Ep 213 | Is Too Much Therapy Hurting Our Kids? | Abigail Shrier | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per Minute
164.38194
Summary
Abigail Schreier is no stranger to controversial topics. She became well known for her book Und irreversible damage where she exposed the transgender phenomena for what it was a social contagion. She is now being backed up by all kinds of research since that book came out. Now she s been proven right. She s now peeling back the curtain on our mental health establishment and what she found will in some way shock you. Her latest book is Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren t Growing up.
Transcript
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and now a blaze media podcast you may have already noticed this but america's young people are
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struggling hard one in six american children about between the ages of two and eight have
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already been diagnosed with a mental behavioral or developmental disorder the american psychological
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association says that more than 20 of the teens have a serious uh problem with suicide they have
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seriously considered it a growing number of our young people are taking multiple psychiatric
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drugs at once more and more they are telling us they are not okay the question is why what has gone
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so drastically wrong is it them is it us is it the iphones what is it maybe our kids mental health
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is just yet another victim of the expert class inserting themselves where they don't belong
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and making a mess of our families we've listened to the experts when they told us how to raise our kids
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we listen when they diagnosed them as some having some sort of disorder we listened when they offered
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solutions that clearly haven't worked maybe it's time we tell the experts to take a hike my next
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guest is no stranger to controversial topics she became well known for her book irreversible damage
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where she exposed the transgender phenomena for what it was a social contagion she is now being
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backed up by all kinds of research since that book came out she took a pounding for it now she's been
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proven right she is now peeling back the curtain on our mental health establishment and what she found
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i think will in some way shock you her latest book is bad therapy why the kids aren't growing up
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please welcome journalist and best-selling author abigail schreier but first let me tell you about
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abigail how are you i'm doing great it's great to see you yeah it's good to see you again how's the
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family we're good thanks for asking how's yours oh good uh i appreciate that you don't travel very
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much because of your kids i think that's uh remarkable good for you um your new book is
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uh filled with things that i think if you're a common sense person they occurred to you but i
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also feel like people feel trapped uh in a way because we're dealing as parents we're dealing with
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things we didn't deal with as kids um and i often say to my wife well i tell you what my grandfather
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would say right and that's not what the world tells you to do right um and that's yeah go ahead
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that that's exactly why i wrote the book i write the book because you know a lot of us have common
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sense a lot of us have wisdom from our families and you know what it's good stuff that wisdom but
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we don't have the proof you know people can you know conservatives you often hear conservatives
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saying things like i've been yelling this from the rooftops for years well that doesn't do very much
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good unfortunately sometimes so what i try to do is i go in i do a full investigation i bring them the
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psychological research that is actually on the side of what our grandparents used to tell us
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and now i say here go yeah i want to give parents the resources and also the metal to go in and say
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i knew it i knew this was the right thing and i knew you all were were trying to put one over on
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me and now i'm not going to let you well i tell you the the refreshing part of the book for me at least
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is the experts i mean i think we went wrong as a society when we started holding experts up
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uh as you know the experts say do this and we stopped listening to ourselves and that's one of
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the bigger problems isn't it absolutely and especially when it comes to things that don't
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require expertise raising good children good people into good citizens does not require expertise and it
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doesn't require knowledge of the brain which most science you know most of these therapists will tell
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you that it does and i went in and i looked at their you know often phony expert you know research
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on the brain or very very limited very very crude and i wanted to give parents the the resources so
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when that teachers and school administrations and therapists try to make them feel stupid or crazy
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they know that they're in the right so what was the biggest shock that you found what were the
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things that just you either just thought thank god i found this i know this or that shocks me i i had no
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idea i think it would have to be the mental health surveys we're giving to kids which are terrifying
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honestly i you know i wouldn't you normally use the words diabolical but but with giving kids a series
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of methods have you tried this this for self-harm burning cutting choking um have you tried a choking
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game here are some drugs have you tried the following drugs gammies and they use all the you
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know the nicknames right i mean if you wanted to break down children teach them the world is a dark
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place give them the impression that everyone is around them is engaging in self-harm right suicidal
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ideation or all kinds of drugs uh these these surveys would be a great way to do it you know in
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page 148 how mental surveys hurt students i read this and i was shocked uh during the past 12 months
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did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that you stop
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doing some unusual activities during the past 12 months did you ever seriously considering
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consider attempting suicide the past 12 months did you make a plan about how you would attempt suicide
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past 12 months how many times did you actually attempt suicide if you're attempting suicide in the last
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12 months did any attempt to result in an injury poisoning or overdose that had to be treated by a doctor
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a nurse and then it goes on about feeling sad and empty and hopeless and angry my gosh i mean this is so
