Is It Bad to Ask Kids How they Feel?

My thoughts on a recent WSJ article.

A few of you have written to ask me to share my perspective on a newspaper article that has been making the parenting rounds. On March 8, The Wall Street Journal ran an essay titled “Stop Constantly Asking Your Kids How They Feel,” by journalist and author Abigail Shrier. The article is an excerpt from Shrier’s new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, which is now a New York Times bestseller.

It’s tricky to succinctly summarize this article’s main points, because it meanders, but I will try. Shrier argues in her article that it’s bad that parents today check in with their kids about their feelings, because this communicates to our kids that all we care about is their happiness. Also, asking people how they feel typically makes them unhappy, because most of the time we actually are unhappy. Finally, she argues, feelings aren’t trustworthy and we should encourage our kids to suppress their feelings instead.

I am not really sure how to respond to all that as a whole, so I’m going to pick out some tidbits and respond to them with a focus on the science.