When I deliver messages to parents like:
- What you do in college is more important than whether or not the school is prestigious
- Parents need to step back and allow their kids to find their own way
- Grades, test scores, and admissions decisions don’t measure your child’s worth or your success as a parent…
…I find that parents respond in one of three ways.
- They agree wholeheartedly and are already embracing that approach.
- They think it’s ridiculous and wish I would just tell them how to get their kids into Harvard.
- They want to do it and they know in their parenting hearts that it’s the healthy, sane approach. But they have nagging fears that they’ll somehow be leaving their kids at a disadvantage.
If you’re in the third group, I encourage you to watch this 14-minute TED Talk, How to raise successful kids — without over-parenting. The speaker is Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former dean of freshmen at Stanford, author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success, and a parent herself (one who admits in the talk that even she has fallen for the over-parenting trap).
Thanks to loyal reader George for sending it to me.