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far away from a childhood that i had and i know things have changed but our kids why is what they're
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suggestible why is this happening and it's put out by the cdc that's what i want people to know it's put
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out by our national mental health uh organizations it's it's all across the country they're giving
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them in every school and i want parents to know something else at the bottom of these surveys they
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often say that that if you're if this survey if the questions cause you distress maybe you should you
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know here is our suicide hotline so even the authors of the surveys know they aren't good for kids
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and you know it that kind of stuff shocks parents but what i did was i tried to bring in the research
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to show that that parents better instincts that this is not good for kids is exactly what our research
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on suicide and suicide contagion shows so give that exactly give that to me yeah so they did this
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amazing um it's called the vienna suicide study uh subway suicide study and the reason was is there
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was a spate of subway suicides in vienna austria uh in the 90s and what the researchers had found
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was that valorizing the subject of a suicide um explaining methods details as a methods and
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repeated mention of suicide were three things that led to suicide contagion so they stopped doing it in
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vienna they had all the media stop publicizing this suicide they were able to depress the rate of
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suicide by 75 and they kept it down for five years right what brought it back did they forget about
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the lesson that they learned it's a great question i wonder if the media just stopped you know listening
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to the ban stopped obeying the ban but they basically had all the media stop doing these things
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and they the suicide rate plummeted well we talk about that we talk about that in um uh with copycat
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killers we we don't do that so why are we doing it with suicide and expecting that it would be better
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well i don't think we expect it would be better i think that our institutes of mental health in this
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country have um a separate agenda i'm not sure why but the materials they're putting in front of
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children the aggressive mental health interventions and i show this in the book are the opposite of what
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you would do if you wanted resilient and healthy kids they are breaking kids down i don't i don't
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know why but um but but that is no doubt the effect of what they're doing you talk about and this is so
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true you talk about kids have monitors all the time and they're constantly being evaluated and watched
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um you know from just parents you know not feeling kids are safe or whatever they're monitored all the
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time and if you want somebody to uh do well at a subject the last thing you do is you have somebody
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looking over their shoulder the whole time that just makes people nervous and anxious and um you know
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and is that part of what our kids are feeling absolutely parents are tracking them on their phones
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i mean one of the things wonderful psychologists i interviewed academic researchers that i interviewed
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is peter gray who's a wonderful academic psychologist and he told me that in studies when they do
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psychological studies on subjects the way they introduce stress if they want to introduce stress
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is all they do is add monitoring and that's enough to create a stress condition for any subject
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so you know i think the i and you talk about this i think the iphone
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is a giant experiment that we're running on all of society all over the planet we have no idea it says
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a lot to me that the people who make these things don't allow their children to have them but they're
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pushing them for our children um but that doesn't explain the increase in suicide alone right right it
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doesn't i mean i'll give you another statistic you know by 2016 according to the cdc one in six
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american children between the ages of two and eight already had a mental health or behavioral diagnosis
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now two to eight year olds weren't on the iphone and by the way i'm no defender of the iphone they
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are terrible social media is awful and if we ban them and if we certainly if we took them out of the
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schools it would be an incredible help and i and i think it's a no-brainer that we ought to do that
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but but it doesn't explain why two to eight year olds were were diagnosed at that rate one in six
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of them by 2016 no it doesn't they didn't have iphones and they didn't have social media so why why
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were they diagnosed with that how did that happen is that just we're looking to find something
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in our children and somebody's willing to give us a diagnosis a few things so i think that parents
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were really uncomfortable asserting their own authority with children um and and they they very
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much adopted what i call therapeutic parenting they always soliciting the kids feelings never
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punishing always giving a kid options this is what they were told was healthy and they ended up with a
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lot of ungovernable kids and then the kids went off to school and they had never heard the word no
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and now you have a kid the teacher can't control and so the first stop is well maybe he there's
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something wrong with him maybe he has oppositional defiant disorder maybe he has adhd and one of
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the things parents told me is that one year a teacher would suggest an adhd diagnosis and the
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next year they wouldn't they would think the next teacher would think they were great so the schools
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of course were getting involved in the diagnosis business but they really they didn't know what they
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were doing of course um which which shouldn't surprise anyone it really isn't their expertise but they
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were no nonetheless because if you give a child a drug um it really does bolt them to their seat
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depending on which medication you choose and it's unfortunately there's a conflict of interest there
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i've had really a lot of friends pull their kids out of school because the teacher of the school
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demanded that they put their child on drug on a drug and go ahead wow no they feel completely at
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liberty to do that i mean that alone is astonishing i mean i i'll ask you this glenn how many parents
