a lot of risks and owe me an example in adults said to me recently, friend of mine said to me recently, SHE said, you know, I wasn't where I was going to agree with your book, but when my parents divorce, they stuck me in therapy just automatically and I didn't want to talk to my, to this stranger, about how I was feeling. I was really sad, and this person was a stranger. I wanted my mom.

I was angry, but I didn't want to talk to the stranger. And I just thought, but she's like, but they made me, and I had to go once a weekend. I was awful.

And I just thought what I was a healthy, Normal reaction. I'm sure he was shamed. That sounds like he was shamed. No, of course you have to talk to with there be, why don't you want a doctor? her.

But at what is the most natural thing in the world, I don't want to to share with my stranger about my home breaking up. I want to talk to my parents or someone who really loves me. And yet today, kids are made to feel terrible, right? That's so unsophisticated. And so IT puts the therapies in the situation. Now they've got a kid who doesn't really want to be there, and now they pander to the kid.

How do you pander to the kid by affirming or agreeing with everything? The child comes up with the kids not ready to do the hard work of therapy most of the time, if unless they're dealing with a serious problem like anorexic, a or severe CD is interface with our life. And now they need the help, right? They can't get on with our life.

They afraid to leave their house, or they have some severe fob a whatever. But sitting around talking about why i'm sad, it's not even clear very often what the goal is make you less sad you know it'll make you less sad community getting involved in projects with others yeah sometimes not thinking about why you're sad. Building new relationships, real and personal relation in personal relationships, not online. Spending time with extended family. So I think the project of sticking kids who don't have a real problem and therapy, it's got a lot of risk.

And adults too old mad yeah.

But adults are different .

because we can sort of recognize easier. I mean, with kids they're so easily um I wouldn't I don't want to say they are easily influenced that.

Yes, of course and adult can say, listen, i've been on this anti depression for three years. I have no sex drive. I hate IT. I'm ready to tape off.

IT can you help me taper? Yeah, kid can't say that they might not even know what they're missing when IT comes to sex drive. You put a kid early enough on anti depressants.

They don't know what a sex drive is for or why they might miss one, right? So you get in and start deleting their natural resources for coping with things. You offer them in some giant way while they're just trying to adjust to life.

I mean, how many adults do you know, say, yeah, I probably had A D H D as a kid, but, you know, nobody diagnosed me. And now I am this incredibly successful at a lot, right? I mean, I know so many adults in that situation, and they often say, I wish I had gotten a diagnosis medication, but they turned out pretty great, left to their own devices.

Now, of course, i'm not saying that that's true of every child. There maybe kids who need the stimulant, but stimulants are profound, and they are given out way, way too readily without first seeing if we can adjust, make adjustments in the child's environment to help them. You handle their distracted ability.

You mention preventative mental health. I do think we can like not prevent, but we can position ourselves to handle things through resilience, through overcoming adversity, through I mean, isn't that preventative mental health in a way where you're not preventing a specific thing, but you're sort of like I want to put you in a position where you can overcome whatever the world throws at you and it's not going to beat you down and you can get through IT.

yes. And you know who won't give that to you mental health experts, because then there's nothing to come back for. You can join a church group and get that.

You can join a boling leak and all of us, you're happier or a dance class, right? You can search a regularly exercise and you will see mood improve. Now i'm not talking about people suffering with major depressive.

Just what I want to say that again, there are people who absolutely need an intervention and they should get IT. But i'm talking about the average bombed out person and certainly the bombed out kid, the number of things we can do in our life to set ourselves up for a good life. Now is that prevent of mental health care?

No, it's called good living. And IT doesn't require therapeutic expert who's gonna undermine the parents authority with their kids and make the kids because IT makes a kid feel like, oh my, my problems are too big for my parents to handle. So they needed to call in this other person who sort of more expert than they are.

That's not a not a not nothing to introduce. That's that's a risk. It's messing with the parent child relationship, messing with the child's confidence that the parents know what they're doing, right?

So if you have to introduce that, fine, by all means. The child suffering, bringing the the therapy. You know, that is just a question.

What kind of thiery y and who who you should trust but a child who doesn't need IT. There's a lot of things you can do to give them a good life. But but sitting around and talking about their feelings with a therapy weekly, i'm not sure is the way to get there.

