Children of a Society That Got It Wrong — How Parents, Schools and Society Stopped Setting Limits

There are three pillars in a child's life: the family, the school, and the wider society. Historically, when one failed, the other two held. Today all three are failing at once.

This is not a book complaining about young people. It is an analysis of how three adult institutions stopped, one after another, setting limits — from 1968 and the misreading of Montessori, to schools paralysed by the fear of complaint, to legal systems whose consequences arrive far too late to teach anybody anything.

Fifty-four chapters, five conceptual diagrams and four appendices: the phrases that end an argument instead of starting one, a seventy-year timeline of childhood and technology, eleven rules for a house that works, and full references for the research cited.

Five chapters are devoted to the device: the dependence it produces and how it is engineered, what social media specifically do to a twelve-year-old, the habit of delegating every mental operation to a screen — homework included — what can actually be configured at home once the phone has been handed over, and who has an interest in all of this continuing.

For parents who feel they have been left alone to play the villain, for teachers who stopped reporting problems, and for anyone who wants to understand the problem without being told the answer is more listening.