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you know have gotten this email from their school you know we know the whatever the recent catastrophe
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is the uvalde shoot shooting was was traumatic um you might not know how to talk to your children
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about it here is what our staff a psych staff suggests for talking to your your children about
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you know the the the mass murder well um you know the the school shooting um they they feel
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they've all they've all become parenting experts they're all telling us how to talk to our own
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children so i can i tell you um i think parents sometimes feel overwhelmed completely overwhelmed
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um they're just trying to hold their head above water they feel very very alone um and i mean i've had
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several suicides in my family uh my mom committed suicide my brother committed suicide i mean just
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it's long pattern um and and so i'm very well aware of the signs i i'm i'm on hyper alert because
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it seems to run through my family um and uh i had my son uh attempt suicide and
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i immediately felt like i i i i don't know what to do i don't know what to do because the
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the consequences are so high and the the advice of i'm so glad that i received was he knows you're
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afraid of that so don't be afraid of that life goes on and i i thought that was insane at first
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but he was right he was right whoever told you that is exactly that's brilliant i have had a few
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very rare therapists tell me that yeah most of them of course immediately get in there they diagnose
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they make the parents so anxious and you're right that is terrifying and what they do is they start
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they start with the medications yes and um look i'm not against medication there are people who need
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psychiatric medication there's no doubt but but you're but that person was where i've heard that
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from other other people who say that you know kids can weaponize this too yeah and um cutting often
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girls will weaponize cutting against their parents because they know it brings the entire household to
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a halt you know their parents love them and they'll do anything the second they you know given to any
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demand uh the second they go down they start with that so um you're right and whoever gave you that
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advice was very wise because very often um you you let the experts in the door and they just go they
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start diagnosing and they start with the medication and they don't stop i know i know um and as you
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point out in the book this is uh going to be a problem i'm trying to remember uh he was the president
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of google for a while uh schmidt and he said to me um this is probably 2009 or 10 he said glenn there's
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going to come a time when children are going to have to change their name because there's going to
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be so much information out there on them it will be almost impossible to go to a job interview okay
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and he and i said what what how do you mean he said it's inescapable the information that's being
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gathered and it will happen in job interviews probably in the mid 2020s you'll start to see this real
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problem and here we are and you talk about that in the book yeah it's it's really interesting you
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know these kids there's no question they spend way too much on time online way too little time with
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each other i mean one of the things i say in the book is look i'm no parenting expert for sure but
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what we have done is we've given kids an incredibly unhealthy life and then when they are bummed out when
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they are stressed out we just pour in mental health resources expecting it to fix them and it doesn't
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it often makes the condition worse because the problem is their life and you know i i suggest that
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the the real thing to do is proceed by subtraction get some of the stuff out of your kid's life all the
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unhealthy stuff like way too much tech um and give them back the healthy stuff the in-person stuff the
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extended family all the stuff we know is good for them it's so weird i don't carry a cell phone um
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you know i don't know i live my whole life without one and if you really needed to get a hold of me in
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emergency people have you know um but my wife won't give one up my kids tell me there's no way dad we can
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you know we got to have it no that's not true would you take the cell phone away from children
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my my kids don't have them good so um i mean look my eldest boys are 13 so you know they haven't
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they start high school next year we'll see what we do um we haven't we we certainly aren't giving
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them the the full smartphone um you know whether we give them a flip phone or some version but
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the kids have done fine bumming calls from their friends when they need to i know and you know
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there's so many around the argument is they're going to be excuse the language socially retarded
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they're not going to be able to function with all their friends it makes them weirdos outcasts and
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tech is going to be such a huge part of their life oh it's the opposite actually if you want to know
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the truth sorry um they're they're more socially adept because they have to talk to people they're way
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more they have to ask directions i mean there's no question it's been a huge i mean the question
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is only how much strength my husband and i have but the truth is is it is it good for them right it's
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not even a question are you kidding me right they have better attention spans they have better i mean
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it's definitely good for them and it's socially retarded are you kidding have you seen a kid who has
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a phone early no i know there's nothing worse they don't make eye contact they you know can't sit
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through a movie they'll text each other sitting next to each other right you're like lean over
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and say something it's right you want to talk about socially backwards so so uh there's no question
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getting that away from them and and a lot of other things that are bad for them you know the the the
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isolation of kids today from community from higher purpose from a sense that they're connected
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from hearing their grandparents stories and their you know cousins oh my gosh yes we they need this
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stuff they need it because they're going to go through hard times and they need to know that their
