Bad Therapy should shake parents out of the world’s therapeutic parenting ideology. Then, of course, Christians will have to replace the worldly wisdom Shrier debunks with sound Biblical teaching. God is gracious and when we walk by faith and parent according to God’s design, we can be confident that we will raise godly children capable of meeting life’s challenges.

Currently at the top of Amazon’s bestseller booklist, Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up tackles one of today’s most pressing issues:
[W]ith unprecedented help from mental health experts, we have raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record….How did kids raised so gently come to believe that they had experienced debilitating childhood trauma? How did kids who received far more psychotherapy than any previous generation plunge into a bottomless well of despair? (xvii)
This issue affects everyone: parents, teachers, pastors, coaches, and more. Today’s children are tomorrow’s future. Despite the weighty topic, Bad Therapy is easily readable, full of humor and hope, including clever chapter titles like “Trauma Kings” and “Spare the Rod, Drug the Child.” Bad Therapy is also secular validation of the natural order God created for parents and children and is an encouragement to Christian parents.
Shrier outlines the problem: therapy and therapeutic concepts (“mental health”) are ubiquitous today and parents are quick to find therapeutic solutions for everything, including medicating kids with psychotropic drugs and stimulants to treat normal childhood behaviors. Any pain or disappointment is equated with trauma and, in our risk-averse society, must be avoided at all costs, or treated as a problem to be solved with therapy and drugs. This ideology is even common among Christian parents, who readily rely on therapy to address perceived behavioral issues (aka sin) or on medication for normal childhood characteristics like being wiggly or distracted.
Shrier argues that therapy can often introduce iatrogenesis (i.e. treatment itself creates harm). Therapeutic interventions also undermine parental authority, fracturing countless family relationships, and create anxious, needy children who grow to adulthood unable to cope with basic life problems (40). Shrier recounts interviews with psychologists, therapists, school counselors, parents and children, and provides academic studies, school survey results, and more for overwhelming evidentiary support. And the evidence is powerful. Shrier surmises that individual therapy has very little proven benefit for kids, and rather sows self-doubt among parents and an over-reliance on “experts.” Bad Therapy is the slap in the face needed to wake parents up so that they will course correct.
Not surprisingly, therapists tend to think otherwise. Even the most altruistic therapist has bills to pay and needs a steady stream of income:
No industry refuses the prospect of exponential growth, and mental health experts are no exception. By feeding normal kids with normal problems into an unending pipeline, the mental health industry is minting patients faster than it can cure them (xviii).
A therapist, for many, has come to replace traditional friendships and wisdom from older family members or friends (9). Although not mentioned by Shrier, therapy has even replaced traditional pastoral care and advice. Marriage problems? Take it to the therapist, not the pastor or elders. Rebellious or difficult children? A behavioral therapist can help; medication will fix the kid with ADHD. What could the pastor know about a child with sensory processing disorder?
Contrary to the popular wisdom of the day, which encourages eternal introspection and navel gazing, Shrier discusses the different types of mindsets that enable success in life.
There are at least two we can adopt: ‘action orientation’ and ‘state orientation.’ Adopting an action orientation means focusing on the task ahead with no thought to your current emotional or physical state. A state orientation means you’re thinking principally about yourself: how prepared you feel in that moment, the worry you feel over a text left unanswered, the light prickling at the back of your throat, that crick blossoming in your neck. Adopting an action orientation, it turns out, makes it much more likely that you accomplish the task (46-47).
In short, therapy is not necessary, but a stiff upper lip and a can-do attitude are effective at getting one’s life in order. Christians especially should recognize that life is hard (anyone who says differently is selling something, says Westley in The Princess Bride) and that the solution isn’t to avoid difficulties or be quick to medicate for troubles, but rather to learn how to persevere or repent of sinful behavior.
Isn’t therapy good for kids who have gone through trauma: abuse, abandonment by parents, divorce, etc.? Shrier says:
There is no good reason to believe that most kids are traumatized. The best research indicates the opposite: even among victims of heartbreaking circumstances, resilience is the norm. Disturbing events are best understood as ‘potentially traumatic,’ meaning they may leave no lasting psychological imprint at all, and certainly not necessarily a negative one (105).
Unfortunately, the so-called experts often conflate hardship (poverty, death of a parent, a major move) and actual physical or emotional abuse, and thereby fail to serve the students they claim to help. Psychologist and writer Rob Henderson (who, despite spending most of his childhood in the foster care system, graduated with an Ivy League Ph.D.) says, “What [children who have suffered the most abject circumstances] need is also the thing so few adults in their lives are willing to supply: high expectations” (105). This is a theme repeated throughout the book: kids don’t need to be coddled; they need to have the freedom to fail, make mistakes, or do hard things and then to learn from their experiences. Hard times, difficult experiences, and risk, all tend to make people more resilient.
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Jesus entered our world in the lowest, most humble manner possible to identify with humanity at our lowest and most humble (cf. Philippians 2:5–8). He experienced the full gamut of our finitude—he knew hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, and “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). He then died in the cruelest, most agonizing manner ever devised. Consequently, we can know that Jesus knows all we are going through today. He is praying for us right now (Romans 8:34) with complete understanding of our every issue, problem, and pain. 

