When I got a new puppy and took her to obedience school, I quickly learned that I, the dog owner, was truly the object of the training. The dog’s behavior was only as obedient as the owner was firm. I learned that the dog understands “yes” and “no”. The dog cannot understand “maybe” or “sometimes”.
Every dog owner knows that a trained dog is a happy dog. These dogs know the rules and the boundaries. Trained dogs recognize when they have violated the house rules.
“Gentle parenting” is the current style of raising children, in which parents have abdicated their authority. The children never learn any boundaries. These children are not happy. These children then are sitting ducks for the school counselors who, under the guise of advising and helping, actually promote and encourage the children’s unhappiness. These children never grow up.
Abigail Shrier has just published an important and relevant book on the quandary of American families and child-rearing in the age of school counselors. “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up” explains the exponential rise of teenage drama fed by an industry of antidepressant drugs and therapists. She could have titled her book, “Bad Parenting”.
Under the guise of preventing suicides, schools are promoting suicides. Under the guise of reducing trauma, the schools are promoting trauma. Here is how the therapists encourage depression: they pick at the scabs and nurse the wounds. The therapists make the trivial seem really important.
While raising her children, Shrier encountered medical and school professionals whose actions would harm and not help her children. For example, the National Institute of Mental Health (a federal government agency) has this questionnaire for twelve-year-olds:
- In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?
- In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?
- In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?
- Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how? When?
- Are you having thoughts of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.
No good can ever come from such an intrusive inquiry by a white-coat professional reading a federal diktat. A mature adult would be threatened with such a questionnaire, so to put such chilling ideas to a small child violates the first principle of Hippocrates: Do No Harm.
Schools have embraced “Social Emotional Learning”, which Shrier describes as Social Emotional Meddling. SEL does not soothe; it promotes anxiety among children. Social Emotional Learning is not social, nor emotional, nor learning. Here is why: instead of the school requiring students to complete tasks, they are “checking in” with the student’s state of mind and “emotional health”.
How easy is it to distract a child (or a dog?) from the task at hand? It is very easy to chase the squirrel instead of doing homework. SEL pushes the child to focus on his temporary emotional state of mind instead of doing his work. When the schools focus on emotional states, instead of learning academic material, then no one should be surprised that achievement levels have declined.
Shrier details the toxicity of evaluations. The school asks the student invasive and personal questions. Parents should reject these nosy noosers and their questionnaires. Shrier offers this example from Second Step, a curriculum for social-emotional learning for eighth-graders:
- Have you ever stayed overnight in the hospital?
- Has someone close to you died?
- Have you ever lost a championship game or important competition?
- Do you attend religious services?
- Have you ever worried about the safety of a loved one?
- Have you ever been really embarrassed?
- Have you ever been teased?
After each question, the student is instructed to answer: And how did it make you feel?
These intrusive questionnaires are illegal, due to the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, which Eagle Forum led the effort to enact in 1978. Under PPRA, schools are not supposed to ask questions about religious beliefs or psychological problems of the student. Under PPRA, the schools must obtain parental consent prior to the test. Yet the school administrators are determined to invade your family’s privacy. More parents should demand that the schools recognize their privacy and the parents’ primacy in child-rearing.
“Bad Therapy” details how and why the schools are doing such a bad job of “in loco parentis”. Every parent should be on guard any time the school instructs in non-academic matters.