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people got through hard times i was sitting with my wife's mom last night at the table and my kids were
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both out and she was just talking up just saying the stuff that my grandmother used to say and i so
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wanted my kids in the house because they have to hear that and you may have hated it when you were
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a kid because you're like oh that's that story again you know if i heard one more story about the
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great depression when i was a kid but that makes a difference to me now a great difference that's
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that's right you know i realized something we stopped telling those stories completely i remember
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you remember the meme that used to go around like the the joke and it was on every greeting card
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you know my my parents walked five miles up yeah right they held to school every day you don't
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even see that meme anymore and the reason you don't is people stop telling what they're you know maybe
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they exaggerated i don't know but we stopped telling those stories to our kids so now instead what we
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do is attend to every minor hurt and worry they have it magnifies their worry and also they have no
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proof that they come from tough people that people who have gotten through harder things you know
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they're gonna need that i know they do um i i was struggling with some you know you know what
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it's like to stand up against the mobs today and i was having a bad time and i started doing some
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work on my family history and i found that my uh great uncle died in andersonville which was the
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horrid prison camp in the south during the civil war and my uh my uh great great grandfather fought in
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the civil war and was captured so they both went to andersonville but that gave me this sense of
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i come from people who stand i come from people who have been in the worst i mean that's compared to
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the concentration camps of the 30s they endured they endured um and it means something
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that's exactly right you know i i interviewed one of the people i interviewed was this wonderful
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harvard medical school psychiatrist whose parents had survived auschwitz and you know other concentration
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camps and one of the they survived in the sewer pipes in poland they escaped to the sewer pipes and one
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of the things he told me was that not only does that you know has that story given him strength
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but also one of the things that that that made his parents that got them through was memories of their
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families that they would replay in their mind these beautiful memories of their extended families
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and just kept them going and he said he sees young harvard you know university students and he says
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they don't know about their family histories why is that why have we stopped i think we decided we
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were going to stop burdening our young people with their you know those stories instead we were going
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to focus entirely on them as unique and atomized individuals it was the opposite of what we would do
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if we wanted to actually give them a sense of well-being but we started treating them as so unique in the
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world so precious that we ripped them from the social fabric we ripped them from the people
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they're connected to we didn't want to burden them with it but we also didn't realize it would have
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strengthened them too i have to tell you um because i've always felt my children are going to need
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oodles of therapy because i've always treated them you know in appropriate ways like i treat them with
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respect um and so they've gone all over the world with me they've been with presidents and but they're
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expected to behave and listen and contribute if you can um uh and i talked to them about the world that's
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going on and how different it is and that what's changing and i think my kids uh now that they're
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you know 19 and 20 um are stronger because of that then they can they can have conversations with
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anyone i i have no doubt that they are because the thing is that's what's good for kids skills
00:25:10.460
give them skills put them in hard situations like here's a president you have to make conversation
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with whatever it is right and expect them to do it and have high expectations then they'll go out in
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the world and they'll meet a new challenge and say i can talk to my boss i just talked to the president
00:25:25.520
so but is the problem is the problem them or us because like you just said i gotta tell you man
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the you know netflix or whatever is such a great break at times and you feel like a bad parents you're
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like you know what's in front of the tv for a while because you just need the break so is it us where
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our parents or grandparents didn't get that opportunity to break right we're we're in
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overload right we all are i mean you know everything can be ordered up instantly for us
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we are flooded with information we are flooded with netflix as you say i mean you know people have
00:26:08.900
called it an addiction economy it really really is but but all that stuff we know and and by the way
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obviously i partake of it too i'm not pointing fingers but what we know we have to proceed by
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subtraction we know it's unhealthy it's not actually healthy for us to order up any show any time of day
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or night and the reason it is is it's accommodating our every whim and then we are less we are less able
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to sit through boredom or you know anything that displeases us it it makes us weaker in a way and
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how do you do that in an now kind of environment how how do you how do you do that well well i think
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there's a few things the easiest thing to do of course would be to ban phones during the school day
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we don't even do that i mean that's a no-brainer right just don't let them text during the day when
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they're actually with their friend right right i mean there is really no reason to be texting your
00:27:08.620
friend while you're with your friend um so that would be one obvious and very easy situation but
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the other thing would just be to you know that that reconnect them in person to people who care
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about them who love them make sure they see grandparents make sure they have cousins around
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we we took them away we took everyone who was the non-expert away from the child because we decided
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they their their child rearing wasn't expert so it was less good and we hired people the kids knew
