Julie Lythcott-Haims is interested in provoking parents of the educated elite. One look at the chapter titles in her best-selling book How To Raise An Adult will tell you that: “Our Kids Lack Basic Life Skills”; “The College Admission Process Is Broken”; “They’ve Been Psychologically Harmed” – just to name a few.  That certainly gets our attention.  But how does this former Dean of Freshmen and Undergraduate Advising at Stanford University back up her assertions?  With loads of research and a career's-worth of anecdotal evidence.

 

As part of our SPEAK series, Ms. Lythcott-Haims gave an inspirational and sometimes emotional talk to parents on Thursday of this week.  Just as she does in her book, she encouraged the assembled adults to think about their children’s future and emotional well-being.  And she urged us all to re-frame our “misguided definition of success” and to parent differently than many have done.  In our understandable quest to keep children safe, we have become over-protective, bubble-wrapping children in multiple ways, including over-using the “bully” label in reference to how other children treat them.  She knows of whence she speaks having raised two children of her own, with whom, admittedly, she made similar errors in judgment.

 

Of course, much of this over-parenting stems from the desire to “ensure” college admissions into the narrow funnel of highly selective institutions (like Stanford).  I too have seen the trend for parents to simply “double down” in the face of ever-shrinking admission rates into these institutions, protecting their kids and over-programming them to the point of driving kids into anxiety, depression or exhaustion.  It’s a vicious cycle that we should (re)-examine very carefully.

 

So how do we correct the course?  Again, Lythcott-Haims’ chapter titles in the section called “The Case for Another Way” light the path: “Give Them Unstructured Time”; “Prepare Them for Hard Work”; “Normalize Struggle”; and “Have a Wider Mind-Set About College” are amongst the selections.  Of these, the idea of normalizing struggle strikes a chord with me.  I have noticed that many students have a difficult time with a process that doesn’t lead them to ready answers. They get impatient or even anxious when faced with open-ended questions where they may have to do some creative problem solving or thoughtful reflection.  This doesn’t mean our students object to hard work; in fact, they work diligently most the time.  But it is hard for them to let go of their desire to get to a “perfect” end product rather than embrace the uncertainty and struggle that comes with trying out their own ideas or following difficult options.  They are worried about disappointing – themselves or their parents – and build up an unrealistic sense of what they “should” be doing.

 

In all, this latest SPEAK guest and her book raised many important issues that all of us who have children and/or teach them ought to consider.  I hope the dialogue will continue.