#381： Why You Should Let Your Kids Fail
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Summary
If you're a parent, you likely want your kid to flourish and succeed, and according to my guest today, the best way to do that is to let your kid fail. Her name is Jessica Lahey, and she's a teacher and the author of the book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go so Their Children Can Succeed. In this episode, we discuss the downsides of helicopter parenting, and why letting your kids fail is so important for their long-term development.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you're a parent
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you likely want your kid to flourish and succeed and according to my guest today the best way to
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do that is to let your kid fail her name is jessica lahey and she's a teacher and the author
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of the book the gift of failure how the best parents learn to let go so their children can
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succeed today on the show jessica gives us a quick overview of the history of parenting in america
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and why it's gotten more productive and why it's gotten more protective and more involved in the
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past few decades we then discuss the many downsides of helicopter parenting and why letting your kids
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fail is so important for their long-term development jessica then gets to the nitty-gritty of areas where
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you should let your kid experience failure and how to make sure those failures become learning
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experiences after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash gift of failure
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jessica lahey welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you published a book called
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the gift of failure how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed the backstory
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behind this book is interesting because you're a middle school teacher god bless you and you're tasked
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with shepherding these kids into competent adulthood like they're that weird phase of life
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where they're not like it's just weird but you describe in the book you discovered that you were
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failing at this job at home with your own kids tell us the backstory in that realization you had
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yeah so full disclosure i actually i've taught for the past 20 years i've taught every grade between
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six and 12 i actually uh currently i teach kids who are in an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab setting
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so i teach high school english and writing i don't get to teach middle school kids that often anymore
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now that i'm on the road so much but this this job of teaching the the drug and alcohol rehab kids
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keeps me just continuously entertained but yeah that's exactly what happened is i was noticing that
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my students were not only less motivated to learn for the sake of learning which is sort of a constant
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problem teachers are up against but they were also less able to learn and a lot of that seemed to be
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coming somewhere from this like this more directive parenting style this or you can call it over
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parenting you can call it helicopter parenting in the research they call it a directive parenting style
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and i was pissed i mean i was i was really i mean i i admit this when i talked to parents i was pissed
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off at my students parents for really just derailing so many learning opportunities and at that moment
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when i was at sort of peak pissed off i realized that my own child who was nine at the time didn't
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know how to tie his own shoes and i i joke that you know when in cartoons when the lightning bolt comes
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down and explodes or lights the main character on fire and they're you know reduced to an incinerated
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sort of pile of steaming ash that's what i was because you know as pissed off as i wanted to be
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at the parents of my students i had to admit that i was just like them so you know the book really
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came out of this interest in helping my students learn better and be better learners be more resilient
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but it became pretty urgent when i realized that i was doing the exact same thing that those other parents
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were doing to their kids to my own kids and i had handicapped my own children not just in terms of their
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resilience and their ability to just do stuff but it turns out that the research is pretty clear that
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it undermines kids ability to learn so like the very things we're trying to do to make our kids
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succeed in school are actually undermining their ability to learn okay so let's talk about how we
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got here uh so this the guiding ethos of parenting nowadays yeah he's directive parenting over parenting
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helicopter parent whatever you want to call it right what was it like in the past and how did we get to
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this point you know what were the cultural shifts that occurred because you kind of give this history
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of parenting in your book which is really interesting that was really fun to to write also because you