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they didn't really care about them you always know that and we in in that so doing we made them a lot
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less resilient because mom got no or dad whoever was in charge got no pushback so there was no we
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weren't subjecting kids to a range of different styles and approaches it was all one and it was all being
00:28:00.140
directed usually by mom and and usually she was directed by some mental health expert
00:28:05.340
so and increasingly so from the schools to um talk to me about you know um uh subtraction of things that
00:28:16.700
are harmful increasingly that's our school um i mean you know you are i think vindicated here especially
00:28:27.300
with the latest reports coming out on your first book um i mean that is extraordinarily harmful
00:28:34.520
uh to to our kids um and and yet all of this stuff is being preached at school can you
00:28:46.260
do it with your kids in school or is that too much of an influence of the negative it's it's a really good
00:28:55.000
question i guess it depends on the school but is school a problem schools are not your friend
00:29:00.160
and when you they are not parents friends and when they say that oh this we're just having the mental
00:29:06.300
health experts meet you know talk to your kids they're not your friends either right that's what
00:29:11.600
parents need to know and why do you show me why you say that well because a few things first of all
00:29:19.220
the you know the last book i wrote was all about an epidemic that was largely encouraged by school
00:29:24.460
counselors right um that's what they would do they would you know affirm a child's transgender
00:29:29.980
identity and deceive parents the act of the school policy was and still is in many places to lie to the
00:29:37.020
parents and as i show in the book the social emotional learning uh uh exercises are very much the
00:29:43.760
same the parents they don't even call them parents caregivers that's what we're reduced to
00:29:48.400
are outsiders and what who presides over it all the teacher the school counselor and they know best
00:29:55.180
they are the trusted adults that are always talked about in the materials and it's the same sort of
00:30:00.960
thing the the um effort to undermine child parent relationships and is is real and i have to tell you
00:30:08.000
that's what i argue in the book would happen and after i finished the book two studies came out
00:30:13.720
the researchers in europe were looking into the same things that i was claiming in the book
00:30:18.320
in europe they were doing these social emotional exercises with the kids in both australia and the uk
00:30:25.080
and um and two major reports came out this is academic research peer-reviewed and they said that these
00:30:32.520
techniques with kids the coping mechanisms uh the emotional dysregulate the emotional regulation
00:30:38.620
techniques were making kids sadder more anxious and more alienated from their parents so and it's
00:30:45.300
the same thing so explain that to me the coping mechanisms everybody thinks oh you know just give
00:30:51.400
them something to fidget with or give them you know a stress ball or they've could they count to 10 and
00:30:57.420
breathe why are those so bad well because they start by saying think about a time when you were sad
00:31:03.860
does anyone want to share a time when you were disappointed or let down or sad so now we're
00:31:10.080
increasing what they call rumination the really the number one symptom of depression which is
00:31:15.680
dwelling on a past pain because in order to teach the mechanisms you have to first to induce
00:31:21.280
sadness in the group right if there's happiness there's nothing to teach them if you're asking about
00:31:26.620
a time that was great in your life there's nothing to teach so you start by inducing sadness in the in
00:31:33.000
the class which of course is bonkers but but let me let me tell you something else who's in charge of
00:31:39.860
keeping a child well and safe the parents so inevitably it tees up criticism of parents why
00:31:47.300
what was happening well my mom went out that day or my mom didn't have time to look at my homework and
00:31:53.360
i was really sad the the criticism of the parent is almost inevitable because you're asking kids
00:31:58.600
with this authority to talk about a time when they were sad to share their trauma well whose fault is
00:32:04.920
that that the child was traumatized so can i jump to this um because there's another thing that was
00:32:11.380
uh shocking to me in the book where um through uh sel they are asking i can't remember here it is
00:32:21.460
homework i spy and uh seventh graders are encouraged to play a game that might be called
00:32:30.460
hero of the soviet union you're a private investigator it prompts you've been hired by
00:32:36.380
an unnamed source to spy on your family the source wants to find out all the various feelings
00:32:42.660
that one or more of your family members have while doing activities at home you won't be able to talk to
00:32:48.960
your family you don't want to blow your cover so you'll have to use your keen skills of observation
00:32:54.700
and they're trying to find out from the kids through the parents body language and the family's body
00:33:03.580
language what's happening in the family this is like nazis are as you say hero of the soviet union
00:33:10.680
i mean they're asking kids to spy on their families and report back and that's a direct quote from the
00:33:17.060
social emotional learning materials and you know i i like that exercise because it just makes explicit
00:33:23.460
what all the others it runs it's a theme that runs through all the exercise you know so many of the
00:33:28.380
exercises i looked at which are look we're here to talk about your emotions think about a time when you
00:33:33.940
might be sad oh then bring it into class and remember that all these teachers and school counselors are
00:33:39.780
mandatory reporters to child services so anything they hear about that sounds fishy to them
00:33:45.640
like parent yelling at them which they in some of the materials indicate is abusive in their view
00:33:52.740
um they can easily call child services on um and that's that's how they're thinking they're encouraging
00:33:59.420
children to think with them about whether their parents are doing a good job so let me ask you um
00:34:05.940
and i don't know if you can answer this but um you know when um
00:34:10.640
when medicine was introduced to put you under for a surgery the surgeons didn't like it and the
00:34:20.280
surgeons fought against it because at the time what made a good surgeon was a fast cut somebody who
00:34:31.040
could go in and amputate a leg the fastest okay somebody who could go in and remove something
00:34:37.960
the fastest it wasn't the best it was make it stop fast okay so when they introduced ether a lot of
00:34:48.700
these doctors knew wait a minute i'm fast i'm not necessarily good i'm fast and so the standards
00:34:56.840
changed and a lot of the doctors fought against anesthesia wow do you have any idea are these
00:35:05.000
is this is this whole thing just self-perpetuating on what the stupidity on ego on what what is the
00:35:19.360
motivation when you can show this stuff is harmful right so i i tried to go back and go through the
00:35:27.200
psychological research to prove that it's harmful because it's not just our instincts i mean what i
00:35:32.220
wanted parents to know is not just common sense there's real data and real research showing that
00:35:36.960
all of this is harmful it's exactly what you want all of these programs in in schools these social
00:35:43.360
emotional programs um the expanded psych staffs the go see the school counselor and the all the
00:35:49.600
accommodation for kids who don't need it it's exactly what you would do if you wanted to make kids
00:35:54.240
weaker if you wanted to break kids down and you can't track motive at all i mean because it's an
00:36:02.860
industry right i mean it's grown i can only tell you that since 1986 nearly every decade has seen a
00:36:10.580
doubling in our expenditure on mental health and the lion's share of that is going to young people it's
00:36:16.220
going to kids and adolescents they have presided over the worst downward spiral of mental health
00:36:22.540
um that we've seen and they've been you know working on us the whole time and that's the
00:36:28.440
problem as i you know as i argue the rates of incidence of problem of disease of disorder should
00:36:34.960
be going down with increased treatment instead it's been skyrocketing um and i don't think that's
00:36:40.760
an accident i don't think that the treatments are not only unhelpful they're counterproductive
00:36:45.400
they're making the problem worse getting kids to constantly focus on their feelings
00:36:49.780
talk about their sad feelings focus on each other's feelings they're creating a tyranny of
00:36:55.260