Scientists still don’t know why cats purr, why bicycles stay upright when ridden, how animals migrate, or why we sleep. And they speculate as to whether the universe is finite or infinite.
The omniscient Christ of Christmas has no such questions today (cf. John 2:24; 16:30; 21:17).
Speaking of the universe: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently captured stunning images of Uranus along with its numerous rings and fourteen of its twenty-seven moons. The space agency also recently captured images of a solar flare that disrupted radio signals on Earth.
Max Lucado noted that every square yard of the sun is “constantly emitting 130,000 horse power, the equivalent of 450 eight-cylinder car engines.” He added, “Our globe’s weight is estimated at six sextillion tons—that’s a six with twenty-one zeroes!”
The omnipotent Christ of Christmas made all of that (Colossians 1:16).
Then, in a miracle-defying comprehension, he reduced all of his grandeur and glory to become a fetus in the womb of a peasant teenage girl. Then, on the first Christmas day, he was born as a helpless baby into the world he created.
Twenty-one centuries later, we still celebrate that first Christmas. But the longer I live, the less I understand it.
Why did Jesus come the way he did?
We know that Jesus came into the world to die for the world: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This was always God’s plan: Jesus was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV).
However, it would seem that the divine Son of God could have entered our world at any age in any way he wished.
Scripture records that “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23). Why not come to our planet then? We know little about his birth and nothing about his adolescence apart from a single episode when he was twelve years of age (Luke 2:41–51). Why enter the world as a baby?
I understand that his birth fulfilled numerous biblical prophecies.
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My father abandoned me before I was born, being a bad father is something I’m deeply afraid of. Before my son was born, I was anxious that since my father didn’t love me, perhaps I also wouldn’t love my son. But to my joy, I adore my son, by the grace of God. I would never abandon him or harm him in any way.

I recently published a vague post on X (or Twitter) this week. The tweet said:
I had to discipline my son tonight. It’s not the first time, but I’m heartbroken. It’s necessary, but I hate it so much. It’s especially difficult since he’s such a good boy. He’s such an easy boy to parent. But he’s still a sinner, and since I love him, I must discipline him.
Thousands of atheists and progressive “Christians” on social media are accusing me of hurting and abusing my nearly 5-month-old son. Some believers have also resorted to all kinds of assumptions and accusations.
I’m deeply disappointed with these people. I should have known I was too vague. I should have known better. I’ve explained my foolish tweet to a few sincere people who’ve reached out to me in love, but I think it’s good for me to write this article to explain what my tweet was about.
When I said I had to discipline my son, I meant I had to do sleep training. It’s really as simple as that. I wish I had used the word “sleep training” instead of “discipline,” but I couldn’t remember the word. Even when I was trying to explain what I really meant in my tweet to some people, I said “sleeping habits” and “disciplining him in terms of bedtimes.” 
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