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Because I Said So!
Season Two Coming in September!
Because I Said So! is a podcast by John Rosemond. John is the nation’s leading parenting expert and provides common-sense advice for raising your children. John is a nationally syndicated columnist, author and public speaker. His audiences are left feeling empowered, educated and entertained.
A family psychologist by license, John points out to all his audiences that “psychology has caused more problems than it has solved for American parents.” John’s mission is to be a counter-weight to the psychological parenting paradigm that was sold to America in the late 1960s/early 1970s, restore commonsense to the raising of children, and give parents the guidance needed to raise happy, well-mannered children who will, as adults, contribute value to culture and society.
Because I Said So!
The Parenting Apocalypse
America's children are in the throes of a mental health crisis. The solution being proposed is more mental health professionals. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! They caused the problem! They don't know how to solve it!
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Hello and welcome to Because I Said so the only podcast on the entire worldwide web where you'll hear the truth about psychology and the mental health professions in general, which is now called parenting a very strange and odd variation on the theme and children, families, marriages, etc. Etc. This particular episode of this podcast series is titled the Parenting Apocalypse. Why would I name it the Parenting Apocalypse? Because the debt of the last 50 years incurred by parents who parent is coming due. One of the things I am thankful for during this holiday season is the fact that I was not parented. Today's children don't have a clue as to what it used to be like to be a child. In America, there used to be a tremendous amount of freedom accorded to children and, at the same time, children were held completely responsible for their behavior and penalized if they did not behave properly. It was a very clear arrangement and I don't think anything is clear to children anymore. So the Parenting Apocalypse. I find it to be absolutely hilarious, ladies and gentlemen, in a very sardonic sort of way, that when evidence of our child and teen mental health crisis becomes impossible to ignore, the proposed solution is always ooh, we need more mental health professionals and the evidence of our child and teen mental health crisis keeps on pouring in, as it has for the last 50 years. The Wall Street Journal, the only newspaper in America I read not that it's the only one worth reading, but it's the only one I read of the several that are worth reading. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that hospital emergency rooms are being overrun by teenagers who've been overwhelmed by depression and anxiety. Lord knows how many teens similarly overwhelmed don't show up at emergency rooms.
Speaker 1:When I was a teen, I became a teenager in what? 1960, 13? When I was a teen in the 1960s, I never heard of another teenager who'd been emotionally disabled by depression or anxiety. I never heard of another teenager who had to go to a doctor or a therapist, a psychiatrist, psychologist, for mental problems. I went to a suburban high school in Chicago of 5,000 kids 5,000. It was like a small college campus. During the four years of my incarceration at Proviso West High School in Hillside, illinois, no schoolmate committed suicide no one. 5,000 kids, no suicides over four years. So we're talking about more than 5,000 kids because a new I don't know 1,000 to 1,500 came in every year. So it's probably more like 8,000 kids. 8,000 kids, four years, no suicides. I never heard of any kid going off the deep end and having to be removed from school for what would have been called back then a nervous breakdown. No girls were starving themselves, no one was cutting themselves. Some kids were kind of weird, but weird was as bad as it got, and even the weird kids seemed to be holding it together.
Speaker 1:What in the world has happened to our kids? Let's answer that question, shall we? I know the answer, so stay tuned here. What has happened to our children and grandchildren? I alluded to it earlier. It's called parenting.
Speaker 1:Parenting is what has happened to America's children. Parenting is why teenagers are overrunning hospital emergency rooms across the country with complaints of depression and anxiety. Parenting Parenting is what parents have been doing for the last 50 odd years. Prior to that, parents merely raised children, and when children were merely raised as was I and the other 4,999 kids at Proviso West High School during any given year child mental health was reasonably good. Then, in 1970, along came parenting, when child mental health began to deteriorate in America, and pretty soon we had an epidemic of child mental health problems. Now we have a full-blown, apocalyptic crisis.
Speaker 1:These people who think America's child mental health crisis calls for more mental health professionals. What are they thinking? That's akin to proposing that we can put an end to nuclear war, nuclear weapons, at this case, at this stage of the game by training more nuclear scientists. Yeah, we can put an end to nuclear weapons by training more nuclear scientists. I mean that's absurd, right? Yes, it's absurd. And, in the same way, thinking that America's mental health crisis, child mental health crisis, can be solved by more mental health professionals. What are they thinking? Those are the very people who led us into parenting. Mental health professionals, mental health professionals, of which I am one. I am licensed to practice psychology in the state of North Carolina by the North Carolina Psychology Board. I am a psychologist, I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Mental health professionals their stinky, bad, horrible advice has caused this problem. When we were listening, when it came to the raising of children, to our children's grandparents and great-grandparents and great-uncles and great-aunts and the 80-year-old woman who lived down the street and hadn't gone past the fifth grade, everything was fine. When we went to our elders for parenting advice, parenting child-rearing advice everything was fine. It's never going to be perfect, but everything was fine. 5,000 kids at my high school, suburban Chicago high school early 1960s, not once. Who had suicide? No anorexia, no cutting, nobody taking it out of school and put it into a treatment program. I mean, it was non-existent. And then we started listening to mental health professionals tell us how to raise kids. Oh, they had a better idea. Oh, yeah, they did. And as soon as we began listening to their stinky ideas, child mental health began going down the tubes.