feelings and they're tyrannizing themselves and tyrannizing each other so let me just play devil's
00:36:59.620
advocate here for a second um my father had some horrible things happen to him when he was young
00:37:08.460
horrible his father did things to him that just are unspeakable he never told anyone in the family
00:37:18.560
until about 15 years before he died he told me because i asked him questions dad why were you so
00:37:30.960
distant i remember a fishing trip and i said that was just the weirdest awkward moment of our relationship
00:37:39.840
do you remember that and he told me what happened on a fishing he remembered that and he told me what
00:37:47.000
he was trying to avoid uh because that was such bad memories and i wanted to go fishing uh so he took me
00:37:54.600
um you know there are some things that you should share and delve and and and open up about the old
00:38:03.960
generation world war ii they never talked about it never now everybody's pouring their feelings out
00:38:12.360
is there a happy medium well let's question it's it's a good question here's what i'll say
00:38:19.480
two things um one is that even the most traumatized people who've gone through horrible things and have been
00:38:26.600
in some ways scarred by it aren't necessarily helped by talk therapy okay so it's not always a good thing to
00:38:35.080
just get it out sometimes people know that not talking about it is best i interviewed a wonderful
00:38:41.560
man richard bing who who works with ex-convicts in plymouth england and these kids these people
00:38:47.560
these ex-convicts went through unbelievable abuses children and he said sometimes the best way to help
00:38:54.120
them is not by pushing them to talk about it because it's re-traumatizing and here's what i'm afraid of
00:39:00.280
in the schools we're not helping the kids who didn't start out with problems because we're
00:39:05.480
encouraging them to think of themselves as traumatized when they aren't and we're not
00:39:09.880
helping the kids who were traumatized why because having a counselor or a school teacher casually
00:39:17.320
ask you about your bad feelings right before your math test when you went through some serious pain you
00:39:23.880
don't need a counselor who's going to take the summer off you need you may need serious intervention
00:39:30.200
on an ongoing basis but having your teacher inquire about your past pain with the class is
00:39:36.840
counterproductive for someone who actually went through something very hard our american values are
00:39:42.760
under attack um our schools are under attack our families are under attack our financial system
00:39:50.040
is under attack from inside and out it's frankly broken uh when you have three gigantic ceos
00:39:59.400
those when you have when you have the uh head of citibank selling his shares when you have uh bezos
00:40:09.880
selling his shares and amazon and there's three of them i can't remember what the third one is
00:40:14.600
they've sold to the tune of nine billion dollars of their own shares what do they know that i don't know
00:40:22.600
what's coming i recommend please that you take some of your hard-earned savings uh and you put it into an
00:40:31.080
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now back to abigail this is i'm so i'm so glad you are the one who is doing all this research because um
00:41:35.400
um this is a hard case to make to moms and to people who are who are naturally nurturing you know it's
00:41:47.080
one thing for a guy to say buck up buttercup it's another for a mom to say no this is not good how do you
00:41:56.280
convince the people who really just think they're doing the right thing for their kids
00:42:03.480
kids by keeping them in swaddling clothes well here's the problem it's not that we need to change
00:42:12.600
every mom okay the problem is there's no balance the dads no one is telling them you're fine shake
00:42:20.040
it off no one is saying you'll live remember we used to hear that all the time you'll live every adult
00:42:26.120
used to say it now no one says it not even their soccer coach is allowed to say it so the problem is not
00:42:32.760
is not that moms you know are over coddling or dads are over coddling it's that there's absolutely no
00:42:37.960
balance and the dad is very often told you don't know what you're doing i know i talked to the
00:42:43.240
expert yes you have to get on the program yes and it in my mind the biggest change in the last
00:42:48.920
generation has not been moms it's been dads there's there they don't feel like their way their instincts
00:42:55.960
are good they feel like they're inexpert and backwards that's what they've been told and they're afraid to
00:43:01.240
do any you know give the kid any balance so it's interesting because i have a wonderful wife we have
00:43:06.920
a great relationship and we talk about everything when it comes to the kids and disciplining the kids
00:43:13.240
and we both feel that there is to everything there is a season sometimes dad needs to handle it
00:43:21.800
sometimes mom needs to handle it mom doesn't understand how to handle the boy and i don't necessarily
00:43:30.040
understand how to handle the girl because i i mean everything when i say something to my daughter
00:43:36.840
every my wife sometimes will look at me like what the hell are you even thinking i don't know i you
00:43:42.360
know and she does that to my son my son will walk out of the room and i'll say what that what that's just
00:43:49.640
that plays into everything it is you know and it takes that balance you have to have that balance of no
00:44:01.000
but i love you right but no exactly yeah exactly right it never needs to be cold the idea that
00:44:09.480
you know if you tell a kid no we're going back to some you know era of the 50s or whatever imagined
00:44:15.000
era where parents were authoritarian and cold no there's these kids never hear the word no they're
00:44:21.080
all the you know gentle parenting therapists are telling parents never say it it's cruel never
00:44:26.680
punish that that'll cause emotional injury these kids are never being told you'll live and the
00:44:33.080
problem is kids don't know they're looking to parents to decide should i cry now should i lie on the
00:44:40.280
field or should i try to get up that's so great there's nothing better than when you're a parent
00:44:46.600
you learn this quickly kid falls and you go who just fell down and they laugh you say oh my gosh they
00:44:55.880
immediately cry they do look to you it's amazing exact um that's exactly yeah so the um
00:45:05.480
the experts are out there and they are growing and growing in power and stature and yet
00:45:16.760
you are proving that they are part of the problem um like the um the american pediatric association
00:45:27.000
where the hell were they during covid exactly exactly the mental health experts who now hold
00:45:33.800
themselves as the solution to the problem had nothing to say when we were heading into a second
00:45:40.120
year of lockdowns for these children and by the way it was obvious every parent knew it parents
00:45:46.200
protested and they were ignored but you know what the american psychological association the american
00:45:50.840
psychiatric association school counselors association you know what they've been preoccupied by
00:45:55.640
and and some of them went to congress to lecture on police tactics climate change um you know
00:46:02.040
racial inequities that's what they had time to lecture the public now on now they think there's
00:46:07.400
the solution to kids mental problem mental health problems when they had nothing to say about
00:46:12.600
the most foreseeable catastrophe how is this affecting us because i just thought about this today
00:46:18.520
where you know the this week the state of the union was happening and they're going to talk about
00:46:24.280
um ivf and i thought wow we're we're in a psychological war with china there are people that want to go to war
00:46:37.320
in ukraine our economy is falling apart kids are killing themselves we've got fentanyl coming across the border
00:46:45.640
and you want to talk about what not that it's not important but are you kidding me it's we're t we
00:46:54.440
we're not teaching critical thinking and we're not teaching priorities
00:47:01.160
it's a big problem i i i couldn't agree with you more here i just you know uh i think that's why the
00:47:08.600
group that i trust the most is parents they're the only ones with skin in the game they're the only ones
00:47:14.280
who are laser focused but they are beaten down they're beaten down that's right but i write for
00:47:22.120
them i mean that's what i try to get my books into the hands of parents so that they can go in and
00:47:27.480
whatever decision they want to make at least they have more information so what is the um
00:47:37.080
what is the difference in the generations far as generation z disconnecting from
00:47:43.960
the parents yet living in the house um you know not not paying for it not not even getting a
00:47:51.000
driver's license it's a different world and the tendency is to say well it's a new generation