That's so interesting. I mean, I was on the the tire is podcast. And the most controversial part of that segment was that I chose to send my kids to a school that I I sort of over generalized but doesn't really care how they feel about their homework.

Or you know, if you come and you didn't, dear homework to give you a zero, I mean, my oldest one of his memories from great seven was one kid didn't do his homer because he didn't feel like IT. And the teacher drew a big zero on this page and cross IT out and then told the whole class that your homework doesn't care how you feel a bit IT needs to be done. And I got so much flag for the segment on the show, but i'm sort of like, well, you know, we need to be tough on kids and kids can overcome a lot of this stuff. We just think there's so fragile and so .

we're making them fragile. Listen, a kid who gets zero because they didn't feel like doing their homework. You know what the kid learns IT could be embarrassing IT seems the kids behavior.

But you know what else the kids learn, learned. I matter when I don't do. When what i'm supposed to do, someone notices.

I'm part of this community and part of this class. And my teacher, I, he maybe upset with, disappointed that I didn't do the work, but he cares. He notices IT matters that I have a role to play.

And when I do my homework tonight, he's gonna notice that too, or she's gna notice that too. So yes, holding kids to high standards, high expectations gives them a sense. IT honors them with the sense that they have capacity, they have capability. Obviously, if you disappoint, if if you are giving a kid zero, what your saying is you could have done this home work. I know you could have done that because I believe in you was going to say.

when I taught her friends who send their kids to private school, they always say the biggest difference between private and public. They never mention class size first. They mention the expectations the teachers have. The kids are higher.

Expectations are one of the greatest things you can give kids because it's a way of saying, I have faith in you. You can do great things and wants to introduce the diagnosis and the pill. What you're saying is, okay, you can totally do IT on your own.

You, you need intervention. You have a brain problem. And that will lead a kid to feel like I can't do IT on my own.

Now again, if a child absolutely requires IT, then they require IT. They need that. They need the extra help.

Uh, but if they don't, you don't want to get, you don't want to introduce that message with a kid. Okay, being told, listen, you were lazy last night. You didn't do your homework.

You were irresponsible. You didn't do what you're supposed to do. A kid can make a decision.

I'm not gonna do that anymore. But if you tell them they have a brain problem, no, you have A D, H, D. We're going to change all of your requirements. Now what you're saying is you can't.

One of my close friends is a third pest. SHE wanted to ask your opinion on something which was SHE said, terrible therapies due terrible work, which leads to terrible results. Just like anybody in any profession, the terrible people in that profession due terrible work get her about results. Do you think that grad schools are partly to blame because they've graduated ideologues instead of free thinkers who have hearts and souls?

So yes, things have gotten a lot more politicize, a lot more woke in the world of of therapy. There's no question. But I think there's a bigger problem.

And the bigger problem is we're overtreating the population with therapy. I'm not talking about bad therapists. I'm talking about too much therapy. Okay, sitting around with a child once a week, talking about their pains, talking about their struggles is an unhelpful intervention.

If a child doesn't need IT and I don't care how well intention that therapy is, you know that you are not doing them a good service. You you ought to know that. And the reason is, as they've measure things, you know what Better for for for mood for mild to moderate depression than psychotherapy? Orm, anti depression.

dancing. Yeah, exercise. dancing. Anything you could literally, instead of asking kids in school constantly how they're feeling, you could do anything with them, have them painted the gym, have them pick up trash, have them build a structure together, you could literally have them dance.

They could do almost anything. And IT would be Better than sitting around talking about their feelings because, guess what, teenagers have a lot of bad feelings. They do news flash, if you're going to sit around once a week and say, come talk to me about your feelings, why we're they're going to fill up that session and they're onna live with wow. I do have a lot of bad things to feel sad about. You don't do that unless a kid needs IT absolutely requires IT there is too much treatment of the population.

What role do you think technology and social media play and the mental health chAllenges faced by today's kids? And how, conversely, do you think parents and even therapies who are listening to this can help a trust? These issues?

sure. So I think that social media absolutely played a big role, has been an accelerant for all kinds of determination, mental health. It's encouraged people in the idea that they have a diagnosis and spread social contagion, mental health diagnoses.

So so things like gender is for, I wrote my last book about on social media, absolutely played a big role. But I don't think it's the whole story. And the reason I don't think it's the whole story is a few reasons.

