Caroline Goldman’s unwavering speech

In the Goldman family, not everything is necessarily centered around music. The siblings, the women in particular, are driven by a deep “devotion to the care and cause of children”, to the point of making it a profession. This is what psychologist and doctor in psychopathology Caroline Goldman testifies from the outset on France Inter this Tuesday, September 3. The daughter of the famous composer, but also of a psychologist, and older sister of an emergency pediatrician, returns to the forefront this fall with the release of her Today’s Parents’ Guide (Ed. Flammarion). The book is a literary adaptation of her podcast and her columns on France Inter. Columns which, moreover, had not failed to make noise among listeners, who criticized her, among other things, for a speech blaming parents or her questioning of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At the microphone of the journalist Mathilde Serrell, the psychologist defends herself and reaffirms her positions.

Also readCaroline Goldman: “I always put my children in front of the television for 1h30 after school”

“Fight with their weapons”

“I’m as interested in criticism as I am in thanks. Some have helped me evolve, others not so much. (…) (My detractors) are often positivity sellers who have no interest in me throwing a spanner in the works of their marketing,” she observes. With over twenty years of professional experience in her private practice, the forty-year-old publicly deplores the damage caused by a positive French-style education that rejects educational limits within the home. “I didn’t want to spend the next forty years of my career undoing what self-proclaimed gurus who are education specialists and have never studied psychology say. I said to myself: ‘we have to go to the war zone and fight with their weapons’,” she recalls.

HPI is a marketing fantasy that decreed that quality could justify suffering.

Caroline Goldman

Her criticisms have not changed, she has been hammering them home for almost four years and again this Tuesday morning on France Inter. “Clearly I came to say that we are being lied to, that we are being made to feel guilty in order to sell books and coaching methods. In reality, children who are difficult need us to set limits for them when everything is going well,” she qualifies. And adds: “There is the theoretical child that we are presented with, and then the actual child who is very concrete, who puts all the psychological and physical resources of the parents to the test. Whether they are doing well or if they are doing badly, in any case children are tornadoes; adorable tornadoes who demand a certain discipline and good responses to their movement.”

The child and adolescent psychologist also continues to oppose the overdiagnosis of ADHD and cases of HPI (high intellectual potential). “We throw out labels that are supposed to explain the child’s singularities, but these labels are extremely crude. HPI does not even exist in the classifications of mental illnesses; it is a marketing fantasy that has decreed that a quality could justify suffering. However, just like having beautiful hair or being good at sports, being intelligent has no unfortunate consequences on the mental system,” she observes.

Different times, different issues

Another point of tension is screens. On this point, Caroline Goldman argues in favor of better use rather than a total ban. “The impact of screens is indicative of the family problem. Either it will be used in a virtuous way and will have consequences of satisfying the child’s curiosity. In which case, it will be indicative of a structuring family environment that has pre-structured the child,” she emphasizes. “Or the screen has a harmful impact and in this case, we can question what the child receives elsewhere.”

After having undertaken a brief media diet following the flood of criticism of her columns on France Inter, the clinical psychologist has visibly recovered in recent months. Faced with those who accuse her of being repressive, of embodying “a reactionary shrink”, or even an “anti-Dolto”, Caroline Goldman hits back and argues. “I love Françoise Dolto but it was another time when children were depressed because of an emotional deficiency and not an educational one. If I had been born sixty years ago, I would have gone on a crusade with Dolto to make it heard that the child is a person, that he needs attention. But these are no longer really the failings of the time (…); today we regulate an excess.”

Also readCaroline Goldman and the excesses of positive education: “Today, parents are being martyred by their children”

For some patients, Caroline Goldman embodies a psychologist who runs counter to the portrait painted in the media. One who has a sense of formula, metaphor, and sometimes a sense of humor like Florence Foresti, when the occasion arises, reports journalist Mathilde Serrell. At the end of the interview, the psychologist also addresses a message to her “little patients”, wishing them “to be light, happy, to live their childhood to the full, in carefreeness, “impulsivity”, joy”. And to conclude: “Because a happy childhood is a whole destiny of happiness, and destiny, a life, is long”.