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know those history sort of how we got here chapters tend to be on the boring side and so i was on like
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this mission to make the history chapter as entertaining as possible and it was really fun i you know it
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really is multifactorial so we have kids later in a our age you know when we're older we have kids
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after we've been out on the workforce for for a while we have fewer kids the state the media has
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us believing that you know things are terribly dire that our children are never going to get into
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college they're certainly not going to do better than we did economically so you know everything is
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just really dire everything's an emergency everything has to be perfect like in this moment and
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and it's not really our fault in the sense that you know the media like i said has told us that
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you know our children are being enticed online every single day there's someone waiting on every
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street corner to abduct our children and sexually abuse them and you know they're never getting into
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college anyway but at the same time you know we're using a lot of the tools that we used out in the
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workforce to sort of manage our parenting like i cannot tell you how many parents i've spoken to that
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have spreadsheets where either you know when the kids are really little it's you know in what goes in
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and what comes out like they're recording their poo and their pee and how much they eat and all that
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kind of stuff or and now parents can log on anytime they want to these grading portals that schools
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have opened up for parents use and they're logging on many many many times a day i talk to parents who
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actually keep the portal open and just kind of hit refresh all day long so we're using all these
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tools like databases and spreadsheets to track our kids progress and all of that is because we just
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want to know if we're doing okay because you know we don't get we're used to performance reviews
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but we just got to go with what we got which is looking at our kids and seeing if our kids can give
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us the feedback on how we're doing as parents and that's completely unfair to them putting a lot of
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stress and anxiety on our kids i'm hearing from kids all the time you know i don't understand why
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my parents expect me to be perfect because i can't be perfect i'm trying as hard as i can and i can't
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so you know we're judging our own parenting based on our kids and that's just completely unfair
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right i mean i think i think you mentioned this in the book like in the past like parents thought
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their job was like keep your kids safe your job wasn't to make them happy but now it's like okay
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we're keeping them safe and you got to make them happy well and i'm certainly not the first one to
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point this out but you know it used to be called child rearing so it was very child centered and now
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it's called parenting it's very parent centered and we freak each other out you know we go to
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all these soccer games and we sit in the waiting room outside you know while the kids are having
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their music lesson and we talk about like the traveling soccer leagues and how many awards our
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kids are getting and we we sort of freak each other out and and we're doing it to each other
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um and that's you know that's something that we need each other to get out of too you know a lot of
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parents are like you know how do i i don't want to be the first one to step back because then
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everyone's going to assume that i'm not doing my job and you know i think we got to start undoing
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what we've been doing to each other we're each other's own best supports as well right and i'm
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sure the internet and social media is like just exacerbated the problem because yeah yeah absolutely
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you know the instagramming you know the dirty laundry is off on the outside of the picture so no one
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can see it and you know we're making our lives look fairly curated and we're making our kids look
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really curated too and that's teaching them to you know there's all sorts of stuff that's happening
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to them in terms of their social media use that we're just feeding into because as the more we
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curate our own lives and curate their existence on social media the more they're going to do the same
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okay so let's talk about the downsides of this sort of directive parenting i mean what does the research
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say what's happening to kids because of this over direct over over parenting well there's a couple of
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things we need to talk about i suppose the first one is you know anyone who's familiar with dan pink
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and the work that drive was based on edward dc's work how why we do what we do the science of self
