Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY ｜ The Dangers of Gentle Parenting, SEL & Empathy ｜ Guest： Abigail Shrier

00:00:00.920 Gentle parenting, empathy, therapy, all the things we're told are good for kids are actually

00:00:08.640 very harmful.

00:00:10.040 That's what today's guest argues.

00:00:12.740 Author Abigail Schreier is here today to break it all down for us as we are talking about

00:00:17.640 her book, Bad Therapy, Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up.

00:00:20.800 Guys, this is an amazing conversation that you need to share with every single parent

00:00:26.500 in your life.

00:00:27.280 Oh my goodness, I learned so much.

00:00:30.000 This episode, this conversation with Abigail Schreier is brought to you by our friends

00:00:34.440 at Good Ranchers.

00:00:35.460 Go to goodranchers.com, use code ALI at checkout.

00:00:38.140 That's goodranchers.com, code ALI.

00:00:50.020 Abigail, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:00:54.000 All right, you've got another amazing book that's out after Irreversible Damage.

00:00:59.160 This one is called Bad Therapy.

00:01:01.580 So just set us up.

00:01:02.800 Tell us why you went down this road and decided to write it.

00:01:06.800 Sure.

00:01:07.420 So first of all, thank you so much for having me on, Ali.

00:01:10.060 I really love your show and I really appreciate the invitation.

00:01:12.960 So I'm raising three kids in the rising generation and what I wanted to know was, why did the rising

00:01:21.180 generation seem to be suffering so much?

00:01:23.700 They seem to be in genuine distress, genuinely fearful, genuinely full of worry and anxiety,

00:01:30.780 and genuinely a little depressed, sad.

00:01:34.800 And they hadn't obviously lived through anything that hard until the pandemic.

00:01:39.140 They really hadn't lived through, you know, anything hard at all as a group, as a generation.

00:01:45.240 And the other strange thing was they received the most mental health treatment, the most coping

00:01:53.440 techniques, the most mindfulness, the most therapeutic intervention, the most diagnosis,

00:01:58.980 the most psych meds of any generation.

00:02:01.240 So they really should have been the picture of mental health, wellness.

00:02:05.200 Instead, they were the picture of suffering.

00:02:07.720 So I really wanted to know why.

00:02:09.580 And the other thing I wanted to know is why they have no interest in growing up.

00:02:13.100 Why did they, you know, 18 to 25 year olds and numbers we've never seen want to live with their parents? 0.76

00:02:19.000 Why did they not want to get driver's license, you know, even more than millennials?

00:02:22.960 Why did they not want to be parents or to get married?

00:02:27.360 So that's what started me down this path.

00:02:30.300 Yeah, that's what made you curious about this.

00:02:32.660 And did your last book, Irreversible Damage, where you talked about this kind of phenomenon

00:02:37.600 of particularly young girls, quote unquote, transitioning into boys, did that book and

00:02:43.800 the backlash it received from you had, you know, libraries, institutions saying, oh, this

00:02:48.880 book, your book will cause suicide and so-called trans youth. 0.88

00:02:53.220 Did that kind of have an effect on your desire to start looking into the therapy world?

00:03:02.480 Well, remember that in almost every case where a girl goes down this path, that the parents

00:03:10.420 who called me, they already had a therapist for the girl. 1.00

00:03:13.200 In fact, the therapist played a big role in the child's, you know, or teenager's revelation that

00:03:21.540 she was trans, either a therapist the family had hired or the school counselor invariably played a 0.99

00:03:26.860 very large role.

00:03:27.900 So I knew therapists were making terrible mischief with the kids.

00:03:31.040 And what I want parents to know is it wasn't a gender therapist.

00:03:34.080 It wasn't even necessarily an activist therapist.

00:03:36.180 It was just a therapist that parents very often hired to deal with the girl's anxiety or

00:03:40.980 depression, who when they were done, you know, talking about her, you know, emotional trauma

00:03:47.780 or whatever, you know, of she felt like she had gone through in adolescence, they would

00:03:52.660 say in loud, let's talk about gender. 1.00

00:03:54.500 How are you feeling about your gender?

00:03:55.900 And that was really enough to get them off to the races.

00:03:58.820 Right.

00:03:59.440 And so that is an example of something that you talk about in the first chapter, this idea

00:04:05.720 that healers can harm, and you use a Greek phrase, atrogenesis, is that how you, is that

00:04:13.560 how you pronounce it?

00:04:15.660 Iatrogenesis.

00:04:16.240 Yeah, this is a word that, you know, I wasn't aware of, but everyone should know because every

00:04:21.160 single intervention, no matter how good, can cause harm.

00:04:24.680 So iatrogenesis refers to when a healer introduces the harm.

00:04:29.060 And of course, that doesn't mean any intervention is all bad.

00:04:32.520 Tylenol causes harm if given too much, too often.

00:04:36.300 X-rays cause harm.

00:04:37.640 And yes, therapy also comes with harms.

00:04:40.260 And there's actually a large body of research showing the harms of therapy.

00:04:44.440 They include things like making depression worse, making anxiety worse, alienating you

00:04:50.420 from your parents, making you feel inefficacious in your life, like you can't do anything on

00:04:55.420 your own, making you feel demoralizing you with a diagnosis.

00:05:00.160 All these are known side effects of therapy that all the academic researchers knew.

00:05:05.360 Oddly, though, most of the practitioners I talked to either weren't aware of them or

00:05:10.500 denied them outright.

00:05:12.480 And what is it about therapy that is causing that, particularly what you talked about, about

00:05:17.500 young people today not wanting to grow up?

00:05:20.760 I've noticed that, too, the just complete lack of interest in getting your driver's license,

00:05:25.560 which as a millennial is wild to me.

00:05:27.760 I could not wait.

00:05:29.340 I could not wait.

00:05:30.460 What is it about therapy that is causing that kind of failure to launch?

00:05:34.620 Well, the idea of and it's, you know, these kids are getting therapy not just from a therapist

00:05:40.320 in school and from their parents who are reading the best, you know, the most popular parenting

00:05:46.520 books written by therapists.

00:05:47.780 And what it is, is any time you are told to check in and double check and think about everything

00:05:55.240 you're going to do before you do it, that you can't handle any problems on your own.

00:06:00.580 Every time you have a squabble with another kid, you have to go rushing to mom or rushing

00:06:05.300 to a therapist.

00:06:06.120 It creates what they call treatment dependency.

00:06:09.580 You become dependent.

00:06:10.940 And the idea is I can't take a risk on my own because I could ruin things.

00:06:15.020 It could be ruinous.

00:06:16.200 And so I have to bring everything to an adult and adults are always standing by.

00:06:22.300 And, and that's what we're seeing.

00:06:23.260 These kids feel unwell over half of the rising generation says their mental health is not

00:06:28.520 good.

00:06:29.020 You know, they, they report that, you know, that they don't feel well.

00:06:32.060 And so they don't feel up to the responsibilities of adulthood, right?

00:06:35.740 Adulthood is a series of responsibilities.

00:06:38.160 That's what it is.

00:06:39.200 It means I'm ready to be someone other people can rely on.

00:06:42.540 I'm ready to form a family.

00:06:43.820 I'm ready to be a good spouse.

00:06:45.080 I'm ready to be a good neighbor and someone you can depend on.

00:06:48.020 And, um, they're opting out of all of that.

00:06:51.000 And, and really it's no surprise because if you feel weak, you don't think you're ready

00:06:55.440 for those things.

00:06:57.080 And the irony is, is that going to therapy is marketed as the most responsible thing,

00:07:04.420 the most mature thing, the most adult thing that you can do.

00:07:08.040 And in fact, it is the thing we are told that will help you finally be able to love other

00:07:14.440 people.

00:07:14.660 While we've heard this kind of therapeutic mantra of you can't love other people until

00:07:19.740 you love yourself.

00:07:20.520 And loving yourself has to look like constantly thinking about yourself, constantly focusing

00:07:25.500 on yourself, constantly thinking about and examining your feelings and overcoming your

00:07:29.940 trauma and all these things.

00:07:31.280 You can't go out and love other people and be this dependable adult until you take care

00:07:35.440 of those things.

00:07:37.000 But that's right.

00:07:37.620 As long as you're going to therapy, you could think that, well, I still don't love myself

00:07:42.760 perfectly.

00:07:43.340 So maybe I still can't adult.

00:07:45.540 Maybe I still can't be a responsible adult in a faithful relationship because I haven't

00:07:50.920 perfectly figured out how to like every nook and cranny of myself.

00:07:54.120 Right.

00:07:55.760 I mean, here's the thing to know that therapy with a child or teenager is totally different

00:08:00.480 from therapy with an adult because with an adult, an adult can push back on a therapist.

00:08:05.020 So a lot of the harms that are, that there are risks of are going to be less.

00:08:09.800 An adult can say, you know, I love my wife.

00:08:12.600 I really don't think she meant that.

00:08:14.140 I wouldn't call it, you know, I wouldn't call our relationship toxic.

00:08:17.520 I don't think that's fair.

00:08:19.460 Or an adult can say, you know, honestly, I don't like the way I feel on these medications.

00:08:23.600 I think I don't like not having a sex drive.

00:08:26.540 I think I'm going to try to taper off them.

00:08:28.720 It's very hard for a teenager to say those things.

00:08:32.800 They don't have enough of life.

00:08:33.960 But also it's very hard for a teen who might be angry with mom to say, you know, I'm not

00:08:38.640 sure I'd agree that my mother's emotionally abusive. 1.00

00:08:41.820 And yet, so there isn't that pushback, but also there isn't the buy-in.

00:08:47.060 An adult who chooses to go to therapy decides, listen, I feel like I need someone to work

00:08:52.000 on me, work with me on this.

00:08:53.980 I'm unsatisfied with this.

00:08:56.000 I need to work.

00:08:56.660 I want to do this.

00:08:58.060 Okay.

00:08:58.840 But a teen or child who's, who's signs up for therapy is strong armed by an adult.

00:09:04.760 So there's the incentive of the therapist to pander to the child, whatever will make the

00:09:09.760 child feel good and agree with the child.

00:09:12.260 Oh, that was that.

00:09:13.240 I can see why that made you feel terrible that your mom said that.

00:09:16.620 There's every incentive to do that because of course the child didn't even sign up to be

00:09:20.640 there. So they have to do something to get the kids buy-in.

00:09:24.320 Now, of course, if a child has a real problem, that's different.

00:09:27.700 If a child is anorexic, if a child is severely, you know, obsessive compulsive disorder or, or,

00:09:33.680 or has one of these other problems, then there's no question what the therapist is there to work

00:09:39.080 on. But if you sign your, your anxious or moody teen up for psychodynamic psychotherapy,

00:09:44.980 just general therapy, general talking about problems, there are real risks that the problems

00:09:50.100 they have will be magnified or the therapist will introduce new ones.

00:09:55.740 And in your research, how did you find that we got here?

00:10:00.000 Not just in sending kids to therapy and going to therapy unnecessarily ourselves, but getting

00:10:09.180 to the place of calling worry, anxiety, and sadness, depression, diagnosing a normal spectrum

00:10:16.560 of human emotions and then medicalizing them.

00:10:20.960 That's right. We didn't even realize, we almost didn't even want, you know, notice the water

00:10:26.340 slipping in because you're right. It totally changed our vocabulary, you know, and, and I mean,

00:10:32.220 across the board, liberals, conservatives, religious people, it didn't matter. All of a sudden we were

00:10:37.440 seeing all of humanity as a series of pathologies, psychopathologies, and the whole human experience,

00:10:44.060 every deviation suddenly was a diagnosis. And what that meant, and, and it was with the rise,

00:10:50.620 there's been a dramatic increase in the growth of mental health staffs at every school, at every

00:10:57.020 university. And, and of course, you know, they've, they've sort of sit atop our parenting.

00:11:01.500 Um, they write all the popular parenting books and, um, you know, I have various theories for

00:11:07.220 why, you know, part of it may have been, you know, the rise in, uh, divorce among that started

00:11:11.880 with Gen X. We saw various problems in America and we thought the solution was to send everyone 1.00

00:11:17.900 to therapy. We became convinced this really needed expertise. And, um, so adults started going to

00:11:25.160 therapy in larger numbers, and then they sent their kids believing it could only help.

00:11:28.780 And here's the thing, you know, if your child is struggling and they go to their aunt, okay.

00:11:34.700 For help, for advice, their uncle, what, whoever there, the, the, the, the family member in general,

00:11:43.240 not only has, is generally going to reinforce the parents values, not only generally wants the best

00:11:50.460 thing for the child, but there's no incentive for them to keep the child coming back and making them 1.00

00:11:56.400 their confidant. And here's the problem with in general, sending a bummed out kid to therapy,

00:12:02.860 as opposed to grandma, you send a bummed out kid to therapy. The therapist's incentive is to treat

00:12:10.140 the least sick for the longest period of time. They want that child coming back and there's no oversight.

00:12:17.900 There's no one saying, you know, you're really undermining her, you know, um, respect for her

00:12:23.520 mother. No one's even tracking it. Unlike with medicine where they're tracking harms,

00:12:28.800 therapists don't even track these. And so no one's measuring it. No one's reporting. Meanwhile,

00:12:34.700 you know, in many ways in a teen or adolescent could be getting worse.

00:12:39.360 It also seems like social media has kind of glorified the idea of not just going to therapy

00:12:46.660 as just something that you do if you're having any problem in your life, but also, I mean,

00:12:51.260 taking anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications. I mean, there's a whole subset of

00:12:56.800 TikTok that is about the different medications that teenagers can take to alleviate their symptoms

00:13:02.840 of anxiety or whatever. And so probably, uh, maybe there's a lot of similarities between what you saw

00:13:09.680 in the social contagion of what's referred to as gender dysphoria and somewhat of a social contagion

00:13:15.520 here though. Okay. All my friends are going to therapy. All my friends are on Lexapro.

00:13:19.320 Well, I guess that should be what I do too.

00:13:23.640 That's right. And you know, that that's exactly right. There is an element of social contagion.

00:13:29.400 People are valorizing diagnoses, but it's so, it's so dangerous to valid, you know,

00:13:34.920 to valorize a diagnosis or being on medication for various reasons. First of all, those medications

00:13:39.560 come with real risks, but, but also because it's so limiting. See, if you say I'm a shy person,

00:13:46.400 well, that doesn't limit you. You can just say, well, I'm going to try to get over my shyness,

00:13:51.420 but if you have social anxiety or social phobia, now you're saying there's a problem with my brain

00:13:56.760 and I need an expert or medication to help me. So you, you naturally go down the road to feeling

00:14:02.720 less powerful and less able to fix your life. You mentioned that they're not just getting therapy

00:14:08.980 from a professional in an office, but I mean, they're getting it on social, social media. I mean,

00:14:15.560 you follow these self-help accounts that claim to have the power to psychoanalyze you and tell you

00:14:20.280 how amazing you are, but they're also getting it. You mentioned, uh, from school. Now, would you say

00:14:26.240 that's primarily from this social emotional learning SEL curriculum that is now in a lot of schools?

00:14:33.520 That's it. Yes. Social emotional learning is now this giant, massive juggernaut. It's an umbrella.

00:14:41.480 It can mean anything. It can mean straightforward, you know, critical race theory, which the kids

00:14:46.600 learn about, you know, white oppression. But so sometimes it's just a cloak for that, but very

00:14:52.480 often it, it is a process of breaking down kids. That's effectively what it is. It claims to be, um,

00:15:00.500 something that will help kids to make them more resilient. They throw around that word a lot. It

00:15:04.400 will make them stronger by teaching them tricks for emotional regulation. Well, there are various

00:15:10.220 reasons that focusing on yourself, focusing on your emotion, focusing on your pain, isn't the way

00:15:15.900 to resilience. It's counterproductive, but these, the, the discussions of emotion in the classroom

00:15:21.460 old, almost inevitably end up with discussions of sad emotion. First of all, because the prompts

00:15:28.180 actually direct you there. But second of all, it's just much more interesting. How do you feel?

00:15:32.540 Great. Fine. There's not much to talk about. Actually, I'm feeling really sad because my mom

00:15:38.380 was too busy to help me with my homework last night. Now, now we're off and running. Now we've got

00:15:43.700 something we can all talk about. And that's what the schools are doing. Um, they're all engaged in this

00:15:49.420 constant psych, you know, this constant therapeutic kind of group therapy. And it, you know, there's,

00:15:56.240 there's lots of evidence of this, but basically there's a lot of research showing group therapy

00:15:59.980 often makes people feel worse about their problems. Um, this has been true of breast 1.00

00:16:04.880 cancer survivors, burn victims, first responders to catastrophe. Um, you know, um, all kinds of

00:16:10.980 situations, um, in which, you know, sitting around with a group talking about your pain, bereavement,

00:16:16.380 uh, people who lost loved ones, they, they ended up feeling worse off than the control group who

00:16:21.680 didn't go to therapy. And we're doing this with kids. It reminds me of something in college. When

00:16:28.180 I first joined my sorority, my freshman year of college, and we had this retreat with the whole

00:16:34.420 sorority and we all sat in a circle and I'm thinking back, I'm like, why did we do this?

00:16:39.700 But whose idea was this? And we were all supposed to share something like really difficult and sad that

00:16:45.920 we had gone through or something like that we had never shared before or something like that.

00:16:51.580 And we were all supposed to be very emotional about it. And everyone, you know, ended up crying.

00:16:57.160 But I remember feeling that it almost turned into a competition of who can give the worst sob story,

00:17:03.940 who can shock everyone the most, who has been through the hardest thing. And like you said,

00:17:09.760 valorizing trauma or difficulty or whatever it is, it, even in that just kind of like micro example,

00:17:17.560 I can see that I could see that competing to see, you know, who's had the hardest time

00:17:24.240 can make things a lot worse. That's exactly right. And what I want people to know is that's

00:17:30.360 inevitable because they can say, Oh, we're just working on our emotions. We're just discussing our

00:17:36.520 emotions. We're working on self-regulation. They can say that all they want. But as soon as you get

00:17:41.400 kids in a circle talking about their feelings, it becomes, there becomes a natural one-upmanship

00:17:47.680 occurs to, you don't want to just say something boring. Um, right. I, it becomes what, you know,

00:17:53.980 what, what, what a great researcher said to me, it becomes like a memory poker. You start up,

00:17:58.240 you start trying to, you know, dredge up the worst memory of a painful episode in your life

00:18:03.580 because you want to sort of keep the group engaged. And we're doing this with kids right

00:18:09.060 before they have to take a math test. And, um, sometimes it's the school counselor. Sometimes

00:18:14.080 it's the teacher. And the worst part is parents are told this is really good for them. In fact,

00:18:19.860 we're going to interrupt their lessons for it. Um, it, it really is, uh, it's a, it's an incredibly

00:18:25.660 good way to break kids down. And that, that isn't even, you know, the mental health surveys they're

00:18:31.540 flooded with. Many of them written by our CDC, which talked to them about suicide, self-harm.

00:18:37.120 What are the ways you might use? You know, have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you tried

00:18:41.680 cutting, burning, choking? What about a choking game? I mean, it goes through all these with middle

00:18:46.620 schoolers or high schoolers in great depth and as if, Oh, we're just, we're just asking no harm.

00:18:53.820 Yeah. And they do it of course, in the name of saving lives. And they also do it in the name of

00:19:00.600 representation. I had a woman on my show. She had gone viral a couple of years ago for speaking 1.00

00:19:08.020 at her school board because her eighth grader had come home. This was a conservative district in

00:19:12.680 Texas. Public school had come home with this horrifying book that was not only very sexually

00:19:18.340 explicit, but also detailed like how this person was planning to commit suicide. And when she went to

00:19:25.940 the school and she said, what in the world, why is the English teacher recommending this book to my

00:19:32.040 13 year old? They said, well, we give these kinds of books to represent. So these students can see

00:19:40.360 themselves. What if a student had gone through something like this? What if there was a student

00:19:44.340 who had thought about suicide? What if there was a student who was gender confused? Even they justify 1.00

00:19:49.880 books with pedophilia. And then by saying, well, what if the child has gone through this? And they say

00:19:55.920 it's important to see themselves reflected in this literature, in this content that they're consuming.

00:20:04.940 I mean, to me, not only would it make it worse if a child had gone through that, but also for most kids,

00:20:10.760 you are introducing very, very dark themes into their little form, you know, uh, formative minds or

00:20:20.080 their, uh, malleable minds that they can't really safely and fully process in a healthy way.

