 I picked up another parenting book after hearing about it from Ryan Holiday, The Gift of Failure: How the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed by Jessica Lahey. My oldest son will be entering kindergarten next fall, so I thought this would be a good book to breeze through.
Overall, the message was on point and I appreciated the perspective of Lahey as a teacher and a self proclaimed failure of a parent for over protecting her own kids from failure. Her introduction to the book was my favorite part. She eloquently explained her turning point in parenting and teaching, and explained how we got to where we are today - a world where we have taught our kids to fear failure, and in doing so have blocked the clearest path to their success. A lot of the book simply had me in agreement, nodding my head at the suggestions because I already try to parent my young kids in a way that gives them as much age-appropriate autonomy as possible. There were also parts of the book I quickly skimmed because it talked about high school years, so I'll re-read as a nice reminder when my kids are a bit older. If anyone feels they put a lot of time researching, planning and constructing perfectly comfortable lives for their kids, then I'd say this is a must read. There's no parent bashing here, just a clear look at what this loving and well-intentioned type of parenting is doing to our kids, and how we can reframe our approach to raising kids so that they grow up independent, successful, confident and capable. Comments are closed.
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