How To Raise An Adult

Hello Everyone,

 

I hope you are have a great week.  The campus is abuzz with activity as we prepare for the final days of the school.  At this time, I’m working on writing accolades for our 8^th graders and speeches for both 8^th Grade Moving Up Day and for the 4^th Grade Closing Ceremony.  Teachers are writing inscriptions for the various awards we give out, and in the Upper School, teachers are busy preparing their senior honorings.  End-of-year programs encourage (or maybe force) us to take stock and investigate themes and patterns.  And, ultimately, they give us the chance to celebrate our wonderful students.

 

There is a risk, however, to these ceremonies and to this time of year in general.  I remember some years ago at another school, I stood in the faculty receiving line after graduation.  Students filed by, stopping to shake hands or, more often, embrace teachers who had had an impact on them.  It was a lovely, personal moment, even among so many people.  However, down the line from me, I overheard someone asking students as he shook their hands where they would be attending college in the fall.  Now, I completely understand the curiosity behind this question, and I believe his intentions were good, but this was not the time to ask these questions – rather than celebrating students for all of the amazing things they had brought to the school from where they were graduating, he chose to boil down who they were to the college they would be attending.

 

This focus on college lists is not surprising, given that it seems that these days parenting is often judged not by the content of our children’s character but by the number of concrete accomplishments – what schools they are getting into, how many goals they score, what grades they earn, what level math class they are in.  We feel like we are better parents when we can boast about our kids’ accomplishments.  I was just talking to a friend about how Facebook has become the 24/7 version of the family holiday card.  It used to be that once a year, we’d receive letters from families, going on and on about the many accomplishments of their children.  I remember when I was younger, my mother joked about sending out a card that talked instead about the less glamorous aspects of life: “Heather really got a good understanding of how to fold laundry, and so, despite protestations, this has become her number one duty around the house.” 

 

Don’t get me wrong – I am a proud parent and am guilty of this phenomenon – I love to post a cute picture of my kids.  And, really, there’s nothing wrong with being proud parents.  What is unhelpful, however, is when we feel pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of parenting, focusing more on outward accomplishments than developing inner character.  This pressure sometimes then causes us to overparent; that is, we do so much for our children that we are actually hindering their growth.

 

Former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims writes about this danger in her book, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.  I haven’t read the entire book but have read many excerpts and find it illuminating.  Lythcott-Haims noticed multiple students showing up at Stanford (and we can assume these are some of the top students in the country) unprepared to face challenges and unwilling to recognize that failure is a part of success. 

 

She began to investigate why this was happening and discovered that it grew from an overreliance on parents from kids who were used to getting assistance whenever they needed it.  In an article she wrote for the Washington Post last fall, she provides a “test” to see if you are overparenting.  Here’s what she said:

I encourage you to take the quiz and reflect on your own parenting style.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in our children’s lives and to want to protect them from harm.  I find myself doing far too much for my own kids, partly because I care for them and partly because it’s just more efficient!  But the short-term solution may turn out to be a long-term stumbling block if our children ultimately don’t know how to protect themselves and, someday, their own children.

 

If you’d like to read the article, here’s the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/16/former-stanford-dean-explains-why-helicopter-parenting-is-ruining-a-generation-of-children/

 

I’m hoping to read the book this summer, and perhaps we can have a book club meeting about it in the fall.  Please let me know if you’d be interested.  I hope you have a wonderful summer!

 

Take care,

Heather