00:20:27.820 And Allie, when a, when a mom goes in and objects, the first thing they do is make her feel stupid

00:20:33.820 or crazy. That's what their response is. Oh, you don't know the literature. Well, I looked into

00:20:40.620 the literature because I wanted to arm moms like that one. And actually the literature backs up the

00:20:46.520 fact that if you valorize suicide, if you present it as a coping mechanism, if you, um, are, um,

00:20:52.340 repetitive in your talk of suicide, we know that that increases suicide. Okay. There have been great

00:20:59.680 studies on this. There's a great Viennese subway study in which that, that showed this when they, um,

00:21:04.940 stopped doing, when they got the press to stop doing those things in reporting Viennese sub,

00:21:09.640 subways suicides in Vienna. Um, they were able to depress the rate of suicide just by stopping all

00:21:16.160 the talk of it. Stop by, you know, talking about methods and, and valorizing the subject. And, and

00:21:21.620 you're right. It absolutely presents the world as dark and dangerous. But here's the other thing I want

00:21:27.020 you to know. Look, my kids are in religious school. Okay. They're in a very religious school. Um,

00:21:33.360 a lot of people think, and they felt this way with my last book, you know, on the left,

00:21:38.040 they kind of, the react, the attitude was always like, why are you picking on this marginalized group?

00:21:43.120 Right. And on the right, the attitude is, why would you even bother? Like, that doesn't,

00:21:46.780 that doesn't apply to us. Who would do that? Like, you know, that, that is sort of like irrelevant.

00:21:53.300 SEL is completely in my kid's school. They expanded the psych staffs, right? Even in religious school,

00:21:59.600 they bring this stuff in, they smuggle it in, they tell you it's life-saving. And they,

00:22:03.820 they start to very much like DEI officers in a university, they get to work undermining the

00:22:09.700 school. And they, they, that doesn't mean they mean to, but they sort of take over because they

00:22:16.140 can oversee everything in terms of mental health. And now we're no longer talking about morality.

00:22:21.300 We're not, no longer talking about treating each other correctly or, you know, doing what's right.

00:22:26.340 All of a sudden we're talking about feelings and oneness with feelings and that's, and, and, and

00:22:32.560 always looking at yourself. It's, it's, it's, you know, it tends to really undermine, uh, you know,

00:22:38.860 even the most, even in the most conservative districts or in the most religious schools.

00:22:42.760 Yeah. I mean, I think that we all have a natural tendency to be self-centered, to think about

00:22:48.800 ourselves and to look at the world through the lens of like, what do I want? How do I feel?

00:22:53.280 And this kind of feeds into that. And also, as you've said, it glorifies it. And so it glorifies

00:23:00.000 self-centeredness. And you're actually told that self-centeredness, being self-centered,

00:23:03.820 being self-focused is the best and most moral and the kindest and the most loving thing that you can

00:23:10.740 do. That is how you are a good neighbor. That is how you are a good citizen. You just learn to love

00:23:15.460 yourself more and more. You just understand your feelings more and more. And what you're saying is

00:23:20.400 that it's actually doing the opposite. It's not only making kids, stunting their growth,

00:23:26.180 but it's also making them more cruel, right? Like they're actually less able to see the pain of

00:23:32.700 other people and understand other people's point of view, right? That's right. They're living under

00:23:38.680 this tyranny of feelings in which they tyrannize each other with their feelings and they are tyrannized

00:23:45.160 by their own. They're constantly focusing on their feelings. And guess what? When you think

00:23:49.560 about your feelings all the time, you're going to conclude that you're not that happy. You're going

00:23:53.620 to think about every tiny worry and magnify it. I mean, I call them in the book sort of emotional

00:23:58.580 hypochondriacs, by which I don't mean that they're making up their own pain, right? It's not that they're

00:24:03.660 inventing it. They're just making it worse, just like hypochondriacs do. What they do is, you know,

00:24:09.440 what they now call illness, anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder is these are people.

00:24:14.180 And I talked to world experts in hypochondriasis. What they do is they magnify the pains we all have

00:24:19.280 by hyper-focus on them, by relentlessly focus on them. And that's what kids are doing with their

00:24:25.100 feelings. And, um, you know, you mentioned empathy. What I learned is that empathy naturally,

00:24:32.300 unlike things like fairness, it causes us, we can't empathize with more than two people at once.

00:24:37.520 It's not possible. So naturally we privilege the person in front of us who's suffering very often

00:24:44.600 at the expense of the out group. So it actually, empathy can lead to a lot of cruelty.

00:24:51.240 Right. I think that's such an interesting concept. You're the title of chapter eight is full of empathy

00:24:57.020 and mean as hell. And, um, I'm actually writing a book that'll be out this fall about how specifically

00:25:05.800 empathy tricks Christian women into taking the progressive position on everything. If you have 1.00

00:25:12.760 empathy for the migrant, then you'll be for open borders. If you have empathy for these gender 0.97

00:25:18.140 confused young people, you will affirm them, use their pronouns, um, et cetera. And I never thought

00:25:24.060 about what you said though, that you can't really have full empathy for two people at once. And so

00:25:30.680 whoever is hoisted up in front of you as the worst victim is the biggest victim based on their skin 0.66

00:25:37.220 color, based on their sexual orientation or gender identity or whatever it is, that's the person that

00:25:43.180 you're going to say is right, needs your full defense, needs your full celebration, needs your

00:25:48.020 full affirmation, even at the expense of everyone else, even at the expense of truth, even at the expense

00:25:53.580 of fairness, even at the expense of safety. Obviously we see that in the gender issue, um, a lot, but

00:26:00.280 there are many other examples of that, how empathy can actually not just be unhealthy, but harmful.

00:26:06.960 I love that. That's fascinating. I'm excited for your new book. I mean, that's, that's exactly right.

00:26:12.680 Empathy becomes a tool of manipulation, right? So you say to a kid, whatever the issue, oh, well,

00:26:19.500 we all need to feel bad for so-and-so. And I profile in the book, a young woman who was treated

00:26:24.040 so cruelly over supposedly a racist and antisemitic comment. Now it turned out the girl was Jewish and

00:26:32.320 it wasn't, she hadn't made an antisemitic comment or a racist comment, but the administrators and the

00:26:38.240 children who accused her of the antisemitism were not even Jewish, but they accused her of antisemitism

00:26:44.920 based on a funny joke she had made that had really nothing to do with anything. You can see it in the

00:26:51.000 book, but it really didn't have very much to do with anything at all. She was joking about Halloween

00:26:54.620 costumes and they then persecuted her for the rest of the school year and that they felt, but they were

00:27:02.460 only sticking up for the kids who were so pained and injured by this. And no one bothered to say,

00:27:08.680 wait a second, what do you mean you're injured by her antisemitic comment? You're not even Jewish. 0.99

00:27:12.720 She is. What are you talking about? No one said that because they completely forgot every sort of

00:27:20.100 basic principle of what was actually said. Does this make any sense? And they just ran with this

00:27:25.140 girl's feelings. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of a phrase that I heard echoed a lot in the era of

00:27:30.700 George Floyd, like the summer of 2020. What matters is the impact, not the intent. That's what they would

00:27:39.560 say. The activists would say is that it doesn't matter what you meant by what you said. What matters

00:27:44.260 is how it made people feel. And really it's both. And like, obviously, if you run into someone, you

00:27:49.660 didn't mean to run into them. You still apologize to say, I'm sorry that I hurt you, even if you didn't

00:27:54.400 mean to. So it's both. But I think that motto that is always just the impact and the intent doesn't

00:28:02.140 matter at all. It exemplifies what you're talking about there, that we always have to prioritize how

00:28:08.160 someone feels about what you did or what you said over the truth of what someone might have said.