Speaker 1:The crux of good mental health, folks, it's called emotional resiliency. That is the centerpiece, the crux, the foundation of good mental health. Whether you're a child, adult doesn't matter emotional resiliency. Emotional resiliency refers to an individual's ability to tolerate and even rise above what Shakespeare called the slings and arrows, about outrageous fortune. That's from Hamlet, by the way.
Speaker 1:There was talking about grief, he was talking about heartbreak, he was talking about failure, rejection and the like. The stuff, the stuff that so many of today's kids can't seem to tolerate and even rise above. This is the stuff that sending them in droves to hospital emergency rooms. That stuff didn't send my generation in droves to hospital emergency rooms Grief, heartbreak, failure, rejection. You know we didn't like it. It made us feel bad for a while. Well, we eventually shrugged it off. That same stuff is sending today's kids in droves to hospital emergency rooms where they get shot up with various drugs that obviously don't work for more than a few hours, if they work at all, and then they get assigned to a therapist who doesn't know what he's doing.
Speaker 1:Folks, if these therapists knew what they were doing, we wouldn't need more therapists Since 1970, we wouldn't have a child and teen mental health crisis If these therapists knew what they were doing. Since 1970, the per capita number of therapists has increased exponentially. When I was in graduate school, my graduate school class in psychology was relatively small. Today, psychology is one of the most popular graduate majors going. Well, say it again since 1970, the per capita number of therapists has increased exponentially and child mental health has gone down the toilet. Can anyone still add 2 plus 2 or what? More nuclear scientists isn't going to end the threat of nuclear war and more mental health therapists isn't going to end our child mental health crisis. It's going to make it even worse, as it has for 50 odd years. So if child mental health is on the wane, if it's in a state of apocalyptic crisis, that means the general emotional resilience of children has been seriously damaged, and if we have a full blown child mental health crisis. That means the general emotional resilience of children has not just been damaged, it's been virtually destroyed.
Speaker 1:How did that happen? Something that happened because around 1970, america's parents stopped merely raising children. Such as I was raised, my parents were raised, my grandparents were raised, my great grandparents were raised, and all of them had done when it came their turn. This is what our ancestors had been doing for thousands of years. They had been simply raising children. But around 1970, america's parents stopped merely raising children and began doing this very odd thing called parenting. That's what's happened when people merely raised kids, they were doing what parents had done for thousands of years. The oft-heard phrase was well, it was good enough for me. No one was trying to raise perfect people. They were merely doing what had been done with them, their parents, etc. As children, they had chores, so their children had chores. As children, they were punished for wrongdoing, so they punished their children for wrongdoing. When they had done wrong things as kids, their parents had told them you have no excuses. So that's what they told their kids. When an adult reported wrongdoing on the part of a child and the child told a different story, the parents had sided with the adult and child mental health was pretty good, all things considered. And then along came parenting.
Speaker 1:Who came up with parenting? I've already told you America's mental health professional community. With zero evidence to back the claim, america's mental health professional community said that traditional, thousands of years in the making, child rearing had been bad for children, that it engendered a set of horrifying psychological problems. I'll say it again they had zero evidence to back this up. They pulled this out of thin air no evidence, none, zipped, nada. And they said they had a solution. They invented a problem that didn't exist and then they proposed a solution that had never been tested. But because the people in question psychologists and other highfalutin mental health professionals had capital letters after their names and bore impressive titles like psychologist, psychologist's mental health professionals were able to sell America's parents on their pagan apoke their supposed solution to a problem that didn't exist.
Speaker 1:And America began parenting. Rather suddenly, children no longer had chores. Instead they had after school activities, all of which were micromanaged and still are by adults. Rather suddenly, parents stopped punishing children for misbehavior, because mental health professionals were now saying that punishment lowered a child's holy self-esteem. Psychologists said punishment damaged the child's psyche, and so American parents stopped punishing and began talking and explaining and beseeching and bargaining and other equally ineffective things.
Speaker 1:Another big difference between then and now is back then, when I was a kid, my parents taught respect for others. Today, at the behest of mental health professionals like yours truly except I'm not behesting anyone about this parents try to build self-esteem. You got that. When I was a kid, my parents were trying to teach me to be respectful of others. Today, parents are trying, at the behesting of mental health professionals, to install high self-esteem into children. Interestingly enough, research has found that the higher a person's esteem for himself, the less respect he has for others. That's what economists call a zero sum proposition Self-esteem goes up, respect for others goes down. This research has been around for more than 25 years. Does America's mental health professional community pay any attention to it? Nope, none Listen to them. They keep right on babbling about the inestimable benefits of having high self-esteem. Today's America, high self-esteem is right up there with the flag and apple pie. Thank you, thank you, mary, for listening. The People's Union Committee chops off high self-esteem. This is where you think this portion of society can be found. How bad do you think to be if two nutrients come together? How? But I'm concerned about a.