00:48:00.600
i've thought of this a million times my grandfather um he would do things and say things that we'd all go
00:48:09.160
like he's just grandpa okay uh because times changed and now i'm wondering am i just am i just
00:48:19.240
out of step and all of this stuff is has moved past me and i it's you can't say
00:48:28.360
suck it up put the damn phone away go outside and find some rocks and some sticks and build something
00:48:35.960
you know i i think that um there's no question times have changed but the the problem with this
00:48:45.720
generation is it's so manifestly suffering and more importantly they're not even proud of themselves
00:48:53.000
they think they're weak because the truth is look hairstyles may change fashion may change but a man
00:48:59.240
a young man or a woman who's living at home with parents because she can't hold down a job and there's
00:49:05.000
nothing wrong with her she's living you know the the number of young people 18 to 25 who are living
00:49:10.600
with their parents choosing to um is alarming um and it's because you know with with our even with
00:49:17.160
our low unemployment they don't want to leave the house they don't want to take on adult
00:49:22.360
responsibilities and they're not really proud of themselves either um that's the thing when you have
00:49:27.640
capacity when you can do things in the world when you feel efficacious you also feel good i mean
00:49:33.640
as i say in the book you know adulthood is actually the cure for adolescent angst so when we help
00:49:40.120
them avoid adulthood and all responsibilities we're really doing them a disservice um that same therapist
00:49:47.240
told me start adopting the phrase huh that's going to be interesting to see how you work that out
00:49:56.040
and it takes i love that i know it takes all of the responsibility that they're trying to shove on
00:50:03.560
you and you say no it's your turn now you gotta do it and i'm gonna have a good time watching you figure
00:50:10.200
that out because i know you'll come up with the solution good luck to you well you know it's also a way
00:50:17.800
i love that and it's also a way of telling your kids i believe you can yes see when you rush in to
00:50:24.520
solve every problem what you're telling them is this is above your pay grade you can't and you must always
00:50:30.200
check in with me can empathy make us mean yes yes it can it goes along with and there's great research on
00:50:42.440
this empathy goes along with an amazing cruelty to the out group so it preferences the feelings of
00:50:48.360
the in group or or the you know whoever the victim is at the expense of the out group and in fact
00:50:55.080
there's a wonderful psychology academic psychologist paul bloom who wrote a wonderful book about this
00:50:59.480
called against empathy but what he says in the book is that if you make fairness your guide you can
00:51:05.160
treat everyone fairly but if you make empathy your guide we only have the ability we're only built to
00:51:11.240
empathize with one or two people at the same time we can't do it so what it often goes along with is
00:51:17.160
great cruelty to everyone else that seems to be what is happening throughout the world they're teaching
00:51:26.360
equity they're teaching social justice and i mean i see it now on the streets with um with people who
00:51:37.160
will just say you know all those people just need to be rounded up you know they're just really they're
00:51:42.040
really a problem and they just need to go away you know i had somebody on the air this is years ago but
00:51:47.160
i always use it as an example but it's happening now a guy who was a palestinian called my show right
00:51:53.800
after september 11 and said look we wouldn't have a problem with all these jews if there just weren't all
00:51:58.680
those jews and you i empathize with the palestinian people i empathize with the people that are now
00:52:07.960
homeless but i also look at this and you have to say you have to have a right or wrong first you have to
00:52:17.480
know i'm sorry you are paying a price but the germans also paid a price because they were putting people
00:52:24.680
in ovens and until you stop that behavior and you all look at each other go we shouldn't vote that
00:52:32.040
way anymore you i can't i can't help you does that make sense yes yes it does you know the problem
00:52:40.600
with therapy in general a therapeutic or empathetic approach is that it's amoral there's that's the whole
00:52:46.360
point of therapy it's non-judgmental and that if that is your only guide and i'm not saying therapy can
00:52:52.360
never be useful of course it can but if that is your only guide if empathy is your only guide then
00:52:58.040
you're going to lead to what we're seeing now we're seeing now stores in san francisco that have no
00:53:02.360
zionists allowed sign uh which is the same thing as saying no believe it or not believe it or not
00:53:07.400
that's not san francisco that's salt lake city wow yeah wow yeah wow uh i mean that's what i'm saying
00:53:17.480
we're seeing this across the country and they have tremendous empathy what they don't have is
00:53:30.680
i've seen a lot in my life i'm i'm a wannabe historian and self-educated guy just read a lot
00:53:38.200
and and study history i see the patterns and the cycles that repeat um and i think we're coming to
00:53:48.040
the end of this cycle where we'll start to swing back now usually you don't without real tragedy
00:53:57.000
but people are starting to white wake up some and go you know none of this is working what are we doing
00:54:04.440
but i don't know if we can do it in time um are you optimistic about society and
00:54:12.280
and and the future of where we are as a as a people and a civilization
00:54:20.120
you know i'm optimistic about some of it um yes and here's here's the thing a lot of our biggest
00:54:28.040
problems we can solve so the way kids are being raised we can fix that that's really easy it starts
00:54:34.440
in your home and you can absolutely get the bad influences out um you know obviously we have
00:54:41.720
certain problems in the country we can't we have this open border right now i don't know if if we
00:54:47.720
remain unserious about that i just don't know how we won't end up looking like europe um so yes you know
00:54:55.960
i i i with this open border we know that there are people coming in that wish us ill it took 19 hijackers
00:55:04.440
if we have uh another terrorist attack and it's a bad one i could see good people just saying
00:55:16.360
make it stop i don't care how you make it stop make it stop and you know empathy and compassion and
00:55:26.760
reason and justice and all of that stuff goes way out the window and and you're seeing this um
00:55:37.160
anger and the unwillingness to use reason that's what concerns me and we're seeing this
00:55:46.200
honestly all this you know the climate hysteria that you see on the left where parents were
00:55:52.360
so working their children up about the world ending and honestly the parents needed mental health care
00:55:59.480
in many cases i mean uh you know there's an incredible study that came out from gene twangy
00:56:04.280
showing that conservative boys from sorry boys from liberal families had worse mental health than
00:56:11.000
girls from conservative families why and so we don't know why there are a lot of theories but
00:56:18.360
clearly a few things one it's clearly environmental it's clearly the the the what we're surrounding
00:56:25.080
them with right right it's also clearly not social media girls are on a lot more social media than
00:56:30.680
boys and that's true of every kind of political family you know whatever the family boys are more
00:56:36.360
suicidal in liberal families than conservative girls yes they in in terms of anxiety and depression the
00:56:44.920
girls at from conservative families are doing better now there are a few reasons that might be one
00:56:50.360
parents are much less likely to hand the family over to a mental health expert and bring a mental health
00:56:56.120
expert in the door okay um so there's that but also um you know religion sense of higher purpose all
00:57:04.520
community all things we know are good for kids these aren't expensive see that's what i'm optimistic
00:57:11.160
about all of these solutions don't cost anything i know it doesn't cost anything to keep a phone from
00:57:16.920
your child it only costs you give it to them right so so it's yeah no go ahead so the biggest things we
00:57:24.600
can give them grandparents independence genuine independence teaching them a skill and then having them go out
00:57:30.760
and use it whatever it is all these things that are so good for them they actually don't cost any money
00:57:37.480
and um we can do them easily ourselves and and you say look we're sending kids off to these schools and
00:57:43.560
god knows what's in the school and that's true and some parents may want to just pull their kids out of
00:57:48.440
school but you know what we can do we can make sure that before our kids go off to school they know what we