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motivation knows that you know we have 40 years of really good research that shows that extrinsic
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motivators don't work if you want to get your kid to do something if you want to get anyone to do
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something so really if you want kids to do something that requires long-term focus and if you want kids to do
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things that require creativity then giving them something like you know paying them for their
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grades giving them a car if they stay on the honor roll surveillance you know going on the portal
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knowing where your kids are all the time because you're tracking them on their phone and i'm not
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saying we shouldn't do any of these things i'm just pointing out these are extrinsic motivators and
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they undermine motivation so in other words you know if you don't if you want your kid to not want to
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learn math pay them for their math grades it's really quite clear the research is really really
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clear and we know the research is solid because we have studies of the studies we have metadata
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so that's one side of it what we want is intrinsic motivation which requires us to give our kids more
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autonomy which is kind of like independence give them more control over the details of their lives
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help them feel competent which is not the same thing as confident and be really connected to our kids
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parents and the problem is is that under parenting undermines a couple of these things number one
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it undermines your connection with your kid because i don't know how you feel at the end of the day after
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nagging your kid to do your their homework about 100 times but i feel terrible and it's not good for our
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relationships but also kids who are more directed by their parents kids who are told you know do this
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first then do this no no do it this way not that way no no the dishes don't go in the dishwasher that
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way they go this way no no don't use a hammer that way use it this way kids who are told how to do
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things step by step are less able to be frustrated they don't like develop the emotional wherewithal to
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know how to be frustrated so when you put those kids in a room by themselves to do something without
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you know a person there to direct them you know when we give kids directions and we we make their lives
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very step by step they don't develop the emotional wherewithal they need in order to be frustrated
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and two of the most important teaching tools i have as a teacher require kids to be able to be
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frustrated these things called desirable difficulties giving kids work that's a little bit above their
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ability level and then letting them figure things out for themselves and giving kids constructive
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feedback on sort of a daily basis so they can see where they are where they're with their learning
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those things don't work with kids who can't hear negative feedback and who can't get frustrated and
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those kids are harder to teach you know i i can tell when a kid is being over parented from pretty much
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the first day of class because i you know they're the kids who are constantly raising their hands and
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saying what do i do next what do i do next and you know that i'd rather have kids of average
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intelligence who can be frustrated than super genius kids who don't know how to be frustrated
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they're just you know kids who can persist kids who are a little more resilient kids who can
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you know take a breath and say oh no wait a second i think i can figure this out those kids learn
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better learn better than their peers who can't be frustrated anyway and you also highlight and i've
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been seeing more research about this too is that this sort of rising generation of kids like they're
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more anxious yeah and have a lot of anxiety problems and depression issues and it might stem from the
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over parent because they're always told what to do they don't know how to deal with uncertainty
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you know there's it's that yes but you know a lot of it i think actually also has to do with the
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fact that we expect kids like i said i hear this all the time we expect kids to be perfect we expect
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them to be good athletes and good musicians and great in school and never get anything below an a
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and that's you know that's part of the pressure but the rest of it the thing that i think is
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actually really hurting them is that we expect them to do that effortlessly to never break a sweat
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to never make it look like they have to work too hard because and i have to you know shout out to
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carol dweck and her work in the in the book mindset you know these kids tend tend to believe that um
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because we tell them they're smart all the time and we tell them how accomplished they are all the time