Speaker 1:When children were merely raised, humility was a virtue. Do you remember humility, folks? Today, the word humility is rarely heard. It's in danger of going into history's dustbin. What a tragedy that would be. Back in the day, when an adult said one thing and a child said another, the adult won the coin toss. How amazing. Children's deaths were regarded as people who told the truth about children. It was generally accepted children did not tell the truth about themselves, especially when they had done bad things. So when an adult said one thing Billy misbehaved, and the child said another no, I didn't the adult won the coin toss. Today, when an adult says one thing and a child says quite another, the child wins the coin toss. Since when did children tell the truth about themselves? When did that happen?
Speaker 1:When children do wrong things, they attempt nearly always to assign responsibility elsewhere. That's been the case since day one. Check it out Genesis, chapter 3. God says why'd you do that? Adam said the woman. Oh, and let me remind you, dude, you gave her to me. The woman made me do it. And then the woman said no, no, no, no, one me, the serpent, that dastardly thing. He lied to me. I had no choice.
Speaker 1:Back in the day, parents were trying to grow good citizens, people who demonstrated love for their neighbors. Today, when I ask parents what they're trying to accomplish, they tell me they want their kids to be happy and successful. My parents would never have said that I never Happy and successful. Those were my responsibilities, not my parents, by the way, people are happiest, the research says, when there's meaning to their lives. Work gives meaning. And so, back in the day, parents taught children the value of an honest day's work. Not the monetary value, mind you, but the inherent value and authentic success is not measured in dollars and cents either. It's measured in terms of a person's contribution to the well-being of others. Mother Teresa helped poor people in India find dignity.
Speaker 1:Elon Musk invents technologies. I'd rather have dignity than a Tesla Working against Elon although I sense sometimes he doesn't have a very good filter in his thinking. I'd rather have dignity than a Tesla. I drive a Ford pickup truck. By the way, it's the Redneck vehicle of choice. My Ford pickup haul is an Airstream trailer. That's the Redneck vacation home.
Speaker 1:Folks, we have to stop this. Well, when are we going to come to our senses? Parenting isn't working. I said this the other day to somebody. He said well, he's 35. He said well, what is the difference between parenting and child-during? I said I grew up in a home where it was clear, very clear, that the relationship between my parents trumped either of their relationships with me. Today's kids are growing up in a home where it's clear as a bell that their parents are trying to have wonderful relationships with them. That's one huge difference between child-during and parenting.
Speaker 1:Another is I wasn't a big deal. Raising me was regarded as a responsibility not to be taken lightly. But I me, I was not a big deal, and my parents let me know that. If I started acting like a big deal, I was told John Roseman, you are acting too big for your britches. You better size yourself to your britches right now or I'm going to have to size them to you. What's it going to be? Parents? Don't talk like that to children anymore. Every kid in my generation heard those words You're acting too big for your britches Because we were not big deals and we were not supposed to act like we were big deals. And today's kids are big deals. They're idols in their families. They occupy center stage. I didn't occupy center stage. I didn't know any kids my age who occupied center stage in their homes. We were all deferential to adults. Adults didn't defer to us.
Speaker 1:Now, these are just a few of the differences between being merely raised and being told. Your problems are your problems. You need to solve them. We are here to help out in emergencies, but we are not here to solve your day to day problems. You have to learn and the quicker you learn it the better that life isn't perfect and that when you become an adult, you will have problems every single day.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, can you remember a day in your adulthood that you haven't had a problem you had to solve? No, you can't. No, you can't. Even a person who is rich enough to be weighted on by 30 servants every single day of his life, he has a problem he has to solve. And, realizing that, my parents told me hey, you gotta learn how to solve these problems, and we are, not you, so our solutions to your problems are not going to work for you. You have to figure these solutions out for yourself.
Speaker 1:And so I had to solve my own academic problems. I had to solve my own social problems. I mean, as a young child, I had to solve my boredom. Mom, I'm bored. Well, you better find something to do, or I'm going to find something for you to do. Parents don't talk like that to children anymore. Well, honey, I tell you what. We'll go to the park later, you know.
Speaker 1:And the problem is that today's parents God bless them. They look around and everybody is doing the same thing. Everybody is in lock step when it comes to the raising of kids, and so they think they're doing the right thing. And America's hospital emergency rooms are being overrun by children who have not developed any emotional resiliency whatsoever and cannot tolerate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Folks. That's a wrap. Thanks for listening. If you're interested, my websites are at parent guru dot com. I hope you are. I have a sub stack weekly. You can find it at sub stack dot com. Folks, keep on rocking in the free world, because if we don't keep rocking it, we're going to lose it, and we're going to lose it. Happy Thanksgiving. Find something in your life to be thankful about, and if you have a sub stack weekly, you can find it at sub stack dot com.
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