But but for instance, just give you one statistics. In twenty sixteen, the cdc came out with a report that one in six american children between the ages of two and eight had a mental health or behavioral diagnosis. One in six american kids in two thousand sixteen, they were not on social media.

They're not on social media today between the ages of two and a, but they definitely warned back in twenty sixteen. It's not just about the phones and I think the phones are bad, but it's not just about the funds. It's about the lives were giving them.

And the content, constant therapy, the culture, the constant sense of their feelings are all important. They are terrified by their own feelings, and they are turned zing each other when they should be learning to put their feelings to one side and get on with life. And you know what turns out their feelings will get Better. You know they will be more manageable if you hold their conduct to high expectations. If you tell them so what you were cut from the basketball team, let's work harder next time or try a different sport, you let them fail a little bit.

Yeah, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school baseball team.

Here you go.

Do you think schools are incentivized to encourage this? Because and i'm onna walk through this as I think out loud here, but IT strikes me that schools get more resources as kids get diagnosed and need exceptions or accommodations. So there's almost like this hidden incentive.

Schools have to sort of nudge parents to get kids, oh no, your sons, daughters, uh, a problem in the classroom. And therefore you should go get them tested. And when they get tested, they come back with, like I thinking, canada, we call them I E P S.

Individual education plans. Oh, they really, you know, your son, daughter really sucks at writing. So what we're going to do is we're going to pull them out of class and they don't have to write now. They can just talk into a microphone and that's how we're going to accommodate them. But that requires more resources for the school so they get funded Better from sort of whoever funding them.

And you also, conversely, not only are you incentivize to do this and treat every every child sort of like there are special snowflake, but you're also not addressing the problem because now you're you've taken an issue. Maybe now they're the thirty eight percent to all for writing and you've said we're not going to work on your writing anymore. You don't have to do that. You can do this accommodation. And so you're not gonna a get Better at IT because you're not actually practicing IT, right?

It's a huge problem. There is a major conflict of interest with schools getting involved in mental help. Huge conflict of interests should never have been allowed really, except in the cases where you have a kid who's so struggling, they need someone to go to and talk to.

And that may be that's not what we've got, is a huge conflict of interest. They are incentivised to keep the kids bolted to the seats. That's the incentive.

And any kid who's bored, maybe because the teacher isn't good or maybe because they're not, do you know they're not good at controlling the class or whatever that's the person were referring you for a pal that should never have been allowed IT only because the conflict of interest that can be as wonderful as you want. There's a built in conflict of interest justice. You said the kid.

Schools want more mental, healthy resources. They want more resources. They are implementing these surveys to show how bad kids are struggling, and the surveys themselves are distressing.

They are asking kids all kinds of questions about suicide and neglect and things that might be going on the home home and and then they're using the service to justify getting more resources. They should never ever have been allowed, by the way, cool counsellor who plays, who engages in therapy with a kid. And they are allowed to do IT.

They're giving council's sessions to the kids right now. That shouldn't be allowed. why? Because there a dull ensure.

That is an ethical prohibition, every other form of therapy has, which means that if you're a therapies, you're not allowed to give therapy to your own child, to your neighbor's kid, to your, you know, anyone else. You have a person another relationship with. why?

Because of the potential for abuse. A councillor knows all of a child's friends, all of their teachers, and what do they do? The second kid is struggling. They go and they use the one tool. They have accommodation and they get the kid excuse from from hard things.

So just as you said, they'll never learn to set through an exam in Normal time because that's the only tool to school counsellor has this is a terrible conflict of interest. Really IT shouldn't be allowed. And i'm not i'm not, you know, suggestion anything about the motives of of school councils as they can be wonderful, but the conflict of interest is bad.

What role of any to covet play? Was that another accelleration? Or did IT sort of like change our perception of mental health? I know a lot of my a lot of people I know started going to therapy during coffee, and they're still in therapy.

The lockdowns were very hard on kids as parents knew they would be. Parents protested to keep the schools open, who didn't protest mental health organizations. They had nothing to say.

As the schools handed added into a second year of lockdowns, parents knew this was going to be bad. And I was, I was very bad that we had kids in isolation because they need those connections. And now mental health experts present themselves as the solution.

And look, if a child developed some severe problem, then they may need that solution. But in general, do I think they can be trusted? No, not. Is the solution to a problem that was obvious and foreseeable that they said nothing about the school count in america.

