N4L 096: "How to Raise an Adult" by Julie Lythcott-Haims

SUMMARY Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Dean of Freshman at Stanford University, offers her New York Times bestselling anti-parenting manifesto, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success. In the book, Lythcott-Haims explores how and why hyper-attentive parenting, or helicopter parenting, has taken parents and their children hostage in this country. This trend of well-intentioned parents who hover is creating real-life dangers for 21st-century smart kids who can’t even make their own beds. Their parents have been lured into creating "check-listed childhoods" or "redshirting" their kindergartners. Left inept in essential life skills because their parents watch, handle, fix, and organize everything for them, these kids are unprepared to work, lead, and take their rightful place as the next generation of adults. So, here to stop the madness of overprotecting, overscheduling, and overparenting is Lythcott-Haims. She speaks with the compassion of a parent yet the unapologetic urgency of someone who spent a decade observing some of our brightest young people fail to launch. In short, Lythcott-Haims teaches us how to change the definition of success and how to raise an adult. KEY POINTS “Existential impotence” – a state of being among young adults who remain, effectively, small children-in-arms lovingly attended to almost 24/7 and who feel perfectly content to be cared for by parents indefinitely Helicopter parenting is borne of five causes during the 1980s: 1- the playdate, 2 - the self-esteem movement, 3 - “stranger danger” 4 - seatbelt and bicycle helmets laws, and 5 - A Nation at Risk. Three types of overparenting: overprotecting, overdirecting, and hand-holding.  The shift to round-the-clock parenting has short-term gains but long-term losses. Four-step method for teaching children skills: do it for them, do it with them, watch them do it, and they do it themselves. Baby Boomers started helicopter parenting, and the movement has now continued into the present when Millennials are parenting. Give kids unstructured time for free play with no adult supervision. Kids are more likely to be harmed as a passenger in a car than to be abducted. Normalizing struggle by allowing small setbacks to teach is what leads to having autonomous kids and independent adults. QUOTES FROM LYTHCOTT-HAIMES “The most loving thing we can do as parents is to prepare ourselves to fend without us.” “Short of the disasters that can befall them, we’re supposed to let life teach our kids lessons.” “We have to as a community, as a neighborhood, as a school district, as a town—we have to call time out…and blow the whistle. We need to do things differently!” “Free play is essential the developmental wellness of children, so this is not some fuzzy thing…They will be mentally unwell (compromised) if their childhood doesn’t include a pretty regular dose of free play.” “A long-term study conducted over decades [the Harvard Study] shows that a kid who did chores in childhood is more likely to be professionally successful later in life. Why? Because chores build a work ethic and also a mindset of ‘Pitch in, and be useful!’” “What’s really best for a child is to figure out, ‘What do I want? What am I good at? Let me craft my life accordingly.’” Connect with Julie Lythcott-Haims on her website, and check out her wildly popular TEDTalk (with over 4 million views) about how to raise a successful kid without overparenting. Check out the Wilton Connecticut Free Play Matters Task Force website. Read articles by Peter Gray, the guru of free play, found at the Natural Child Project website. Visit the Let Grow website for “future-proofing our kids and our country.” BUY How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success RECOMMENDATION For student-centered college searches, visit the Colleges That Change Lives website, OR BUY Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Connect with us on social media! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit