How to Help Our Kids Thrive in the Real World
How to Help Our Kids Thrive in the Real World
Resilience, resourcefulness and the inner determination necessary for success.
In this newsletter, we provide you with notes on How Parents Can Help Their Kids Successfully Launch with Author Julie Lythcott-Haims an episode of TILT Parenting: Raising Differently Wired Kids.
TILT Parenting is a podcast about learning disabilities, parenting differently wired children, and more.
Host Debbie Reber is a parenting activist, New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and speaker. Her guest, Author Julie Lythcott-Haims is New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult. She wrote the book after noticing that prospective college students at Stanford University, where she was dean of admissions, were being over-parented and as a result, were lacking the resources to develop the resilience, resourcefulness, and inner determination necessary for success.
Save time and read our notes on how to raise resilient, resourceful and determined future adults.
Topics covered in this Summary
Discussing Fear-Based Parenting
Redefining Success
How To Raise A Self Sufficient Future Adult
Resources for Parents
Discussing Fear-Based Parenting
As parents, there are a lot of things that frighten us, and we let that fear animate our behaviors. We are parenting from a place of love, ego, and fear. Children that are over parented in this manner often lack the resources to develop the resilience, resourcefulness and the inner determination necessary for success.
In the short term, we handle things for our children thinking that if they can’t do it, their world might crumble down. But in the long term, if we are always handling things for them, we take away the opportunity for them to learn how to handle things for themselves.
A good place to start would be to allow your children to experience difficult things without jumping in to handle them. This can include things like:
Not being invited when friends are going out
Working hard on a paper and still getting a poor grade
Seeing the tree they planted die
Being told that a class or camp they wanted to attend is full
These things are often intolerable for us parents but without experiencing the rougher spots of life, our kids become incapable of thriving in the real world on their own.
Redefining Success
There’s no uniform definition of success. The general definition is undergoing change. Julie Lythcott-Haims explains: She studied and did well in school, but her concern was her relationship with her boyfriend. Whereas her teenage daughter is worried about making an impact on the planet.
Children nowadays feel that to be successful, they have go to one of the big universities, have a company by the age of 25, or invent something the world has never seen before.
After all, our definition of success shouldn’t be so homogeneous. Success is more about personal happiness, healthy relationships, acquiring certain personality traits, and growing as a human being.
How To Raise A Self Sufficient Future Adult
We're successful as parents when our children can actually stand and make their way on their own. Here’s a four-step method for teaching our kid any skill:
You do it for them
You do it with them
You watch them do it
They do it on their own
Remember that our job is to put ourselves out of a job, raise our kids to be able to fend for themselves, which means teach them everything they need to know.
Resources for Parents
How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims
Julie’s TED Talk: How to Raise Successful Kids
Julie’s TEDxGunnHighSchool Talk: Throwout the Checklisted Highschool
Julie’s TEDxStanford Talk: Be Your Authentic Self
Useful Links
Follow All Star Parent on Facebook
Follow All Star Parent on Instagram
Follow All Star Parent on Twitter
Listen to the original podcast