Why is the modern world besieged by bullies and trolls? Social media isn’t to blame – the real culprit is poor parenting.
This is the controversial thesis of Mumbai-born, Manhattan-based clinical psychologist Dr Shefali Tsabary.
She believes bad parenting is creating an assembly line of miserable children, terrorising schoolyards, who are not suffering from a lack of discipline, but a lack of “heart”.
“When a child’s own voice has either been neglected or bullied into silence
[by a parent], the child can no longer respond to this voice, which is how they lose touch with the natural empathy,” she tells the March issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Put another way, she means parents who are not “present” with their child, or who are not “mindful parents”, fully conscious of their child’s feelings, often misread the problem and use discipline or punishment as a response to perceived behavioural problems.
An adult who is punished unfairly feels resentment, argues Dr Tsabary and so, too, does a child.
Her caveat on this theory is that a mindful parent knows the difference between a child who is truly misbehaving and one who is masking other issues.
In essence, if a child is constantly disciplined, this teaches them the concept of “power” and “control”, which means that they often employ these techniques in the playground and, ultimately, in their adult lives.
“I see the repercussions of this approach,” Dr Tsabary says. “The child truly won’t do anything without being threatened or bribed because they have become addicted to being constantly controlled.”
Dr Shefali Tsabary, PhD, is the author of Out Of Control: Why Disciplining Your Child Doesn’t Work.