00:28:17.100 And that is a very unfair world to live in. Right. I mean, remember, empathy is not a moral

00:28:25.720 concept. Right. In other words, you can do good in this world without having empathy for the person

00:28:32.920 you're helping. You might say, I can't really understand what she's feeling, but I'm going to

00:28:36.920 take care of her anyway or him anyway or whatever the act is that's good. Likewise, you can be, you

00:28:43.460 know, very cruel and full of empathy. So we know that con men and all kinds of, you know, bad people

00:28:50.060 exploit the fact that they can get inside other people's heads to take advantage of them.

00:28:54.880 So sometimes, you know, empathy is not a moral concept. The problem is we're so pushing this

00:29:00.600 with kids and it takes over. It completely sort of, you know, submerges fairness, considerations like

00:29:08.700 fairness, what's right, justice. And we think we're being so emotionally in tuned, but really we're

00:29:15.500 being, you know, the schools are often very tyrannical as they run supposedly with, you know,

00:29:21.960 to take care of someone's feelings. You know, I've thought about empathy and you can tell me if you

00:29:29.020 agree or disagree with this, but I've thought about empathy as something that can be in particular

00:29:35.780 contexts helpful. For example, before I had kids, when I went on an airplane and there was a bunch of

00:29:43.440 crying babies, I'd be like, seriously, seriously, can you, can the parents not just figure this out?

00:29:49.040 I can't believe that you have this crying toddler, this toddler running around. You have all of these

00:29:52.600 silly thoughts in your head of, oh, when I'm a parent, I'll never do that. It'll never be that

00:29:57.120 way. And then you have kids and wow, you understand. And you have so much compassion for those parents.

00:30:02.860 You completely know what they're going through. It's not easy. They're much more stressed out about

00:30:07.520 their crying baby than you are. And that can motivate you to say, okay, how can I help? Now, of course,

00:30:15.180 you can have compassion for someone without having been in their shoes before, but it helps having

00:30:20.580 been in their shoes. It helps having experienced something yourself. It helps to be able to say,

00:30:25.380 not only can I have compassion for you, but I have felt what you feel. And that is what inspires me

00:30:32.440 to help you out or to see things differently or to be more gentle with you. But, oh, go, you know what?

00:30:40.740 Go ahead. You, you answer that because I think I've spoken enough about it. I think I've explained it.

00:30:44.820 Not at all. I, you know, I would say just to push back on you that it's actually coming from your

00:30:49.960 values. So in other words, you could also have empathy just as easily for the stewardess who is

00:30:57.280 trying to get the parent to shut up or right. In other words, your values lead you to, to empathize

00:31:05.300 with that mother. But it, the goodness is coming from your values, feeling like a young mother is doing

00:31:10.940 something noble. She's raising the next generation and she's trying to tend to her kids and I should

00:31:16.180 try to feel for her. Right. I mean, you see people empathizing with terrorists, empathizing with

00:31:22.080 vandals all over the place because empathy is not bad. It's morally neutral. And that's the point.

00:31:28.080 It can, it can be, it can manipulate us. Yeah. You know, it can manipulate us and, and be misapplied

00:31:34.120 all over the place. Yes, I, I agree. It has to be submissive. Empathy has to be submissive to your

00:31:41.720 values and submissive to the truth. And it is not the same as love. I mean, I've argued before that

00:31:48.780 there really can't be true love without truth. You're not loving someone well by lying to them.

00:31:55.480 You can empathize with someone and lie to them. I don't think you can love someone and lie to them.

00:32:01.200 So empathy can be good when it is submissive to those superior values of love, truth, principles.

00:32:09.960 And so I, yeah, I agree with you there, but it is definitely seen as like the reigning,

00:32:16.640 you know, stamp of virtue today that if you are empathetic, you will do X, Y, Z. It's a total,

00:32:25.000 total tool of manipulation and coercion. Yeah. I mean, think about it this way. You know,

00:32:30.600 if you empathize with a child too much, when you're going to give them a shot, you won't give

00:32:34.860 it to them. Yeah. If you empathize with a child too much, who's upset that he's been sent to his

00:32:39.780 room, you'll never punish him. Right? Like empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient for doing good

00:32:47.240 in this world. And often over empathizing with certain people will keep us from taking care of

00:32:54.180 each other for keeping us from doing the right thing. Right? If a police officer over empathizes

00:33:00.160 with someone who is, you know, a criminal, he might not arrest him. And then the criminal could go on to

00:33:06.860 harm others. Yeah. So, you know, in all kinds of situations, empathy is just not, it's, it's amoral

00:33:13.780 and it won't necessarily produce the best result. Right. Right. Tell me how this leads into

00:33:20.800 gentle parenting. Would you say that it is that the idea of gentle parenting, that it is led by

00:33:29.240 the idea that empathy must be first and must be foremost when it comes to how we treat our children?

00:33:39.060 I love that. That's not how I described it in the book, but I love your characterization. I think

00:33:44.680 that's great. I mean, yes, that's a way of looking at it. It is a therapeutic method, which constantly

00:33:51.020 solicits the child's feelings, focuses on the feelings, puts the parent at the same level as

00:33:57.260 a child. And it's constantly a conversation about how are we feeling about this? Do we, and giving a child

00:34:04.080 endless options. Now there are a number of problems with this. There are another reasons that it's not

00:34:09.040 good for kids. And, and the number one thing is that we've known now for really millennia that kids

00:34:15.280 need parental authority, which doesn't mean cruelty. It doesn't mean, you know, an unloving laying down

00:34:21.440 of rules, but ultimately the parent has to be in charge. A child will feel much more safe and secure if

00:34:27.540 the parent is in charge. But if you empathize too much with a child, you'll never do what's right for

00:34:33.420 the kid. Hmm. Yeah. This is such a debate right now among young moms. And I think that there is some,

00:34:42.080 um, there's somewhere in between, I mean, obviously only being a disciplinarian or a nag or a nitpick 1.00

00:34:50.380 or someone who never gives credit to what your child is feeling. That's one thing.

00:34:54.540 But who is that today? I mean, does that even exist today? We don't have authoritarian parents

00:35:00.620 anymore. We surround our kids with these therapeutic empathic adults. No one is laying

00:35:06.080 down any rules or high expectations, almost in any situation they're in. The problem isn't that

00:35:12.780 they have empathetic mothers or empathetic fathers. It's that they're getting therapy from every angle

00:35:19.100 and no one's saying you're fine. Go on, keep playing soccer. You'll be fine. No one's saying,

00:35:24.780 knock it off. No one's saying, shake it off. No one's saying, handle your problems yourself.