I can tell the school counsellors association, school psychologist association, none of these organizations had anything to say about the forseeable damage that that was gonna happen to kids. Now, maybe they just didn't know, maybe they were afraid to speak up. But in any case, the idea that there are now the solution to the struggles we're seeing, I don't think in general, there are the solution.

What would you do like if if you're sort of could weave a magic wand and redesign the mental health system, how how would you approach IT and you? So both the mental health system and sort of like child dream, like how do we get back to a baseline now of, let's say, Normal, whatever Normal is? But like how do we come back from this? Because IT strikes me that is really, really hard to even slowly walk back from this once it's got moana and it's in place.

And I think we can change this because it's very bad. And the the the results of all of their work, all the mindfulness techniques for kids regulation is a disaster. They failed.

So I think we can really easy, you know, what the mental health professionals should be doing when IT comes to kids or Young people dealing with the sick. We have so many kids and desperate need of help. We have schizophrenics all over our streets.

The need is enormous. But they would rather treat the well because is easier and and and come up with these techniques with no proven effective y for just bolstering your sense of well being. okay.

Now let me just say again, if an adult wants to do that and get something out of IT, by all means they should, right? And adult can do any number of things that they decide are good for. There's what makes them happy or feeling in controller, whatever else they want.

The problem is with a kid, you're really messing with a lot when you stick in in therapy or you treat him as unwell because he's likely to believe that he's likely to believe that he has ptsd because he was treat, because he was bully teas a little bit in middle school, really bullied tests made fun of the most Normal experience in human life. And by the way, kids who are told that a big deal, boy, the end for disappointment, because the number of times you are going to get insulted or have your feelings hard in life. Wow, a lot.

If you lead a good life, you are going to be criticized. You are going to have your feelings her over and over and over. You have to be able to handle IT. You have to if you're going to be a strong at productive at all.

Yeah, I is funny image that my Youngest had his feeling certain in class and sort of get shamed for something. He he got a four score and you know one of his colleague or student friends like call IT out to the class and was like, look, hello, that is, you know he calls me and he's crying and i'm like, oh yeah, like this is going to happen all for your life and we ll deal with IT.

You're strong enough to get through this and then he got home at night. We just pulled up some of my youtube videos. I was like.

illustrate some of the comments exactly, exactly.

And so I put that out, things that people are saying about me. And he's like, why would people say those things about you? And I was like, nobody who does anything in the arena, nobody who's struggling is doing that, right?

Like you don't see elan must jumping on my youtube video saying, you know, this guys in network, no, they never comment like that Stevey. So I thought that was really interesting and he's like, huh and I was like, anybody in the arena trying, you know, they might not say anything despite what they think, but they're not going to try to pull you down. The people who pull you down are you get to ignore those people.

Like if I listen to all these people, like, i'd stop doing what I do for a living. And like, that doesn't make sense because I wanted do that. So like.

you just actually you, yeah, yeah. We used to say this. We used to say sticks and stones may break my bones.

No one heard of that. Heard that in a generation, right? You never hear sticks and stones. Instead, the mom, mom, dad calls the school or calls the other parent and says, your child was bullied. My child, well, god, you're setting them up for a bad life.

Because let me tell you, as you just said, boyer, we criticize a lot in life as adults by a boss, by whatever and one things that boss say. I can't give any constructive feedback to the rising generation. I can't stand them as employees because I try to give them constructive feedback and they won't accept IT.

They go to pieces. They think it's inappropriate and i'm trying to help them be Better workers and more successful. It's it's the opposite of what kids need.

They need to be told. So what? Now I just add one caveat. We were absolutely we evolved to handle have been made fun of by our group, by our class, by whatever.

But I don't think we were we evolved to be humiliated in front of a million people on social media. So I don't think social media is a way to tough in kids up. Is an effective or Normal way to tough in kids up.

If you get dumped, if you get cut from the baseball team, and you have to go through that humilation in front of your classmates, you will learn something. You will learn something. You will, you will say, I survive that.

I'm fine. I went on and did the other thing. I met someone who I liked more or whatever IT is but humiliation on on social media at that scale that in personal context, I don't think IT builds the the same natural resources for resilience .

speaking of social media and sort of that culture, I mean, the the public campaign culture to cancel you was pretty huge. What was that like? How did you deal with that did not .

effective at all? Oh yeah, me, look at a few things. So was IT fun. No, but I was right. I wrote a book about a transgender, you know a sudden Spike in transgender identification among team girls. I thought IT was socially driven phenomenon.

