I have a teenage daughter. We lived in a very progressive suburb of Chicago. She was depressed, gender confused and started self harming. This was pretty common in her middle school. Nearly every kid I knew had "mental health issues" and was seeing a therapist. I listened in on her therapy sessions and I never heard them talk about CBT t…
I have a teenage daughter. We lived in a very progressive suburb of Chicago. She was depressed, gender confused and started self harming. This was pretty common in her middle school. Nearly every kid I knew had "mental health issues" and was seeing a therapist. I listened in on her therapy sessions and I never heard them talk about CBT techniques and cognitive distortions. I know them well because I did CBT myself during a dark time in my life and I am a huge believer.
I read "The Coddling" right as covid hit and it really jumped out at me how we were using all of these reverse CBT principles to deal with covid as well. And ofc if you were to make a graph, I'm sure there would be a direct relationship between how (big L) Liberal a community is and how many reverse CBT ideas were being cultivated in that community. So I watched all of these kids in my community, including my own, become more depressed and anxious. And instead of teachers and parents helping them, they were using reverse CBT techniques themselves. "Well we are in a deadly pandemic" and "this could be over if it weren't for all the selfish conservatives who just won't wear their masks or take their vaccines" or ofc the Lorenz inspired late stage capitalism and climate change stuff.
Contextualizing was also off limits. How dare anyone tell these kids that Covid is like a cold to them when MILLIONS of ppl are dying??!! And then we told them they were selfish for meeting with friends in person or even showing their faces in public! So they all retreated to tik tok and Instagram where the algorithms drug them further into the postmodernist worldview that they have no agency, they are either oppressed or oppressors, nobody understands them and the world is full of hate.
In summer 2023 we moved to Georgia (a purple suburb of Atlanta) and my daughter started high school here. As Brian Kemp was famously the first governor to open schools, these kids missed far less school due to Covid. There is also a very obvious difference in the kids here. My husband and I keep saying it feels like the 90s when we were kids. While they can be a little bit "meaner" to each other (like in the 90s), they just seem less guarded, more confident and def less angry. And the change in my daughter had been shocking. She is 1000X more confident, doing much better in school, has not had any urge to cut herself and she even looks so much better. She's taking better care of herself. My 10yo even refers to the "old (or Illinois) ____" and "Georgia ____".
Anyways, I just wanted to share this anecdote. There are a few really smart and courageous ppl who might get us out of this mess, and Haidt and Lukianoff (along with Bari and some of her colleagues) are chief among them.
I would love to know more about your new suburb. We were in a very dangerous school in Denver and needed to get our daughters, ages 13 and 15 out fast.
We considered moving to several different states, but couldn't take the risk of all the DEI/progressive nonsense showing up again. (I'm from the suburbs of Chicago and wanted to move back to the midwest, but I think it's getting too progressive as well.)
We ended up moving to Costa Rica for the year and the school has been a very refreshing change. It feels like the US in the 90's -- before all the schools started inculcating DEI and anxiety.
Your experience brings to mind some of the subjects in Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, which is an excellent book about today’s trans craze targeting girls. Once the trans craze took hold of a person’s daughter, the families with the highest success rate of rehabilitating their daughters were the families that were able to make drastic cross country moves in order to remove their daughters from the environment that triggered the trans craze completely.
I have a teenage daughter. We lived in a very progressive suburb of Chicago. She was depressed, gender confused and started self harming. This was pretty common in her middle school. Nearly every kid I knew had "mental health issues" and was seeing a therapist. I listened in on her therapy sessions and I never heard them talk about CBT techniques and cognitive distortions. I know them well because I did CBT myself during a dark time in my life and I am a huge believer.
I read "The Coddling" right as covid hit and it really jumped out at me how we were using all of these reverse CBT principles to deal with covid as well. And ofc if you were to make a graph, I'm sure there would be a direct relationship between how (big L) Liberal a community is and how many reverse CBT ideas were being cultivated in that community. So I watched all of these kids in my community, including my own, become more depressed and anxious. And instead of teachers and parents helping them, they were using reverse CBT techniques themselves. "Well we are in a deadly pandemic" and "this could be over if it weren't for all the selfish conservatives who just won't wear their masks or take their vaccines" or ofc the Lorenz inspired late stage capitalism and climate change stuff.
Contextualizing was also off limits. How dare anyone tell these kids that Covid is like a cold to them when MILLIONS of ppl are dying??!! And then we told them they were selfish for meeting with friends in person or even showing their faces in public! So they all retreated to tik tok and Instagram where the algorithms drug them further into the postmodernist worldview that they have no agency, they are either oppressed or oppressors, nobody understands them and the world is full of hate.
In summer 2023 we moved to Georgia (a purple suburb of Atlanta) and my daughter started high school here. As Brian Kemp was famously the first governor to open schools, these kids missed far less school due to Covid. There is also a very obvious difference in the kids here. My husband and I keep saying it feels like the 90s when we were kids. While they can be a little bit "meaner" to each other (like in the 90s), they just seem less guarded, more confident and def less angry. And the change in my daughter had been shocking. She is 1000X more confident, doing much better in school, has not had any urge to cut herself and she even looks so much better. She's taking better care of herself. My 10yo even refers to the "old (or Illinois) ____" and "Georgia ____".
Anyways, I just wanted to share this anecdote. There are a few really smart and courageous ppl who might get us out of this mess, and Haidt and Lukianoff (along with Bari and some of her colleagues) are chief among them.
I would love to know more about your new suburb. We were in a very dangerous school in Denver and needed to get our daughters, ages 13 and 15 out fast.
We considered moving to several different states, but couldn't take the risk of all the DEI/progressive nonsense showing up again. (I'm from the suburbs of Chicago and wanted to move back to the midwest, but I think it's getting too progressive as well.)
We ended up moving to Costa Rica for the year and the school has been a very refreshing change. It feels like the US in the 90's -- before all the schools started inculcating DEI and anxiety.
Your experience brings to mind some of the subjects in Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, which is an excellent book about today’s trans craze targeting girls. Once the trans craze took hold of a person’s daughter, the families with the highest success rate of rehabilitating their daughters were the families that were able to make drastic cross country moves in order to remove their daughters from the environment that triggered the trans craze completely.
Yes, excellent book. Well researched.
Oops summer 2022 we moved not 2023
Pretty sure your “anecdote” is mirrored all over the country. 😉 Thanks!