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that the minute they look like they're having to put out an effort we're not going to believe them
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about that them anymore if they look like they have to work hard then you know maybe they're not
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just naturally smart maybe they're just you know faking it so it's this weird catch-22 you know i need
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kids to raise their hands and admit when they don't know something i need kids to take challenge
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problems so that they can you know embrace these desirable difficulties and yet kids who believe that
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if they show any weakness then they're less than perfect and they're not as smart as we think
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they are are less likely to raise their hands and ask for help and less likely to admit they don't
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know something and less likely to take challenge problems so the very things that you know telling
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kids constantly how smart they are how talented they are how genius they are undermines a kid's ability
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or the likelihood that a kid will push themselves to move outside their comfort zone because when i ask kids
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about this they always they're they're so cute they're always really clear they're like well of
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course we're not going to take the challenge problems because we don't want to get anything
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wrong because then you're going to know we're not as smart as you think we are and of course we're not
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going to raise our hand in class because then you'll know that we're not as smart as and our peers will
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know and our parents will know so keep the challenge problems away don't ask us any questions
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don't ask us to admit when we don't know something and we'll just pretend that we know everything
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and hopefully uh learn something along the way and that's just that's not where good learning happens
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right and you highlight this in the book too not only that expectation of perfection and effortless
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perfection prevents students from taking on challenges but it also sort of acts as a what's the word
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i'm looking for you know a source of cheating like it makes people want to cheat right because
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they got to be perfect yeah carol carol dweck showed that pretty clearly in one of her experiments
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that i just love that when you ask kids to report self-report their grades kids who have been sort of
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set up to have a fixed mindset about intelligence that it's this thing that you either have or don't
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have they're more likely to lie about their scores because well of course because they want you to
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think that they're smart and they'll defend that at any turn and there's a book i love called cheating
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lessons by james m lang and in his book he makes it really clear he says look if you want to create a
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classroom full of cheaters just keep telling him how smart telling them how smart they are
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and foster this fixed mindset what we should be doing actually is foster is making sure kids
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understand that intelligence is malleable that the more you push yourself out of your comfort zone
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the more you'll learn the more you can learn things that are different and new and the more connections
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you'll make in your brain and yes telling them that is great and teaching them about that about it
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about that is great but where we really seem to be falling down on the job is by modeling that and
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so i'm a big fan of you know talking to our kids when we screw up and showing them that we're willing
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to try things that are scary for us because you know we can blah blah blah as much as we want but they
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stop listening after a while uh what they really believe is what they see and if we're modeling that
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sort of approach that fearless approach to things that are a little bit scary then you know i think
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they're a lot more likely to take our word for it okay so controlling parenting directed parenting is
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like something we don't want to do what sort of parenting should we take what does the research
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say that sort of the style ethos is the most conducive to producing you know well-adjusted competent
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kids i i actually refer to the research of this woman named wendy grolnick and in one experiment she
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had parents come in and and she gave the kids a task to do and she watched the parents to see how the
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parents dealt with really general instructions which was be there with while your child completes
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this task and the parents who were really really directive about with their kids where they you
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know told the kids how to do the task and gave them step-by-step instructions when the parents were
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removed from the situation and the kids had to try a task on their own the kids were a lot less likely
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to be able to finish it on their own by contrast the parents who sort of were just there and supportive
