'How to Raise an Adult' Author Visits CA

How can we best raise kids poised to tackle adulthood as happy, successful, and self-actualized women and men? Last month, we were lucky to have Julie Lythcott Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and  Prepare Your Kid for Success and former dean of freshman and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, address a packed house of parents and community members at CA. Her message was poignant and timely, as we live in an age of helicopter parenting, mental health issues in kids of all ages, and increased anxiety regarding the path to highly selective colleges and economic certainty in uncertain times.

 

From a college counselor’s perspective, her talk and her book are extremely relevant to the college process, in addition to parenting in general, as day-in and day-out, we are working with students (and parents) as they navigate some of the essential choices and transitions that move a child closer to adulthood. We encourage parents of students of all ages to read her book and watch her TED Talks. Here are some of my key takeaways:

 

“OUR JOB AS PARENTS IS TO PUT OURSELVES OUT OF A JOB.”

I relate to the desire to feel needed and like my kids can’t do it without me. However, Lythcott-Haims argues that this type of “concierge parenting,” catering to kids’ needs, doing things they are capable of doing, and tackling tricky situations (e.g., handling issues and disagreements with friends and teachers) teaches them that they can’t do things for themselves.

 

She writes, “You can’t let go of your 18-year-old if you’ve been holding tight to your 17-year-old.” She uses the analogy of teaching a young child to cross a street on his or her own. First you do it for them: carrying your baby. Then, you do it with them, holding the hand of your toddler.

 

You narrate what you are doing and show them the safe way to look left, right, and left again. Then, you watch them do it (this can be the most terrifying step!) and have them show you that they’ve been watching, listening and have learned the steps to do it on their own. Then, finally, they are ready to do it completely on their own, without you there. You can’t move from step one or two directly to four, so we can’t expect that we can do things for our children (some of her examples are basic life skills such as cutting meat on a dinner plate and doing laundry) throughout their childhood and teenage years, and expect that they will be ready to launch successfully in the world when they reach the magic age of 18. Building these skills is a process, and it takes time.

 

“WHEN WE DO THEIR WORK FOR THEM IT SENDS THE MESSAGE, ‘I DON’T THINK YOU CAN DO THIS WITHOUT ME.’”

Lythcott-Haims’s book talks about parents wielding glue-guns, and chemistry Ph.D.s doing a fifth grader’s science fair project. Parents can get caught up in over-helping in the early years, which bleeds into re-writing sections of their student’s papers (or, gasp, even college essays) in high school. There is the perception that students are competing for grades, and that all parents are doing this, and that it’s fed by the frenzy of the increasingly selective college admission process. As dean at Stanford, Lythcott-Haims was in an ideal position to see the harm that over-helping does to our children. Particularly in the age of the smartphone, when parents are just a text away, kids become dependent on this lifeline and rely on it because they’ve never had to figure out life’s little details on their own.

 

She met a student who texted her mom several time zones away to figure out where one of her college classes was held. The student had many more resources to figure it out being the one physically on campus, yet she had her mom “Google it” for her. Parents are reaching out to college professors, residence hall directors, and deans to manage details and disagreements that students can and should be navigating on their own. If this is the culture we create with our children, when and how does it change?

 

She has many examples of parents continuing to manage their adult children’s graduate school applications, job searches, and careers into their 30s. In one unsettling anecdote, Richard, an Ivy League graduate and investment banker, was fired after his mom called his boss to complain about the long hours her son was keeping. This learned helplessness is not only damaging our sons’ and daughters’ abilities to learn essential life skills, but their confidence and belief that they can succeed on their own. Lythcott-Haims poignantly states, “One of the most loving things we can do is show we think they are competent.”

 

“AS WITH ANYTHING, THE TOP 5% OF COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE FANTASTIC. THAT’S 140 SCHOOLS.”

All too often, parents and students spend years vying for a particular college outcome, admission to one of the top 10 or 20 most selective universities. Lythcott Haims argues that that mentality is harmful to our kids, and that students can get fantastic educations at many many more colleges than those with the most name-brand cachet (here in the College Office we fully support that claim!). It’s not where you go to college but how you go to college — what you do when you are there — that truly matters.

 

She quotes a 1999 study (Dale and Krueger) of what happened to students who were accepted to the most selective colleges, but chose to attend a “moderately selective” college instead. “It turned out that such students had on average the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges.” The list of undergraduate colleges attended by the class of 2016 at Harvard Law School illustrates that there are many ways to get to the same endpoint — the 540 members of the class came from 171 different undergraduate colleges — many of which you’ve never heard of.

 

“OUR KIDS ARE MORTGAGING THEIR CHILDHOOD—A DEBT THAT CAN NEVER BE REPAID.”

 Several studies have shown correlation between over-parenting and the rise in mental health issues among kids and young adults. Lythcott-Haims refers to the “check-listed childhood” in which free play is traded for hours of homework for all the “right” classes, several extracurricular activities (even for elementary-aged children), and scheduled playdates in which we observe our kids’ play and involve ourselves in helping them work out things they can and should be doing on their own. Children and teenagers have much less free time than any previous generation,

and their activities are carefully constructed to fulfill what we believe will look best to college admission officers. They also aren’t getting enough sleep, which is vital to their developing brains. According to a 2013 study by the American College Health Association, 51.3% of college students surveyed felt overwhelming anxiety, 46.5% felt things were hopeless, and 31.8% felt so depressed that it was difficult to function.

 

Lythcott-Haims concluded that the best recipe for success is Love + Chores. Beyond loving our children unconditionally, we need to teach them life skills that will eventually put us out of a job. Part of that is giving children household responsibilities and teaching them the feeling of being useful and how to contribute to a community and a collective effort. Children who have the skills and the confidence to be self-sufficient will be happier and more successful adults. Judging from the standing ovation she received after her talk, Julie Lythcott-Haims’s message resonated loud and clear with our community, as we seek to raise healthy, happy, and successful adults.

 

On a related note, we are beginning the process of transition out of CA and into the world with the Class of 2018. We’ll host our College Night for those students and their parents on January 24, 2017 to look at the road ahead.

 

Our special guests will be Mark Hatch, vice president for enrollment at Colorado College, Kevin MacLennan, director of admissions at CU Boulder, and Debra Shaver, dean of admission at Smith College. If you are the parent of a current junior, please mark your calendar and join us that evening!