00:35:28.840 And that's the problem. It's so extreme. And I'll tell you something else. Empathy can be much

00:35:35.180 crueler. And I'll give you an example why. Let's say you don't set down rules for your child. Let's

00:35:40.500 say you always solicit their opinion. You always worry about their feelings. You just hug them when

00:35:46.000 they're in distress. You never punish them when they punch their little sibling, right? Now you're

00:35:51.140 going to send them off to school where they have to obey the teacher's rules and they won't be able to do

00:35:56.120 it. So tell me what ended up the most compassionate. Was that compassionate? The teacher's

00:36:01.560 going to now want to put your child on drugs. Right, right. And even beyond that, I mean, if that

00:36:07.200 problem extends until they're a teenager or until they're an adult and they never learn how to work

00:36:14.320 with other people, learn how to share, learn how to not have outbursts or violent reactions when they

00:36:20.160 don't get their way, I mean, you're talking about not you disciplining them, but the state disciplining

00:36:25.380 them. And so you're right. At the end of the day, which was the more compassionate option?

00:36:33.380 The last book, people were always talking about, you know, oh, what about, you know, what we teachers

00:36:39.000 have to get in there and liberate the kids and protect the kids from their horrible, you know,

00:36:43.920 homophobic parents who won't affirm, you know, who are so homophobic, they would throw a child out in

00:36:50.040 the street. And they invented this bugaboo that didn't exist. I mean, I don't know what, how many

00:36:55.980 decades we have to go back in order to make that a reality of American life, but it has been so many

00:37:02.420 decades until since that even existed. And they were saying this in the most liberal districts in our

00:37:07.880 country, in California, there was this idea, oh, that we couldn't trust those homophobic parents.

00:37:13.320 And I think the same gets true when you talk about basic authority and rules and expectations in the

00:37:18.640 home. Where are these cruel, unloving parents who demand obedience? You know, these authoritarian

00:37:24.800 parents. Now we know authoritarian, which is unloving and rule bound. Those kids don't fare very well,

00:37:32.040 but neither do the permissive parents. And study after study has shown this. The ones who, or as I call

00:37:38.220 them, the therapeutic parents are even worse than permissive because they surveil the kids. They give them

00:37:42.980 no independence and they constantly solicit the kids' feelings on everything. Neither of those

00:37:48.400 kids has done very well in terms of happiness, anxiety, depression, and success, and all kinds of

00:37:54.420 good relationship with parents long-term. None of those have had good results. But authoritative

00:38:02.280 parents who just basically set down rules, that's not cruel. That's just parenting.

00:38:07.640 Hmm. Do you think that it's changed because of how the different generations were parented? My

00:38:17.520 grandparents were part of the silent generation. I think, like, within my age, it's probably

00:38:23.040 grandparents in the silent or the great generation. And so, you know, early 20th century to the 30s and

00:38:29.100 40s, my parents, baby boomers. And obviously, they didn't have as much of an emotional or even

00:38:36.460 affectionate upbringing as I did. And I have a great relationship with my parents. And they

00:38:42.960 certainly were not permissive. They were authoritative. And they weren't as, even though I

00:38:48.580 never, ever, ever have doubted that my parents love me so much and love my brother so much, I

00:38:53.860 wouldn't call them affectionate necessarily. My husband and I are much more affectionate as parents

00:39:02.020 and maybe a little bit gentler as well than my parents were. And a lot of my friends say the

00:39:09.440 same, say the same thing, that we are just much more affectionate and kind of like gushy with our

00:39:15.020 children than our parents were, even though we have a great relationship with them. And I just kind of,

00:39:20.420 I wonder why that is. Because we, I think we bought into the idea that it was cruel to lay down rules

00:39:29.080 and just say, no, I'm sorry. Those are the consequences. You hit your sister. I'm taking

00:39:34.800 away your toy. You're going to your room. We started feeling like that was abusive. That could

00:39:40.220 cause them trauma. We were afraid to do it even when we needed to. And it became, we also poured way

00:39:47.200 more time into the kids than any generation. We are so devoted to these kids and we're so determined to

00:39:53.840 have a close relationship with them in part because we spend all our time devoting ourselves to them.

00:39:59.240 So now we really want to be their besties. And the problem is, look, you can be as affectionate to a

00:40:04.800 kid as you want. That's not harmful, right? But, but you can't miss out on being in charge. See,

00:40:12.180 if you stop being in charge, that's when the harms come in. And, and, and study after study has shown

00:40:17.540 this, the kids don't do as well in all kinds of metrics because kids know that someone has to be in

00:40:22.920 charge. And very often when a kid did, wasn't raised by anyone who was willing to be in charge,

00:40:28.560 they go looking for daddy elsewhere. And we see radicalism, political radicalism in this generation

00:40:34.440 in, in rates that are, that are new, that are much higher than before. They are, you know, and many,

00:40:39.940 you know, I interviewed several immigrant parents and people who work with parents who, whose, um,

00:40:45.080 families have become radicalized. The kids have become radicalized. And they tell me very often

00:40:49.120 these come from the most liberal, these kids come from the most liberal homes before they join

00:40:53.480 Antifa, BLM, whatever it is, but they're really looking for daddy. And I, you know, that is a

00:41:00.860 consequence of never having high expectations or rules for your own home. Totally. I can see that

00:41:06.700 the importance of discipline and setting, not just setting the boundaries, but consistently enforcing

00:41:11.020 those boundaries. Kids are always looking for that. Like even when it comes to non, not, not just

00:41:18.260 discipline, but when you see, uh, toddlers start developing, they're putting everything kind of

00:41:23.540 into categories, into definitions. They know the difference between mom and dad, male and female

00:41:28.660 from a very early age. We do this here. We do that there. This is right here. This is wrong. Whatever

00:41:33.400 it is. You can tell that they are looking for those definitions. They're looking for the lines.

00:41:38.480 They're looking for the boundaries. And I think part of their development is to test those

00:41:43.040 boundaries. And it sounds like what you're saying is that parents in the name of being empathetic and

00:41:48.280 gentle have said, yeah, keep testing them, just keep pushing them out. And we will keep moving the

00:41:53.280 boundaries further and further out until they basically don't exist. And these radicalized teens are

00:42:00.640 out in search of those boundaries. Finally, like, you know, how extreme can I get? How radical

00:42:06.340 can I get until someone finally tells me to stop? Right. I mean, think about it this way. Say you

00:42:14.240 don't punish a five-year-old who's hitting his sister. Okay. First of all, he could hurt his

00:42:18.700 sister. Right. Okay. Um, second of all, now he's in charge because he's dominating things. He's the

00:42:24.840 most powerful. He's in, you know, asserting a certain, uh, rule over his sister. There's something

00:42:30.560 else too. Now you're sending a kid who hits other kids off to school. Totally. So is that more

00:42:36.340 compassionate? Is he likely to be, you know, get, have friends at school, have people like him,

00:42:42.180 have teachers who want to teach him? No, because nobody likes a kid who's going around hitting other

00:42:48.880 kids. Right. What they do is they suggest a medication. They start telling you he has oppositional

00:42:54.320 defiant disorder, right? There's something wrong with him. And if you think that having your kid set

00:43:00.980 up to believe there's something wrong with him, just because he, he, he never heard the word no.

