Do Swedish kids have too much power?

The man who coined the term 'Collective panic syndrome,' Chief physician and psychiatrist David Eberhard thinks so. 

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  Controversial Swedish author David Eberhard believes Swedish children have too much power. Photo: Charlotte Strömwall/www.bladhbybladh.se

• Chief physician and psychiatrist and author David Eberhard thinks so, and that he believes that kids in Sweden make too many of the decisions in a family is the message in his new book: ”Hur barnen tog makten” (How the kids took power).

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  Illustration from the video game "Lucius"

• The book has already garnered headlines internationally, from Chinese South China Morning Post’s ”Swedish children are spoiled” to the British Independent’s ”Was it right for Sweden to ban corporal punishment?” In Brazil the book has been used as a tool in the debate whether or not children should be able to receive corporal punishment, since if you do not punish your child, he or she might end up like the children in Sweden.

• But Eberhard doesn’t agree: ”Nowhere in my book and never in any interview have I said I am for corporal punishment of children. But now I’m receiving mail from upset people in Brazil. I didn’t know they’d angled it like that there. People want to read whatever they want to in a text, that’s obvious,” he says. Eberhard argues in his book that children in Sweden have much too much power within their families, and this makes them badly prepared for adult life.
  ”My hope is that parents will get some of their confidence and courage back and dare speak up. Children aren’t going to come undone by being reprimanded,” Eberhard tells daily DN.
  Read Nordstjernan’s interview with David Eberhard here: Are Swedes too safe?

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