BAD THERAPY ON BOOK TV

A book called Bad Therapy on c-span? I’m watching.

When is the best time to watch Book TV?

Trick question: Any time is the best time.

Extra points for tuning in while lifting weights in the garage.

You’ll be lucky to find this episode:

Bad Therapy:Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up

Whether you’re a young parent, old parent, or grandparent, Abigail Shrier is talking to you.

You don’t have to like everything she says, just as you don’t have to like everything about anyone in particular.

I saw her on Book TV, liked what I heard and saw, then took a closer look at her parenting takes, and my own parenting experience.

I looked at her twitter account.

The internet is a place to look for anything and maybe find it.

It’s also where you might not like what you find.

I liked the interview on Book TV, not so much anything else.

In other words, she might be a republican. Oh, no.

But, like a grown man, I can like a writer’s writing, and not so much the writer, so let’s stick to that.

Abigail Shrier is sharp, not some neophyte testing the waters of controversial topics where she gets caught unawares.

How sharp?

She’s got an Ivy League undergrad degree, a graduate degree from Oxford, and a law degree from Yale.

It looks like this:

She holds an A.B. from Columbia College, where she received the Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship; a B.Phil. from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

 

Good Book Reviews On Amazon

There is so little most parents know about therapy and the effects on children.

We should be so grateful that Abigail has taken the time to investigate and expose the therapy industry for what it is and how it affects children.

Abigail qualifies right at the beginning of the book that some children are ill enough for mental health therapy.

 

One more time: Abigail Shrier is sharp, not some neophyte testing the waters of controversial topics where she gets caught unawares.

Again, I liked what I saw and heard on c-span, not so much of the rest on her.

This is a writer who has done the work of collecting enough college degrees to make her an unassailable public figure.

She even gives credit to Dad Parenting. That’s what I did as a dad.

Did I search for the ‘right way’ to raise two little boys so they could grow into confident, strong, men?

I did not since I was raised in a family of six with two brothers and a sister.

My parenting came from growing up with an older brother, older by thirteen month, a younger brother by four years, and a sister by fourteen years.

My mom was a terror on teen pregnancy growing up and no one had a pregnant girlfriend in high school.

There may have been pregnant girls walking graduation, but no claimed her boys as a baby daddy.

Abigail Shrier told a story about her kid’s stomach ache. It could have been appendicitis.

Toward the end of the doctor visit Shrier was asked to leave the exam room so doctor could do a mental health review.

She got up to leave, but then asked the doctor if she could speak to the counselor.

 

Here’s my parenting advice: Always stay in the room with the doctor and the kid.

I was a sports dad one year and all the team kids in seventh grade met at a doctor’s office for the sports physical.

With four or five exam rooms, the kids went in while the parents chatted in the waiting room.

When the doctor made his rounds he was surprised I was in the room.

“Just dad time, spending some dad time.”

Actually, I was the only dad in there and didn’t want to chat with the moms or seem stand-0ffish.

No problem. Doctor did his job, I did mine, kid did his.

A few weeks later the doctor was accused of doing more than his job, disappeared over the weekend, and committed suicide.

The whole ordeal was traumatic for the community. The wife and I explained things, or tried explaining things, to our kids.

Dad parenting to the rescue. There were a lot of feelings. There was also Right and Wrong.

I think we covered every angle possible. Was it good therapy or bad therapy?

 

Bad Therapy Or Good Therapy

My kids haven’t been to therapy as far as I know, but I have.

Do I blame the kids? No. The wife? No. My parents. No.

But it was marriage counseling, so it wasn’t just me seeking answers.

My marriage needed better communication tools, which is what we told the counsels from the start.

We admitted we weren’t functioning at our highest level.

I helped the counselor do their job, which turned out to be wrong, which turned into another ‘communication problem’ to solve.

Overall, my therapy takeaway was I needed to shut up.

Thank you, doctor.

 

One of my brothers went to their first class in junior high after a weekend haircut gone wrong.

He didn’t like my mom’s styling, complained, and dad finished the job.

On Monday he refused to take his hat off in class and was sent to the school counselor who called my mom at work.

My mom showed up after swinging by the house and picking up a belt.

She walked into the counselor’s office with the belt and said, “Do you want it here, or out in the hallway.”

My mom was a thumper. She and her son did some counseling work in the office. She left with the hat, kid went to class.

What would Abigail Shrier say?

 

My dad caught me in a lie. He asked me the question again.

I lied again.

It was midnight and I’d snuck off to visit a girl around five that afternoon, but said something else.

‘Something else’ earned me a backhand. He asked again, I lied again.

Again, a backhand, but not so hard. We could go all night, old man.

The next day I did the same thing, came home at the same time, told a better lie.

My Mom: He’s lying.

My Dad: I believe him.

Me: (He doesn’t believe me, he’s just taking my side in the summer between eighth and ninth grade.)

 

I was so impressed by my Dad believing me that my future opened up. Maybe I’d get an Ivy League undergraduate degree, a Cambridge graduate degree, and a law degree?

But no, what I got was a greater understanding of what kids need, what they want, and what they deserve.

When my own kid went off the rails enough for punishment as a fourteen year old I pushed him down on his bed, pulled my belt out of my pants loops, and whipped the hell out of the pillow beside him.

Thrashed like hell while I told him if he disrespected his mother again, disrespected my wife, disrespected any women, I would get a bigger belt and he would be the pillow.

After my kid and I had a big physical moment two years later, we faced off in a pushing contest.

He gave me a big shove in the chest and I stepped in to do the same to him.

As I stepped, he gave me a bear hug and suplexed me into the wall head first where I rolled out, knocked over the TV, and squared off all while mom and little brother watched.

Wife: Stop or I’m calling the police.

The kid and I turned to her at the same time and said together: We’re only wrestling.

He was a wrestler. Both my boys were wrestlers. I was a wrestler. It was a bonding moment.

He knew how to set up a belly to belly throw because I taught him.

Was I feeling proud while he tool me over the top?

Yes, and a little foolish, as one does when their own tricks are turned against them.

I told all the wrestling dads they needed to teach their kids the same thing.

Will Abigail Shrier see the benefits of taking their kid on and losing?

Me: Listen, next we go at it, let’s go outside. The house can’t take it.

Kid: Okay.

Me: And the next time we go at it, let’s use words, because I can’t take it either.

 

Call it good therapy?