How to Land Your Kid in Therapy

[Selene]

Folks:

It is rare that someone just flat out fucking nails a concept and drives it out of the park, "but," Lori Gotlieb does it in the July/August Atlantic Magazine here. As she notes:

But in that space between Joan Crawford and June Cleaver, where most of us fall, it seemed like a lot could go wrong in the kid-raising department.

As a practicing therapist, she began getting a steady sequence of patients in their early 20's or 30's who had "great parents." "great jobs" and "great friends," and they were not bullshitting the therapist,

they had all those things, but they were depressed, adrift and "just not happy!"

Until, one day, another question occurred to me: Was it possible these parents had done too much?

I do not want to spoil this lengthy article, so one more "teaser:"

"It's like the way our body's immune system develops," he explained. "You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won't know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle. I know parents who call up the school to complain if their kid doesn't get to be in the school play or make the cut for the baseball team. I know of one kid who said that he didn't like another kid in the carpool, so instead of having their child learn to tolerate the other kid, they offered to drive him to school themselves. By the time they're teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is 'I can fix this.'"

I did not raise my children with the "I can fix this" methodology. Additionally, I have always advised friends, clients and strangers to let the child figure it our and be ready to support them with logic and guidance when they make their choices.

Great article.

Adam

I also just heard her interviewed and she was excellent

Edited June 19, 2011 by Selene

[caroljane]

Folks:

It is rare that someone just flat out fucking nails a concept and drives it out of the park, "but," Lori Gotlieb does it in the July/August Atlantic Magazine here. As she notes:

But in that space between Joan Crawford and June Cleaver, where most of us fall, it seemed like a lot could go wrong in the kid-raising department.

As a practicing therapist, she began getting a steady sequence of patients in their early 20's or 30's who had "great parents." "great jobs" and "great friends," and they were not bullshitting the therapist,

they had all those things, but they were depressed, adrift and "just not happy!"

Until, one day, another question occurred to me: Was it possible these parents had done too much?

I do not want to spoil this lengthy article, so one more "teaser:"

"It's like the way our body's immune system develops," he explained. "You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won't know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle. I know parents who call up the school to complain if their kid doesn't get to be in the school play or make the cut for the baseball team. I know of one kid who said that he didn't like another kid in the carpool, so instead of having their child learn to tolerate the other kid, they offered to drive him to school themselves. By the time they're teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is 'I can fix this.'"

I did not raise my children with the "I can fix this" methodology. Additionally, I have always advised friends, clients and strangers to let the child figure it our and be ready to support them with logic and guidance when they make their choices.

Great article.

Adam

I also just heard her interviewed and she was excellent

Thanks for posting this Adam. I knew a lot of what they're now calling "helicopter parents" while I was definitely more of the rubber raft variety. Now I don't have to feelso guilty any more.

I could never understand where they got all the energy to live their kids' lives as well as their own.

[Xray]

Folks:

It is rare that someone just flat out fucking nails a concept and drives it out of the park, "but," Lori Gotlieb does it in the July/August Atlantic Magazine here.

Interesting article which confirms once more how important it to neither underprotect nor overprotect one's child. To avoid overdoing as well as underdoing.

Daunce's team "helicopter parents" is quite apt for the overdoing parents 'hovering' non-stop over their children's lives.

As a practicing therapist, she began getting a steady sequence of patients in their early 20's or 30's who had "great parents." "great jobs" and "great friends," and they were not bullshitting the therapist,

they had all those things, but they were depressed, adrift and "just not happy!"

[from the article]:

"By the time they're teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is 'I can fix this.'"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/2/

Children whose parents always fix it for them also tend to be more whining and complaining because they are rarely satisfied with how things are going for them.

As adults, they may then carry over the attitude of their needs not being perfectly met which can result in feeling of dissatisfaction with life in general.

As for experiencing the hardships of life possibly working as a protective factor against developing depression (one could draw this inference from reading the article), it depends strongly on the nature of the hardships and on the coping strategies developed by the individual exposed to the hardships.

As for 'everyday-life' hardships every child is exposed to like e. g. frustration because of not getting what one wants, failed attempts at achieving one's goal, conflicts of interest and many more - a child who learns by its own doing how to constructively deal with them will certainly develop a more realistic attitude toward life without feeling helpless about it.

And often the parental help consists in letting the children work it out for themselves instead of fixing it for them.

Which doesn't mean on the caregiver can't give some tips to the child how to handle some difficult situations.

Especially non-dominant children may need some guidance in the beginning; for confronting bullying attempts by dominant children needs quite a bit of guts.

As for 'traumatic' hardships, like domestic abuse, loss of parents, directly witnessing events in war zones, etc. - as a caregiver, one is sometimes surprised at the resilience developed by children who have had to go through them. But this resilience is more the exception than the rule.

Children who experience traumatic hardships can develop depression in adult life too (sometimes even a good deal earlier) because they have experienced the world as an essentially hostile place where their need for security has been severely violated.

Edited June 20, 2011 by Xray