I thought these kids were going through reckless medical protocols that really shouldn't be allowed because or should have given had more supervision, more oversight, you know um and um the risks weren't being explained to parents and all that was right. So am I always on some people's blacklist? Yeah, i'm on literal blacklist.

But what was the hardest? The hardest part was explaining IT to my kids and anything that affected our family that's always going to be the hardest part is like trying to explain to them. I know that this person treated us badly, but I didn't do anything wrong.

okay? I know that usually people treat you coldly when you're a bad person, but that's not the case here. I didn't do anything wrong.

So explaining that to my kids was hard because some people took some things out on my kids that was a hard as part and and look, I can't say i'm like a favorite of the prestige media because they're never sort never forgive me, uh, even though they now run articles saying exactly what I said somehow will never forgive me, perhaps pointed that out without their permission or auspices or whatever. But that's just stuff I have to deal with. Meaning, like, I made a decision, I made a choice freely.

I was gonna ite this book, and I knew there would be blow back, or there could be blow back. And those, those are mistakes. I think, you know, i'm proud of what I did.

I felt, I feel like I was the right thing to do. I stand by everything in the book. I none of it's been, you know, every every word of IT is true.

So no, I feel good at about IT at the end of the day and and look exactly what you said to your son there. I mean, my kids know that. I mean, i've been called every possible name, right?

And I hope that they know that, you know, look, they've been called names at school, you know, just like every kid is. And I just hope they know that we we survive these things. We get past them and you just keep going. That's the answer. Just keep going.

As a journalist, what do you see happening in media right now? You mention that they weren't running stories about this. Now they are. Look, how do you look at media from the outside, but from the inside as well?

Oh, I think there's a lot of really good developments in media. There's lot of you know 啊 people who are act acting outside of the prestige media。 I mean, I think look at the prestige media in amErica certainly is falling apart in a lot of ways.

Know some of the media outlets are still very well funded and they seem to be they seem to be doing fine in a certain sense. But but there there it's weird. It's like, you know they have this sort of Petered an village they've set up that doesn't actually reflect what's going on in the country because they decided that their mission wasn't going to be about truth.

That was going to be about something else, you know. So I think in general, they have they have a lot of become sort of A P R project rather than a truth or again, and that's that's dangerous. And I think that there you I think that their prestige has been damaged by IT and certainly their reliability, the trust people have in them.

And I think that in many ways, a good thing, they don't deserve people's trust for all the things they didn't report or covered IT up or whatever. Now that said, we're seeing a lot of conspiracy theory and that's bad. And I think that when you can't trust the mainstream media to report on stories actively, accurately, rather you, you end up with a lot of conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theory is very bad development. IT leads people in the all kinds of bad places, including scape coding. And I so I know, I wish that they would get back to the project of reporting news and reporting things accurately, whatever the chips may for all I I don't see that happening for for most of the a mainstream media.

Do you think it'll take sort of a crisis for that to come back?

It's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. Some of them may just need to fail.

Do you think it'll take a crisis for us to sort of tackle collectively the mental health culture that .

I think we can fix tomorrow? It's very easy, doesn't require any money.

You think we will fix IT.

Why don't know? I hope some people, well, I hope that I think that you know IT depends how many people are aware that overtreating kids with therapy and feelings, focus and rumination is all very negative and that therapies have really bad incentives here when they're treating the well, it's not their fought.

A lot of most of them are well meaning, but they set themselves up as the overseas of a child's life and the very fact of their existence in the child's life introducers risk. So in less than are necessary, we got to get them out of kids lives. We need to go back to focusing kids outward on things they are doing in the world, things that make you feel good, actually like community, you know like like advocacy, feeling capable um again in the world, not feeling like they need to run to an adult to handle every problem. So I think there's a very, very fixie and I certainly hope he doesn't take any money is just a requires subtraction. So I really hope we get on this.

What can parents do like as they are listening to this, if they're still listening, what small steps can they take to sort of start to go back to, uh, baseline, if you will, or or back to building more resolute kids? That's probably a Better way to work .

that I think they need to first to all give their kids chores. They need to give their kids more independence and more chores and more things to do so that they feel that they matter in the world, that the family they are benefiting the family. We expect two, two.

