Bad Therapy: When Parenting, Not Therapy, Is the Answer
Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy, warns against overpathologizing childhood. Discover why parents—not therapy—should guide normal struggles, and why fewer cases mean better care.
Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up stirred up conversation—and understandably so. The book argues that therapy has become a cultural crutch, pathologizing normal childhood challenges rather than equipping kids to face them. While controversial, there’s wisdom in its warning: in many cases, children need parents—not therapists—to guide them through life’s ups and downs.
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What Bad Therapy Gets Right
Shrier spotlights valid concerns: today’s kids are more diagnosed, more medicated, yet paradoxically more anxious and isolated than ever. She points out how therapeutic language—from trauma talk to emotional check-ins—has infiltrated childhood in ways that may instill helplessness rather than resilience. As one critique noted, "talk therapy in the absence of symptoms can lead relatively well-functioning people to ruminate on negative aspects of their lives".
Moreover, the rise of Social-Emotional Learning in schools—while well-intentioned—can prioritize feeling over doing, steering kids toward self-focus when what they might need is experience and responsibility .
A Necessary Controversy
Bad Therapy is provocative by design. It challenges a culture that sometimes cowers from discomfort, insisting that struggle, failure, and responsibility are essential to growth. As one commentator summarized: “[Shrier’s] core premise… is startling as it is simple: ‘the problem isn’t the kids—it’s the mental health experts’” . She implores parents to reclaim their role—raising children who learn to navigate life, not avoid it.
Why This Resonates With Me
I agree: therapy isn’t always the answer for kids. Many times, what’s needed is parental presence, clear boundaries, and the freedom to fail. Therapy too often becomes a substitute for parenting—outsourced comfort rather than guided growth.
And let’s be honest—the system isn’t helping. Low insurance reimbursement rates push many therapists into high caseloads, increasing burnout and limiting the thoughtful support each child truly needs. That’s one reason many therapists choose to stay out-of-network—so they can carry fewer clients and show up fully for each one.
When Therapy Is Warranted
To be clear: therapy can be transformative and necessary—for children with serious emotional or behavioral health needs. The issue isn’t therapy itself, but its overuse and misapplication for normative life challenges. Shrier herself begins her book with a clear caveat: her critique is not aimed at kids with severe needs .
Final Thought
Listening to Bad Therapy doesn’t mean rejecting therapy entirely. It means rebalancing how we support kids—restoring the central role of parents, trusting childhood’s natural course, and reserving therapeutic interventions for the children who truly need them.