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while the kids did the task the way they wanted to do the task and if the kids got frustrated which
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by the way the task they were given was a little frustrating on purpose the parents that sort of
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helped the kid refocus maybe repeated the instructions but didn't give the answers those
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parents were termed autonomy supportive parents and that is just what it sounds like it supports the
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kids autonomy to do something the way they want to do it and to make the mistakes and to figure out
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what part of the mistake not to bring forward with them and to know how to do it differently the next
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time that autonomy supportive parents parenting style doesn't mean that we you know abandon our
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kids and say hey here's you know replace this carburetor good luck here's a youtube video um you
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know there are parents that are nearby and and present but not right on top of the kids not reteaching
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algebra one when the kid doesn't understand you know one tiny homework problem these are parents that
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say you know why don't you think about it a different way or i noticed that you did this
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differently four problems ago why do you think you did it differently four problems ago and now you're
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having problems here with this math problem autonomy supportive parenting is is pretty magic stuff because
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the more you let your kids have autonomy the more competent they're going to feel and the more
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competent they feel the more they feel like they can attack things and can handle things that are
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beyond their ability level so it's this wonderful self self-perpetuating cycle and the other cool
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thing i get a lot of letters from parents who have gone ahead and you know backed off a little and let
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the kid you know start loading the dishwasher or putting dishes away or whatever the thing is the
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thing that the parent thought the kid could never handle on their own and i you know they always say
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you know yes yes my kid is much more competent now and that's fantastic and they're much more
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autonomous now and that's fantastic but what's really magical are the letters that explain that
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once their kid had more autonomy and became more competent that their relationship with their kid
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improved and i hear that over and over and over and it's certainly been true in my own family the more
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we're spending time talking about things that really matter to the kid as opposed to you know
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have you finished that math homework yet nah you did this wrong i do it differently
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that's that's the great stuff right there like the idea that we can improve our relationships with
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our kids if we actually leave them alone more and give them you know just less guidance as to how to
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get things done perfectly i that's that's pretty important to me to make sure that parents understand
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that this is about our relationships with our kids too not just about raising competent adults
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but the thing it sounds great but it's also really hard to do right because like you see your
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kids i've had this experience you watch your kid doing something yeah and they're doing it completely
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wrong right and so it's like something that sort of something that should have just taken a minute
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ends up taking 10 minutes you're just like all right just you're so tempted i've done it before
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sometimes i just take it let me do it so how do you resist that urge to step in and just be like
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this is going to be a lot easier if i just do it well i can tell you right now it's going to be a
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lot harder for parents who are obsessive compulsive and i can tell you right now i like the dishwasher
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you know loaded in a certain way i like east west not north south you know that kind of thing
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and i i like things the way i like them and that was really hard to get over i think the easiest way
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to start thinking differently about it is to start thinking long term our kids growth and development
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our kids learning our kids becoming more competent it doesn't happen in these like in moment to moment it
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happens long term so if you can start thinking okay i gotta think where do i want my kid to be in
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six months or a year do i want my kid to get the dishwasher loaded perfectly right this very second
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or in six months would i like to know that my kid will do this on their own without me reminding them
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do i need this math homework to be perfect for the teacher and by the way stop doing your kid's
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homework because homework is information for the teacher like when i see homework that clearly
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parents have meddled in i get a good sense of what the parents know but it doesn't give me great
