A New Thought: How to Land Your Kid in Therapy

Gottlieb, Lori. "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy." The Atlantic Magazine. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July/August 2011. Web. 6 October 2011.

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Gottlieb's article talks about the way many parents have an obsession with trying to control their children's happiness which leads them to a devastating future. Lori Gottlieb decides to do an experiment as a psychotherapist and meets with people who were willing to talk about their upbringing and history having being parented. One patient she specifically points out is a woman named Lizzie. Gottlieb states, "She had come in, she told me, because she was 'just not happy.' And what was so upsetting, she continued, was that she felt she had nothing to be unhappy about." As Lori tried to put it together as to why this beautiful young woman just was not happy with her life, she started getting more patients exactly like her. After a lot of the same people, saying the exact same thing basically worshipping their parents and how happy they were as a child, etc, Lori thought, "Until, one day, another question occurred to me: Was it possible these parents had done too much?" The article continues to go back and forth on whether or not it is wrong to smother children with trying to make them happy, or let them pick themselves up and help themselves.

Lori Gottlieb discovers that many people coming from "magnificent parents who just wanted to make them happy and see them succeed" are struggling with the emptiness of feeling like they have been controlled their whole life and do not know what to do now. While reading this article, I realized that many people who I know may be dealing with the same specific "emptiness" feeling. Lori Gottlieb puts it into perspective that although the parents were very supportive and made an effort to make everything perfectly happy in their children's lives, they are living with a feeling that cannot be fixed at all. The article is significant because it can help parents try to improve on not being so in tune with their kids' life. Many children can be affected by their parents down-falls and feel as if nothing they ever do is good enough. Another issue is that many parents try to live through their children by forcing no choice upon their kids and making them do what the parent wants them to do because they did not do that in their childhood. The parents want to complete certain things that they did not accomplish in their own life. Gottleib's article demonstrates the different parenting methods and how they can affect children.