00:43:07.280 Well, to me, that's far less kind and, and, and compassionate to a kid.

00:43:12.080 I worry about my kids being up, put in school and being around other kids whose parents did not give

00:43:25.340 them boundaries and did not discipline them and did not lay a good foundation for them, did not tell

00:43:31.540 them that self-control was a virtue. Of course, I believe it's a fruit of the spirit. It's as a good

00:43:38.120 thing the Bible tells us that we're supposed to practice. Um, I, I worry about that. I worry about,

00:43:44.080 I mean, my kids aren't Gen Z, they're younger than that, but I worry what kind of generation 1.00

00:43:49.440 they're going to grow up with kids who put their feelings first only and are unable to really function

00:43:58.340 in a healthy way with everyone else. Right. I think we're seeing it. I think we're seeing it in the

00:44:04.660 demand. You must use my pronouns. You must change your course to accommodate me. You must, um, you 0.77

00:44:13.280 know, we're seeing it in the workplace. Do you know how many young people are having their parents

00:44:17.080 call the, their bosses to tell them that they've got, that they're too stressed out on the job. These

00:44:23.100 are adults and they're so infantilized and their feelings are always front and center. And honestly,

00:44:29.480 they're tyrannizing others and they're tyrannized themselves by their own obsession with their

00:44:34.200 feelings. No wonder they don't want to get married and don't want to, don't want to have kids because 0.55

00:44:39.660 those things, they do require commitment. They require you to give up some of what you want,

00:44:46.820 your complete autonomy and your complete flexibility for the good of someone else. And when sacrifice is

00:44:54.920 seen as not just inconvenience, but as trauma and as something that is actually immoral and dangerous,

00:45:01.000 of course, you are going to avoid any kind of commitment that causes you to put yourself second.

00:45:08.080 Exactly. That's exactly the right. That was perfectly said. You know, um, I, I, you know,

00:45:13.720 I think of at any time when, I mean, when do moms do what they want to do? Yeah. What feels good to

00:45:19.340 them? I mean, you spend so much time just suppressing your own needs, right. And, and taking care of

00:45:26.000 someone else. That's the job. And, um, I'll tell you what the best email response I got was from,

00:45:32.300 uh, someone passed on to me. It was from a mom who said, you know, I listened to Abigail on a podcast.

00:45:37.880 And for the first time this morning, I punished my son without guilt. And the reason I liked that

00:45:43.860 was not because she had punished her son. That's up to her. That was her decision. Not because I told

00:45:50.100 her when to punish or how to punish or whether to punish. That's not my business. Yeah. But because

00:45:55.280 she was doing what she believed was right without guilt for the first time. She was parenting.

00:46:00.640 She was right. And that's all I seek to, I'm not, I'm no parenting expert. I'm not,

00:46:05.440 I'm not even sure I believe in parenting experts. Okay. Most of the ones I've seen are not terribly

00:46:10.140 impressive, but I do believe in parents exercising their, their better instincts without being told

00:46:17.460 they're going to traumatize the child because it isn't true and it isn't helpful. Yeah. I think also

00:46:23.480 just like the overemphasis on individuality that everyone is special and that you don't have any

00:46:31.200 similarities to anyone else and you shouldn't. And every single kind of misbehavior or any kind of,

00:46:38.600 um, you know, lack of character that you have is not negative. It's just another quirk. It's just

00:46:44.760 your personality type. It's just your Enneagram number. It's just something special and beautiful

00:46:49.540 about you that doesn't actually need to be worked on at all, but needs to be applauded.

00:46:54.940 I think that also gives parents a sense of guilt that like, I can't punish. I can't discipline because

00:47:00.480 I am suppressing this snowflake of a person. Um, and while there are, you know, beautiful,

00:47:08.340 unique characteristics of each person, the fact of the matter is, is that we do have to learn how to

00:47:14.020 function in society with other people. Gosh, there's so much to say about what you just said.

00:47:20.200 That's totally right. It's why, of course, it's a huge part of why religious families tend to do

00:47:24.740 well. People who pass on religion because they're always pushing the kids to look outward, to think

00:47:29.640 of themselves as connected to something higher, to a higher purpose. Community is so important for

00:47:36.100 our wellbeing. We never talk about it. Instead, we tell their kids exactly, as you said, they're so

00:47:40.400 unique in the world, right? They don't need to ever worry about anyone beyond themselves. Well,

00:47:44.660 that's actually very detrimental to their, to their wellbeing. Um, telling them they're part of

00:47:50.320 something greater is actually really good for their wellbeing. But you know, there's, there's another

00:47:55.100 thing too. And that is that it, part of the reason parents never took away the phones and never even

00:48:01.120 limited their use, even during the school day was because they became convinced that the child would

00:48:06.280 be cruelly treated and emotionally, you know, tormented if they weren't with their friends,

00:48:12.040 if they weren't always connected to their friends. I can't, that was the most common response I got

00:48:16.920 when I said, why don't you take it away from her? If you feel like it's harming her, if you feel like

00:48:20.940 her, you know, transgender identification is getting worse, if you feel like, you know, she's getting 0.85

00:48:25.560 more anxiety, more depression, more sleeplessness, less attention span, why can't you take it away?

00:48:30.680 And the parents would often say to me, because she's connected, that's how she talks to her friends.

00:48:34.660 I can't take her away from her friends. And of course, a generation ago, parents had no trouble

00:48:40.920 saying, I'm sorry, you're grounded. You can't go out with your friends. This is best for you.

00:48:45.660 But in this generation, we were so afraid of the trauma that would come in if we ever, you know,

00:48:52.020 cut them off from their friends. And the mental health experts told us that they said that explicitly

00:48:57.140 that, you know, very often kids need to be connected to their friends over their phone and that it was

00:49:02.940 good for them. And they warned parents that it might undermine your relationship with your child

00:49:07.240 if you take away their phone. And so parents couldn't even follow their best instincts.

00:49:13.320 Yeah. I think that also parents just want to avoid bad feelings as much as possible.

00:49:19.400 And if their child says that they feel bad without their phone or they feel bad because their child says

00:49:25.720 they feel bad, the easiest way to numb that pain is to just give your child what you want.

00:49:31.080 So it takes not only discipline for your kid, but discipline in yourself.