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information about what the kid is learning so do i want this homework to be perfect or you know in six
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months do i want my kid to really understand this concept and to be responsible for doing their
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homework completely getting it in their backpack making sure they get it out of their backpack getting
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it in their teacher's hands when we deliver items that have been forgotten at home you know it makes
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us feel great it makes us feel like we're you know really we got our kids back and we're really doing
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this parenting thing and by the way that teacher saw me deliver that homework so now they know i'm
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really on the job but i would much rather have a kid that you know down the road will remember to
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take the homework themselves and allow them to suffer the consequences in the short term so that in the
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long run i have a kid who's much more competent and that's you know just thinking long term is the
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first step and the second step is to start thinking more about process over product stop
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being so obsessed with the perfect homework assignment and the a and the perfect score and
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start thinking more about whether or not your kid's learning something in the moment that you choose to
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step in uh it's it's really hard it's hard to hold your tongue and it's hard to
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keep from just doing it for them because you can do it better you can do it faster you can do it right
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but every time we step in and do something for our kids because we feel like we can do it better
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they don't appreciate that as oh great i don't have to do that they hear my parents don't think i'm
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competent enough to do that myself and we're actually undermining their competence and their
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confidence every time we step in and take over for them so long term over short term process over
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product those are my two big hints perfect so what i love about the rest of the book so you kind of lay
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out this overarching philosophy but then you get into specific areas where parents can help their
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children experience failure in a safe environment where the like the stakes are completely low that
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will hopefully build that resilience and competency they want so the first part you talk about is
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household duties is probably the what parents can do right away yeah so again like i said it's hard to
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do because you could probably do this stuff a lot faster and a lot better than they're gonna drop
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stuff and they're gonna break stuff and you know food is gonna get hardened on the plate but the cool
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thing about you know household duties is you know like you said the stakes are so low and you know i call
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them household duties actually for a reason you know i used to call them chores but frankly do you want
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to do something called a chore i mean that sounds like kind of a bummer to me and their house i call
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them household duties because they're part of what we do to support each other as a family
00:23:34.240
i love love love ron lieber's book the opposite of spoiled which is about kids and money and it's
00:23:40.540
he's really clear he's the your money columnist at the new york times we don't pay kids to do
00:23:46.740
household duties because kids are supposed to do household duties because that's part of being a part
00:23:52.600
of the family not because you're getting paid for it money and allowance is about budgeting and
00:23:57.360
learning about money so you know household duties sort of conveys this you know if you're not going
00:24:02.580
to do it who is going to do it and it's going to have to be someone else in the family and that's
00:24:06.280
going to be you know why why does that person have to do it not you so getting that through from a
00:24:13.920
really young age helps kids understand that they have responsibilities in the family and the coolest
00:24:18.560
part about that is there's a bunch of studies that show that when kids have a hand in helping the
00:24:25.780
family on a day-to-day basis even if it's just little stuff like putting dishes away that they're
00:24:31.040
more resilient emotionally that they're less likely to be emotionally harmed when big stuff goes down
00:24:38.540
like a divorce or a death or you know really big stuff stressful stuff they're a lot less likely
00:24:44.640
to be harmed by that if they feel like they're participating in keeping the family going
00:24:49.160
and they're proud of themselves and they're the number of pictures i get via email and and uh my
00:24:58.140
website and stuff of kids doing stuff parents didn't expect that they were going to be able to do
00:25:03.500
just it blows my mind it's it's so cool and the look on the kids faces like check me out look at what
00:25:10.920
i'm doing it's just amazing to me i you know they're amazing pictures and i'm just so it's amazing it's
00:25:18.540
such a great day for me when i get one of those emails because because it's like yeah there's
00:25:22.280
another kid who feels like they're competent and whose parent understands that the more they help
00:25:26.960
their field feel their kid feel competent the more competent their kid will become um it's it's cool
00:25:32.280
stuff so how young should kids get started with household duties as young as they're able to pick up a
00:25:39.580
toy and put it back in the box they got it out of i mean the nice thing is i'm talking like
00:25:44.100
language from really early on is that you know we take care of each other and we take care of our
