num_pages: 304
description: In The Collapse of Parenting  physician psychologist and internationally acclaimed author Leonard Sax presents data documenting a dramatic decline in the achievement and psychological health of American children. Sax argues that rising levels of obesity depression and anxiety among young peopleas well as the explosion in prescribing psychiatric medications to kidscan all be traced to parents letting their kids call the shots.Many parents are afraid of seeming too dictatorial and end up abdicating their authority rather than taking a stand with their own children. If kids refuse to eat anything green and demand pizza instead some parents give in inadvertently raising children who are more likely to become obese. If children are given smartphones and allowed to spend the bulk of their free time texting playing video games and surfing the Internet they become increasingly reliant on peers and the media for guidance on how to live rather than getting such guidance at home. And if they won't sit still in class or listen to adults they're often prescribed medication a quick fix that actually undermines their self-control. In short Sax argues parents are failing to prioritize the parent-child relationship and are allowing a child-peer dynamic to take precedence. The result is children who have no absolute standard of right and wrong who lack discipline and who look to their peers and the Internet for direction instead of looking to their parents.But there is hope. Sax shows how parents can help their kids by reasserting their authorityby limiting time with screens by encouraging better habits at the dinner table and at bedtime and by teaching humility and perspective. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of experience as a family physician and psychologist along with hundreds of interviews with children parents and teachers across the United States and around the world Sax offers a blueprint parents can use to refresh and renew their relationships with their children to help their children thrive in an increasingly complicated world.
language: English
title: The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups
publisher: Basic Books