00:49:35.620 Like parents have to be able to manage our bad feelings and to say, it doesn't feel good to take

00:49:40.520 this away from my child. I don't want to do it. It's making it a lot harder. I have to deal with

00:49:44.080 the tears. I have to deal with the tantrums. I have to deal with the consequences of doing this hard

00:49:48.720 thing. Parents also have to be willing to go through hard things and to deal with hard feelings if we

00:49:55.440 are going to discipline and parent our kids. I think that's, you know, a whole other layer to

00:50:00.800 this. That's right. But here's the other thing. They get no support. Parents get no support from

00:50:06.660 the culture. None. I mean, the easiest thing to do would be, you know, what, what, you know,

00:50:11.620 the wonderful psychologist Jonathan Haidt has suggested, and we have known for years, they take

00:50:16.640 the kids out of, they take the phones out of schools. Yeah. At least during the school day,

00:50:21.280 they don't have them on their phones. This was so obvious and parents knew it. Parents had been

00:50:25.540 complaining about the harms to their children, but they got no support and they were undermined

00:50:30.780 all the time. So they couldn't trust their own instincts. And you're right. Everything we need

00:50:36.240 to do for our kids is hard. There's nothing harder than sending a kid away from the dinner table

00:50:42.400 because he's been rude or disrespectful or done something bad at the dinner table. I mean,

00:50:47.640 it's such a hassle to parents. If anything, you know, it's the hardest thing you ever have to do

00:50:53.520 is discipline your kid or not give them what they want, but it's also necessary.

00:50:59.000 Yeah, man. You're so right. I know moms who are trying now to get other parents on board to take

00:51:07.620 the phones out of school. They want other parents support and saying, Hey, can't you get on board with

00:51:14.120 this initiative to say no phones in school? And the biggest impediment to that, like the biggest

00:51:20.540 obstacle those, you know, anti phone in school moms have is other moms, other parents. And the biggest 0.97

00:51:28.140 reason is I want to be able to text my kid immediately. I want them to text me back. I want

00:51:32.860 to know that they're okay. Well, guess what? For thousands and thousands of years, we never had that

00:51:37.860 luxury. And now it's parents who are conditioned to that instant gratification of knowing their kid

00:51:45.180 is okay. Um, and so it is an uphill struggle. That's exactly right. We've become so frantic,

00:51:52.280 so anxious. And look, I can tell you my own kid's school, you know, they tried to limit the phones,

00:51:57.760 but I can tell you that every time we have an expert who comes in, they say, well, the phones are good

00:52:02.700 and they're bad. And even the, um, you know, American psychological association, which was so

00:52:08.240 late in issuing any statement when they finally mentioned, you know, the harms of social media,

00:52:13.360 it was incredibly equivocal. It was, Oh, it can be bad, but also good. You know, they never,

00:52:19.060 the surgeon general never did this with cigarettes, right? When they, they warned parents of the harms,

00:52:24.780 which by the way, cigarettes also have positive things about them, right? They're neural stimulants,

00:52:30.900 they're social. There are things that are good about them, but bottom line is they'll give you

00:52:34.920 cancer. And at least they issued the warning. The, the, the, the psychological associations

00:52:40.520 won't even issue, haven't even issued a clear warning about these things. So it makes it so much

00:52:46.400 harder for parents to organize and, and try to take them out of schools, even though we've known

00:52:52.140 for eight years that they're bad for kids. Hmm. Um, what would you say? And I know that we have to

00:52:58.800 end. There are a million other things I could ask you. What would you say to the position that says,

00:53:04.480 okay, I hear you, Abigail, but there are some good things about therapy. There are some good things

00:53:11.300 about children learning how to express their emotions and talk about difficult things and talk

00:53:17.780 about their feelings. We don't want all of that pin up because maybe it can manifest itself in bad ways

00:53:22.940 down the line. What do you say to people who say, I've seen some benefits to SEL or to therapy and

00:53:30.840 how dare you take that away from us? So, um, I think that, you know, I, I try to look at the studies

00:53:39.060 because, um, I think that people tend to exaggerate. You, you often see this with young mothers.

00:53:44.500 They'll see one, you know, one thing that was positive. And then they go around telling every,

00:53:49.820 in their five-year-old and they go around telling everyone, no, no, no, no, SEL is good. It really

00:53:53.720 helped my daughter today. I mean, you have to wait and see how these things play out over time now.

00:53:58.980 Um, so, so I do think it's good to look at research. Um, there's new research out of Australia

00:54:05.720 and England in which they had a control group. One was a meta study of several different kinds of SEL

00:54:12.120 and the other, and then the other looked at, um, coping techniques and teaching specifically kinds

00:54:19.080 of regulation skills, coping techniques and social emotional skills. The other looked at anti-bullying

00:54:24.160 techniques that were taught. They had a control group. They had, um, and they followed these kids

00:54:28.920 over a year and the kids ended up sadder, more anxious or not helped at all and, um, more alienated

00:54:37.320 from their parents. So, um, does giving kids a vocabulary about their emotions help them? Of

00:54:43.940 course, but that's not actually what the schools do. You see what they do is they go in and they,

00:54:49.740 they give them gobbledygook. Sometimes one parent shared with me that her child was being taught

00:54:53.960 anger is red. Um, it was like, happiness is yellow. You know, it was all arbitrary nonsense.

00:55:01.260 They aren't always, I mean, I'll give you an example. Let me, let me just say something real fast.

00:55:05.840 I'll give you an example to, to strengthen that point that you were making. Okay. Here's a good

00:55:10.560 example. When my, my husband told me the story when he was a little boy, um, his father came to

00:55:14.860 pick him up from a friend's house early and he's gotten to the car and he said to his dad, I'm so

00:55:20.820 angry that you picked me up because I was having a good time. And his father said to him, no, you're

00:55:26.180 not, you're frustrated. And that was helpful because now he was saying, no, you're not, you're not angry.

00:55:32.540 Let me, let me give you a new word. That's actually going to help you because it's not

00:55:36.200 exactly anger. And there's no question that's helpful. But if you go into the schools and look

00:55:41.160 at what they're actually doing, all of this feelings focus inevitably funnels towards obsession over bad

00:55:48.160 feelings, obsession over bad pain. And who's in charge of you when you're a kid, who's in charge

00:55:54.880 of making sure that you're not hurt. Inevitably it ends up as a criticism of the parents, the people

00:56:00.000 who were supposed to keep you safe. So in practice, those things very, very often go

00:56:04.700 together. Hmm. That's a really good clarifying point. Thank you so much, Abigail. I'm so excited

00:56:10.400 for people to read this book, bad therapy, why the kids aren't growing up. And I just want to say

00:56:15.840 like your chapter titles are amazing. The chapter titles are sufficient and getting someone to want

00:56:21.480 to read this book. So good. Thank you so much, Abigail. Um, this book I'm guessing is available

00:56:27.360 everywhere. It's available everywhere. Thank you so much, Allie. I really, really appreciate it.

00:56:32.100 Awesome. Thanks so much, Abigail. Have a good day.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 16, 2025

REPLAY ｜ The Dangers of Gentle Parenting, SEL & Empathy ｜ Guest： Abigail Shrier

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