00:25:50.020
things and that starts from toddlerhood on and i'm not talking about you know before a toddler goes
00:25:56.040
to bed they have to have their entire room clean in fact i i my one of our positions my positions is
00:26:01.960
that in our house kids get so little autonomy over their lives and their stuff that kids rooms are
00:26:07.680
their own domain i don't i don't expect my kids to keep their room clean because it's just not
00:26:12.840
that's not my business it's not my stuff but kids little toddlers can you know put a sippy cup in the
00:26:19.460
bottom shelf of the dishwasher you know have a place down low where kids can get their own cup out
00:26:24.420
have a stool have snacks for you know pre-prepare things for kids lunches like carrots and you know
00:26:32.460
some pre-slice things and put them down low in the refrigerator where kids can reach them themselves
00:26:36.740
and put their own lunches together there's a little bit of anecdotal evidence there's never i haven't
00:26:41.800
seen a big study on this but there's anecdotal evidence to show that when kids prepare their
00:26:46.300
own lunches there's less food waste they throw less of their lunch away and they eat more of their
00:26:51.500
own creation and if you help guide their tastes and you help guide their ingredients that food will be
00:26:57.560
healthier so you know i i don't make your kids lunches like from little little kids like from
00:27:04.240
kindergarten on help guide them make their lunches but don't just make their lunches and stick their
00:27:08.840
lunch in the bag and and you know have them have no hand in that it's it's really important to help
00:27:13.940
kids feel competent from a really young age like pre-k and i imagine you know as they get older
00:27:18.820
increase the level of responsibility and i i think would the guiding ethos be like have them do more
00:27:24.440
than you think they'd be able to do i always say i mean for all parents even parents of special needs
00:27:29.860
kids i say look pretend like there's a line you know we all have this sort of line of of of competence
00:27:36.500
for our kids what we think our kids can do and what we think our kids can't do and then let's just
00:27:40.940
stick our toe just beyond that line when i was doing research on um you know i made all these there
00:27:47.260
are all these lists in the books of in the gift of failure of what kids should be able to do at
00:27:52.480
certain ages and what's really mind-blowing is if you look back at lists from for example maria
00:27:58.060
montessori's lists of of chores kids could do at certain ages there are things that she expected
00:28:03.960
kids to be able to do at a very very young age that some parents look at it and say oh my gosh
00:28:08.280
my kid could never do that so i you know i did update the list for you know our new sense of you
00:28:13.900
know oh kids shouldn't you know can't do a lot of stuff that they used to be able to do um but at the
00:28:20.480
same time you know this isn't about manual dexterity this isn't about you know what our kids can
00:28:29.840
handle in terms of safety and you know i always try to remind parents that kids use knives safely
00:28:36.080
when they know how to use knives and they have been using them and that the knives are sharp
00:28:40.220
giving kids a dull knife is a really bad idea kids who don't know how to climb a tree because they've
00:28:45.580
never been allowed to do it are more likely to fall out because and you know step on a dead branch
00:28:51.620
that can't support their weight because they don't have any understanding of what a dead branch feels
00:28:57.440
like because they've never been able to experience that so there's a reason that we let kids explore
00:29:04.120
age appropriately and if we wait too long to give kids responsibilities and let them experience
00:29:10.900
things that are dangerous then we are actually setting up a situation where those dangerous
00:29:16.240
things become more dangerous for them because they don't have um a sense of what they can do and what
00:29:22.080
they can't do so it's really it was really fun to make those lists of what kids can and can't do
00:29:27.580
mainly because when you go across the country and you talk to people about what they think their kids
00:29:32.340
can and can't do there's such wild swings depending on how much parents have let kids be competent in
00:29:39.220
the first place um it was fun recently i got to watch a kid uh bring in some uh some horses just
00:29:47.180
because she's been doing it since she was really really little and she's like 12 and she's
00:29:50.920
bringing in these huge massive horses and sometimes two or three of them at a time and the person who
00:29:56.560
was with me has a 12 year old and she just looked at me like there is no way in the world my 12 year
00:30:00.580
old would ever be able to do that and i said well that's because she's never done it and because you
00:30:05.080
know the expectation is that she wouldn't have to do that kind of thing so start thinking a little
00:30:09.780
more be a little more open-minded push yourself just a little bit to just let your kid try something
00:30:15.720
first and see if they can do it you might be happily surprised so another area where kids can
00:30:21.460
experience failure and frustration are friendships right so they might get left out or they might make
00:30:26.580
friends but i mean peers as you highlight in the book have such a big influence on kids more so than
00:30:33.740
parents you know especially when they get in those middle school years how how do you as a parent
00:30:38.340
like handle that because you know you might you might notice your kid hanging out with the wrong
00:30:42.960
group of kids but you don't want to tell them you can't hang like what do you do about that
00:30:46.580
well it's so you have to understand sort of why kids make friendships so you know when they're
00:30:53.460
really really little you know it's up to us it's proximity you know we choose our friends and then
00:30:58.600
the kids of those friends tend to be their friends and it works out great and you know we get to have
00:31:03.800
total control over who their friends are and that's fine for kids that are really really young because
00:31:09.060
you know friendships at that point um aren't really about exploring identity they're more
00:31:14.660
about play and things like that as they get older and especially when you get like towards middle
00:31:19.620
school friendships become more about exploring identity trying on other people's identity trying
00:31:25.240
on you know things they see in other people and they start becoming more outwardly focused and
00:31:31.560
understanding that our kids are going to be friends with some kids that make us nervous along the way