00:57:53.480
believe they know what's true if you arm them with that you're already giving them a leg up and i have
00:58:01.800
told my kids look sitting around talking about your feelings is just a way to make you sad you're fine i
00:58:07.960
wanted to talk to you about religion and its role you said that they have to have something bigger than
00:58:13.000
themselves but the schools are actually saying social justice it's bigger than you racism bigger
00:58:23.160
than you you have to stop caring so much about you and solve this global warming it's bigger than you
00:58:32.600
why it doesn't the bigger than you work there and it does many times with god
00:58:38.920
because they're they're what they're doing is marinating in a victimhood right so either the
00:58:46.440
victimhood of my diagnosis the victimhood of my white of the white oppression the victimhood of my
00:58:51.800
you know gay identity lgbtq plus identity whatever it is it's incapacitating all of those identities are
00:58:59.080
saying to a kid you're limited you can't you're oppressed it's extraordinarily unhealthy um it's the
00:59:06.760
opposite of what you would do if you were say in favor of a liberal movement or the civil rights
00:59:11.400
movement and you wanted to make a positive change in the world yeah that's very very different from
00:59:15.960
sitting around saying everyone's oppressed you um now let's take to the streets and talk about how
00:59:21.160
the world's going to end yeah i i um i i think you're right on that it's it's i tried to swear off the
00:59:29.480
word evil because i think it's thrown around too much there is evil and it's identified october 7th
00:59:37.320
that was evil um but uh i couldn't think of another word when it came to
00:59:46.760
an ideology that was preaching there's no forgiveness there's no way back and you won't
00:59:56.280
make it unless you stop this it's just evil it just destroys people i i think that we're getting
01:00:06.360
there's a lot of nihilism on the left but unfortunately there's a growing amount of
01:00:10.200
gloom and doom on the right as well and there there there is this increasingly strong you know
01:00:16.440
you know you see it in the andrew tate type of things where it's very dark and it's turning people
01:00:22.760
against things like marriage and family and the idea is we should give up on all those things well
01:00:28.360
those things are ultimately the best things in life yes and and telling people to give up on this
01:00:34.680
country when it's done such remarkable things for all of us is is really not a great message for kids
01:00:41.640
and it's it's not right i'm sorry it's not the right thing to do i i agree with you um which brings me
01:00:47.640
back to action oriented and state oriented talk about that so sure so there's a reason that the
01:00:56.520
best you know football coaches at halftime you know say let's focus on the game ahead here's what
01:01:02.120
we have to do you do this you go do this you cover him whatever it is they lay out a plan and they focus
01:01:08.360
every player on the task ahead why because it turns out if you have a task or or a goal orientation you are
01:01:16.760
more likely to complete it but if you adopt the opposite orientation and they say to kids so how
01:01:24.200
are you doing with your parents divorce at halftime if you focus on your own feelings and state you are
01:01:30.680
less likely to be able to complete any task that's what our schools are doing to kids in the middle of
01:01:36.120
the day they're asking kids tell me how you're feeling we're just doing an emotions check-in how are you
01:01:42.200
feeling right before the kids have to do something really hard like take a math test it's the
01:01:47.480
opposite of what we should be doing if we want them to actually be successful and everything in
01:01:52.680
society is is it used to be action-based i mean i remember you know i pout or something my mom would say
01:02:02.840
clean your room you'll feel better um you know go out and do something go out and and make something
01:02:10.840
produce something make somebody happy do something and now it's all me me me me me and you get trapped
01:02:18.520
in that to the point where you can't take action you're just paralyzed exactly i mean nobody's saying
01:02:25.960
that if you have a broken a kid with a broken leg you tell him to keep playing soccer right so nobody is
01:02:32.280
saying that the point is for minor injuries or minor disappointments telling a kid to go out and do
01:02:39.240
something is an incredible way of actually lifting them up and every study has showed this the recent
01:02:46.200
most recent study was that i think came out a week or so ago was that dancing does more for your mental
01:02:51.800
health it does more for moderate to mild to moderate depression than antidepressants or or therapy
01:02:59.800
getting out and moving any exercise is remarkably good at lifting your mood and instead we're giving
01:03:08.360
kids an unhealthy life and then we're putting them on a series of antidepressants it's not helping so i
01:03:13.720
remember um i didn't really because we didn't label things when i was growing up um riddled with add
01:03:21.480
i didn't know it didn't didn't care didn't make a difference and i think i was probably 35 when my staff
01:03:30.120
finally we were talking about add in the news and i'm like a bunch of hogwash and uh and they said uh
01:03:36.600
glenn you know somebody that has add like crazy and i'm like who and they all said you and so we had
01:03:46.680
a doctor i'm like no i know had a doctor come in and and analyze on the air and oh he got like three
01:03:53.320
questions in and he's like you are a case study for add and uh so one of the doctors at nyu
01:04:02.840
um was writing a writing a book about add and how you can either look at that as a blessing or a curse
01:04:12.680
and it's it's a blessing if you adapt if you're giving your kids medication which by the way i tried
01:04:23.080
medication for add it'll screw with you so many different ways your kid doesn't know what sides
01:04:31.000
of his personality is good and what's bad and what to shave off never give that stuff to your kids
01:04:38.840
um and then uh and so one day the the doctor said explain your day how do you do your job and i
01:04:47.880
explained what's in front of me what's in my ear and everything else he said don't you realize people
01:04:53.400
with add either end up under a bridge or they're very successful because they've learned how to
01:04:59.480
process so much stuff all at once we're taking blessings and making them into curses i i love that
01:05:08.520
what you just said is perfect that's exactly right that's exactly what i talk about in the book the
01:05:13.400
number of people who are wildly successful with untreated adhd is shocking shocking now that doesn't
01:05:20.120
mean you don't do you know you don't adapt in certain ways handing your kid a phone all the time
01:05:25.080
you know to play on youtube when they already are having a trouble with attention it's probably not
01:05:29.800
great you know right right but i'll tell you something else you know what they do in other
01:05:35.320
countries this is amazing this i interviewed this wonderful woman who's a cross-cultural psychologist
01:05:40.040
and she showed me pictures of classrooms in china and russia and other countries and you know they're
01:05:47.080
completely bare and do you know why because they want all kids to focus on the teacher at the front
01:05:54.200
so there are these bare classrooms with the only interesting thing is maybe the alphabet at the
01:05:59.320
front of the room what we do in in america is we create child's classrooms looks like mardi gras
01:06:06.200
celebrations right and then you have kids with attention spans well i mean in my my kids classroom
01:06:11.880
they had a working um traffic light that would go from red to yellow to green i'm not saying you
01:06:18.040
know that wasn't fun but i'm just saying like we give these kids these crazy environments and then
01:06:23.960
we're shocked when they can't you know pay attention um whereas we we could do more to help them
01:06:31.000
but but in any case you're right these things become amazing strengths see there are no quirky people
01:06:36.920
in the next generation they all just have a mental health diagnosis abigail thank you so much for
01:06:43.880
all of your hard work thank you for being brave enough to do the things that you've done and uh and
01:06:50.760
really put yourself out there it's you are um in in my book you are um a true courageous woman who
01:07:02.120
will be remembered for a long time thank you that's so kind of you to say it it's always great to
01:07:08.040
talk to you glenn it's great to talk to you the name of the book um read it you will feel vindicated
01:07:14.200
um but you'll understand why and you'll be able to teach it to others bad therapy why the kids
01:07:20.280
aren't growing up by abigail schreier thank you abigail thank you so much you bet
01:07:25.800
just a reminder i'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it