And we're happy when you do, and we're proud of you. Look what you just did for the family, for someone besides you. And by the way, that makes kids feel good.

But that also means we need to control our own anxiety. Let them do things that are a little bit risky, like sharp knives or cooking dinner or whatever IT is. Get them involved, get them walk going around the neighborhood, them doing things where they have to figure themselves out a little bit and to navigate other people like strangers.

So all that subs really good. But we also need we need to have Frank conversations. You know what? Sitting around and talking about your feelings all the time. Don't worry about your feelings all the time. You know, if you have a problem, if you're really sad, like when your son called you, that's different.

His feelings had been hurted didn't know what to do and you gave him great device, but constantly checking on their feelings when they don't when their feelings, there's no indication that there's been any problem, which is what we're doing now preventatives ly, that's. disaster. And you know what? Telling a kid you're fine, check IT off or you'll live or i'll be fine what that tries, right? The actual big problems that they can't resolve on their own from the ones that they're like, hey, I can.

I am fine, and we need to at least give them a shot at realizing that a certain amount of teasing is something they can overcome. I remember I asked me out of me for sharing the story, but my best friend went through a hard time in high school, and I remember I, her, her mom, like her friend group, totally cut her. And I remember this, god, we all remember that, like, I remember being cut by friends in high school, and I was so upsetting.

Know your best of son. She's not at you and won't speak to you and it's devastating in high schools. Really IT hurts. And I remember that a bunch of girls had decided they were mated, her and her mother, who is immigrant to this country, he said there's a party and he didn't. My friend didn't want to go to IT.

SHE was, you know, in high school, he was afraid to go the party, and mother said to her, you need to go to that party and you need to wear red. And I just kind of thought that encapsulated them. A great message for kids, right? Like that is the message that that we should be giving them.

You're gonna be fine, you don't need to cover. You're gonna show up at that party and you're not going to be embarrassed and at the end of the night will have a laugh about how at all wet. But you're gonna sit at home and we're not gonna rush you off to a thera because girls you know made you feel left out because you're going to keep doing that. We're going to do at the workplace.

You've got to be able to deal with this. How do we talk to our kids about the difference? If we start doing this at home, right? We start, uh, building more agency, building more responsibility, and we're doing our best as parents.

How do we talk to the kids who are going to a school? And getting may be a different message, but these things were they are may be encouraged to talk about their feelings and they are sort of uh, do understand them saying, like where we have two different environments for the kids, how do we have that conversation with them? Because we don't control what happens in the school even if we control what happens in our house.

right? So parents asked me that all the time, they always say I don't want to undercut the school. The school is doing this project.

And I feel, I feel uncomfortable criticising to school. I've interviewed a lot of teachers. You know what they've never said to me, I really don't want to undercut the messages at home. So what I would say to parents, feel free to tell kids what you think about everything, including I had one mom tell me after SHE read my book SHE was gonna her kids fill out the mental health survey and just fill IT out at random.

Don't read IT why? Because he doesn't her kids sitting there hearing about the um you know cutting, choking, all the burning, all the method you might choose to cell ARM SHE was telling her, kid, that's not good for you and I know what's best and I think parents have every right to say that to their kids and in some cases, given how much they've been undermined by the schools, you know with the with the gender, you know the transgender identification thing and the actively deceiving parents, the amount we've been undermined, I know, I tell my kids, you know what IT makes Normal people sad to sit around and think about their feelings. Don't pay attention in asia.

If you have to see through IT. Be respectful, you polite. But I just want you to know, I regarded a lot of nonsense. Literally anything you could be doing would be Better figure mental health than sitting around in doing these exercises.

Also, I have to tell my kids, mental health is not something you work on, is something happens while you're living a good life. So we don't talk about mental health, okay? We talk about what good you could be doing in the world, what you wanted.

Get IT out there and try, you know, what friend you, anna, make, what the activity we should do. We don't sit around talking about mental health. That's what happens when you're leading a good life.

I talk to a lot of teachers thera before our interview and IT seems like there's like a silent majority who agree with you. And yet we're here. Why are they silent?

It's crazy, isn't IT I have to tell you a shock to me. The response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive and I was expecting tremendous backlash. But the my inbox is filled with mental health professionals who say, I have been seeing this for, you know, decades now.

