Angelus News | May 17, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 10

Heather King is an award-winning
author, speaker, and workshop leader.
Granted, this was rural New Hampshire
in the ’50s and ’60s, and the
neighbors up and down the street knew
every kid.
Granted as well, there were things that
went on in our family and childhoods
that shouldn’t have.
There were wounds suffered in silence
and not shared till years later.
But maybe the point is that there’s no
perfect childhood. And the effort to
create one seems to have stripped us of
all common sense.
What self-respecting kid, bursting
to explore, wants his or her mother
hovering over every thought, word, and
deed?
How did humankind manage for
thousands of years without stuffing their
young with psychotropic meds?
Or clamping a helmet on their heads
every time they went outdoors?
It would be one thing if all these
careful, protective measures were
producing emotionally stable, healthily
curious, responsible adults.
Instead, “When asked, our kids said
they were miserable. Our kids didn’t
want to leave their rooms. Our kids
didn’t date. Our kids moved home and
stayed. They didn’t want to marry and
have kids.”
Small wonder.
Psychological research shows — and
again, common sense dictates — that
kids “thrive with a certain amount
of independence, a certain level of
responsibility and autonomy and, yes,
failure. … Small failures and injuries
help rather than hurt kids.”
In fact, “[U]ntil very recently in human
history,” notes Shrier, “nearly all
markers of what we now call ‘childhood
trauma’ were just facts of life: hunger,
loss of a parent or sibling, war, even
occasions of physical abuse.”
Most to the point, as Shrier observes,
children are actually incredibly
resilient, sturdy, and strong. A happy
childhood, she avers, consists of “experiencing
all of the pains of adulthood,
in smaller doses, so that [kids] build up
immunity to the poison of heartache
and loss.”
In an especially interesting passage,
she pooh-poohs the notion that
teaching kids to strive for “happiness” is
beneficial.
In truth, she observes, as adults we’re
almost always in some kind of physical,
emotional, or psychic pain. We’re
worried about paying a bill, or our back
aches, or the guy next to us on the bus
is playing his music too loud. Reaching
maturity requires taking the focus
away from these minor discomforts and
inconveniences, and carrying on in
spite of them.
I don’t want to brag, but in our family
any internal ailment short of a ruptured
appendix was treated with a glass of
ginger ale. Sprains merited a warm
washcloth. Gashes rated a Band-Aid —
if we hadn’t run out of Band-Aids.
We managed just fine without Ritalin,
Adderall, or Klonopin. We grew into
caring, thoughtful adults who read
books and have a sense of humor without
having to monitor our emotional
temperature every two minutes.
Granted Mom — who once went 36
years without seeing a doctor — could
take things to extremes. Her theory was
simple: If you go, they’ll find something
wrong with you.
After reading “Bad Therapy,” turns out
she was right.
May 17, 2024 • ANGELUS • 31