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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Being different, being set apart and having a close family creates a sense of identity and purpose. Today so many young people are confused because they don’t know who they are, what they believe, or what their past is: they know nothing. They are adrift and depressed and confused to the point of trying to change their biology! But by doing things differently from the status quo, we as parents give our children a solid foundation that our kids can rely on. They don’t have to question who they are because we’ve told them and shown them and lived it for them their whole lives. And that will anchor them as they go into the world.

Nearly every day we are bombarded with stories of troubled teens and young adults, struggling with their identity to the point of desiring sex changes, of the rise in drug use, of young men shooting up schools, of the high rate of depression and anxiety amongst college students, and of growing loneliness among all populations. Like many parents, I want to spare my children those troubles, but unlike previous generations, our culture seems to breed troubled children faster than ever before. Even Christian parents struggle to raise their children in a culture that is designed to draw children away from their family and faith. I’d like to argue that parents need to make radical changes to their conceptions of what it means for their children to be successful and for what that means in raising them in day-to-day home life. What good, hard-working families have done in the past will not suffice in today’s environment.
I recently posted to my social media account about some adjustments we made to our home life, sparking fruitful questions and conversation among friends. Along with a photo of cookies waiting to be baked, I said:
We made some big changes to our life this fall which required some sacrifice. But the end result was more time for me to be home. Probably sounds crazy that a stay-at-home mom needs more home time, but homeschooling is a full-time job now and I needed time to be home and not schooling. My kids are getting older and we don’t have forever with them in the house; I want their memories to be of cookies and good food and a warm home, not of mom frantically driving them all around town to various activities. So here’s to cookies and good memories!
One friend asked what specifically we had done to “slow down for family time” and mentioned, “Our society places so much emphasis on [activities] and I’m wrestling with going against the grain.” She’s right. In order to succeed in life (or so we were told growing up), a kid needs to get good grades, go to college and get a good job. In order to get into a good college, kids are encouraged to be involved in school sports, student government, and a variety of other activities that not only showcase the student’s talent and abilities, but hopefully lead to ever-more-competitive scholarships. That often means extra-curricular activities multiple nights a week, sport commitments requiring entire weekends dedicated to tournaments, not to mention church events or other community activities to which a family might be committed. With multiple children in the family, even if mom stays at home, it’s difficult to have regular family meals, and those sports weekends would require splitting the family up at various fields, tournaments, and locations so that there is very little time spent together. Families have no time for family worship, and often skip corporate worship in lieu of competing sports commitments. The result: a group of people who share the same last name, but have their own distinct, personal goals often at odds with the well-being of the family unit. Well-meaning Christian parents seem surprised when after years of this, their kids go off to college and abandon the faith they grew up with and the political convictions their parents believe in.
So what can a family do? How do you raise Christian children, grounded in their faith and secure in their identity? Each family is different, but there are certain principles that can be followed by families wanting to fight against current cultural trends. First, back to the basics: every stable family starts with a dad and mom committed to each other and to the well-being of their children. Having a stable family requires personal sacrifice from both the husband and the wife, but that sacrifice will produce good fruit not only for the parents, but also for their children and subsequent generations. Second, there must be a family hierarchy. The husband is the head of the wife and of the family, and the children must submit to their parents (Ephesians 5:22-6:4). Third, but by no means least in importance, the Christian family must make their faith a priority. Go to worship every week. Be involved in your local congregation. Seek to serve those in your church. Practice hospitality. Diligently teach your children the faith.
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