I was hoping someone would write this book, and that's what journalists exist for, right? Because nobody wants to criticize their colleagues or what their whole profession is doing. They don't generally want to do that.

But a journalist can interview researchers and put the story together. And they are just judge based on their journalism. They are not then treated badly by their colleagues. So um yeah the response to the book has been surprisingly and overwhelmingly positive even even by mental health professionals and happy .

to that's confusing to me a as an adult though, who sends his kids to school if the vast majority of teachers agree with us and that takes an outside journalists to change things or bring attention to IT. There's a problem there. And these people are responsible for educating my children, right? And yet they're feeling helpless. They're feeling like they can do anything on the inside.

They are helpless. Here's why, because the psych staff s are like the dei staff s of an organic of a corporation. That's what the psychopath s now is at.

At school they effectively run the schools. They pass judgment on everything. They control what what a teacher can assign, what what kind of test a teacher can assign and to what child.

They're in effectively running the show. They've been put in charge of the schools, just like I the dei groups have been put in charge of corporations. They're effectively running and intimidating everyone.

That's exactly what the sight staff are doing. The teachers who are there to teach are miserable. They do not like this.

The sight staff s telling them what they can assign and when or when a child needs in any time pass, because his mental healthy requires them to be able to walk around the school in the middle of class. Guess what? Councils will tell you that these kids use those passes in the middle of their least favorite class.

What's in any time pass? I don't.

No, sorry. That's what they sometimes call them. It's a mental health pass that allows you to walk, take a walk around the school when you're feeling too much stress.

And surprisingly, unsurprisingly, the kids abuse them, right? And like as anyone would, but the mental health staff s will very often insist upon them. So you see that that the teachers are intimidated for good reason. Goods who councillors who think there this this is, you know, not what they signed on for, are upset.

What happens with these kids, like, let's say, everything continues. We've probably seen, you know, they graduate maybe their parents interview network, but that doesn't continue forever.

Does IT like you don't have a forty year old whose mothers calling their boss at work? Like is, are we just still laying sort of becoming an adult? Is, is that what we're doing here? Or we sort of preventing becoming an adult? And you have this learned help.

we're preventing them from becoming adults. It's worse. And here's why, because the child who believes they're unwell and incapable will not fill up to supporting others.

And supporting others, being there for others is what adult hod is. It's saying that I tell the world I am strong. You can depend on me to hold on a job.

I am strong, I can raise a family. I can be responsible for other in the society. That's what adult is.

And what we're doing is we're training kids like mental patients and because they feel in firm, right? They don't feel up to adult od, so they don't want to get their driver's license driving a scary. They don't want to take the risks that a robust st.

Teenager would take. They are afraid of them. And we need to go back. We need to undo this, and we need to show them they can. We have high expectations for them, and they should.

They should absolutely take on the next generation the mental of all the responsibility for all the hard work in front of us as a society. We're counting on them and we are we're depending on them, whether we like IT or not. So we really shall tell them, hey, we got a lot of chAllenges. Lets get to work. Let's see what we can do, what you'll be able to do to help us going forward as a civilization, as a society, as a community.

I love that optimistic note to the ending and a final question um we Normally ask what is success for you, but I want to ask you a slightly different version of this which is what is being a successful parent mean what is a successful parent?

A successful parent is someone who's raised a good child to adult t to good adult a someone who has raised a productive citizen who, by the way, has your values passing on your values to your kid. If they are a strong person with your values, you've done a great job, which basically means, do they value work? Are they be reliable? Do they show up for others? Do they want to? And I think they should want to form a family.

Our society depends on IT, and we should incorporate that in kids. So all these things, whether they want to, you know, be there for others, be strong for others and be reliable to others, build community, build family, build all those things that our societies depending on. No, that doesn't mean that every single person needs to get married.

They may choose not to, and that's fine. But in the mean, we want people to want those things. We want people to want to be someone others can rely on in a permanent and serious way.

No, I he's been he has worked with me. He's been my partner for in this job for twenty years. We want kids to feel like they can do that.

And if they have raised a citizen who can do that, who does that, who is relied upon? Gosh, that parents done a great job. And those are the people. Those are in my book. Those are the only parenting experts, the one you've actually done a good job of IT.

It's a beautiful way to end this provocative conversation. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Good luck with everything. shame.

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