When her second-grade daughter came home upset after being left off the guest list for a 20-child birthday party, Dr. Katie Davis says she faced a choice: comfort her daughter through the hurt, or call the host’s mother to secure a last-minute invitation. In a new opinion piece published by Fox News, Davis explains why she chose not to make that call.
Davis, writing from her perspective as both a parent and a psychologist, argues that many parents today default too quickly to intervention when their children face ordinary setbacks. She writes that modern parenting culture has a tendency to “pathologize and diagnose every negative experience,” turning sadness into depression, meanness into bullying, and frustration into emotional dysregulation.
Her central argument is that mental health is not defined by the absence of negative emotions but by a person’s ability to handle them. She contends that children build resilience and coping skills only through exposure to manageable challenges, including the possibility of failure.
The cost of constant rescue
According to Davis, repeatedly stepping in to fix children’s problems carries three consequences. It undermines self-efficacy, teaching children to look to adults rather than trust their own resourcefulness. It reinforces avoidance, signaling that uncomfortable emotions are intolerable rather than temporary. And it creates unrealistic expectations, leading children to expect the world to bend to their preferences instead of learning to manage rejection and unfairness.
She does not argue that parents should never step in. Davis acknowledges that children sometimes need real support and that removing demands can occasionally be the right call. But she warns against doing so reflexively, saying it prioritizes short-term relief over long-term growth.
What she suggests instead
Davis outlines a three-step approach for parents facing a child’s disappointment: validate the feeling without exaggerating it into a crisis, resist the urge to immediately solve the problem, and ask the child to come up with their own next steps rather than supplying a solution. She notes that sometimes the most effective response is no response at all — simply giving a child space to feel bad and move on.
Reflecting on her daughter’s excluded-from-the-party moment, Davis writes that the experience might push her daughter toward making a new friend, learning to cope with exclusion, or simply feeling down for an afternoon before moving on. She frames all of those outcomes as developmentally valuable.
“I don’t want to raise someone who never falls down; I want to raise someone who knows how to get back up,” Davis writes.
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