Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Update on Snowflakes

My new patient this morning, a fifteen-year-old girl, was describing that she had become suicidal because her parents were very strict and would frequently take her device from her when she did not finish homework, misbehaved, or failed to meet expectations.  She found this particularly upsetting going into a weekend, because she would not have the backup of seeing her friends at school. "They took my friends away," she said in all seriousness, as if this were a reality, not a metaphor.  I was reminded of Jonathan Haidt's description of the unstable world children have been living in over the last decade, which I discussed a few months ago in Snowflakes.

2 comments:

Grim said...

Did you recommend they take it away forever?

james said...

Unless they can find something to fill its place--something more real--I wonder how much that would really help. The room is "swept and empty"...