00:31:37.380
shouldn't be a reason for us to say no no you can't be friends with that kid and of course i'm
00:31:43.220
talking within reasonable limits i my older son who's now 19 had a friend when he was young that
00:31:49.380
scared the death it scared me to death he was a risk taker he'd broken like 10 bones before sixth grade
00:31:56.220
he liked to throw himself off of high places with no regard for his safety and i was positive that come time
00:32:03.040
you know for driving that that kid there's no way i was going to let my kid get in a car with that
00:32:09.260
dangerous child but he matured and he changed over time and also my son was able to see him break all
00:32:15.740
these bones and say huh well that was kind of a boneheaded maneuver um you know he got to learn
00:32:20.980
more about his own limits by watching his friend and in a way i think we should be grateful when our kids
00:32:28.000
make friends with kids who are different from them who are experimenting with things that maybe
00:32:34.160
our child isn't experimenting with themselves because then our kid can look at them and say
00:32:39.100
you know huh that is or is not for me and if you have if your kid has a friend let's say your kid's a
00:32:45.060
teenager and they're making friends friends with kids who make you nervous rather than ban you know
00:32:51.440
your child from being able to be around that person which frankly is the fastest way to make your child
00:32:55.900
want to be around that person is to talk about friendships and say huh you know you've been
00:33:00.360
spending a lot of time with this kid and i've noticed that you don't really feel good about
00:33:04.360
yourself when you're around that kid i had this conversation with the mother of a girl recently
00:33:08.600
her daughter is friends with a really mean girl and it's making her daughter crazy and sad and depressed
00:33:16.180
and feel terrible about herself and you know the mom i encourage the mom to have conversations with
00:33:21.920
their daughter like you know every time you come home with um hanging out with so-and-so you just
00:33:26.400
seem sad and you don't seem yourself and what is it about your friendship with this person that you
00:33:31.260
value and you know model for them really good relationships that you have with people and talk
00:33:36.640
about those relationships um i talk a lot with my kids about the fact that the thing i love about
00:33:42.140
approaching 50 is that my relationships with my friends are no longer competitive relationships they're
00:33:48.440
supportive relationships and that's one of the great things about becoming an adult is you can
00:33:52.840
throw away that sort of need to be liked and popular and you can be more attuned to what strengthens
00:34:02.040
you as a person so having conversations with kids about what makes for good relationships is really
00:34:06.500
really important but if you start you know saying forget it you can't be around that person um you're
00:34:11.140
really probably going to drive your child toward that person so um it's you know it's a tricky
00:34:16.660
it's a tricky area um i got to write about it for a magazine called your teen and you know it's
00:34:22.700
really clear that middle school relationships and high school relationships are completely different
00:34:26.440
beasts than elementary school relationships and it's hard to lose control of who our kids are
00:34:31.860
friends with but that's what being a parent is all about kids are supposed to individuate supposed to
00:34:37.660
become their own people and if they try on relationships through other kids and not themselves
00:34:43.020
then great they've had a chance to try something on and uh not necessarily get that tattoo themselves
00:34:49.380
and say huh okay that's interesting maybe not for me but that's interesting so you know yes it's hard
00:34:56.800
so let's take a look at school because that's where parents i think are probably the most paranoid
00:35:01.060
about their kid failing because no we're not yeah we're totally there's a lot of con you know
00:35:06.360
conflict going on there on the one hand we said earlier extrinsic motivation doesn't produce
00:35:12.080
you know self-directed people right right but school the way it's set up in most places like
00:35:18.080
we have grades it's all about extrinsic motivation and getting the good test score and getting to the
00:35:22.680
great college so how do you balance that as a parent where you're trying to okay balance these
00:35:29.340
short-term demands of getting good grades and getting into college with at the same time want to i want
00:35:34.240
to create a child or help rear a child who has just this who wants to learn for the sake of learning
00:35:40.180
because he wants to this is one of the most i i do this video series on on uh youtube about frequently
00:35:47.280
asked questions about the gift of failure and this one's right up there because yeah you know parents
00:35:51.960
are like okay yeah i'm with you this is great evidence backs up the fact that we should not be
00:35:56.420
using extrinsic motivators with kids okay now screw you because you're a teacher and you're telling my
00:36:00.320
kid every single day that grades are important and you give points and you give grades and you give
00:36:04.980
scores and that's absolutely true and it's been one of the hardest things to deal with and you know
00:36:11.480
while i'd love to say look we need to reform the education system and grades stink which they do
00:36:17.820
they're not about information they're about ranking kids and i've written about that at the atlantic and
00:36:23.180
in the new york times you know we have these grading portals that encourage parents to check
00:36:29.180
constantly and micromanage kids grades so i think the biggest things we can do are um realize that
00:36:37.360
kids are getting kids are hearing constantly how important grades and scores and all that stuff is
00:36:43.820
it's not like when we say to them sweetie this french test you have next period next uh friday is
00:36:49.140
really important or you know grades in your junior year those are the ones the colleges are going to see
00:36:53.780
this is not news to them so if home could be the one place where we're actually talking
00:36:59.000
about goals um this is something that i actually stole from what i do at school i was i mean i was
00:37:05.800
an advisor in middle school and one of the things i did constantly was talk with my um my advisees
00:37:10.760
about what their short-term and long-term goals for themselves were so that i could tap into and use
00:37:16.120
as levers the things that are important to them and you know if they say you know i they really i know
00:37:23.440
i know that their goal is to go to x college or to you know play soccer and in order to do that they
00:37:29.920
have to have a c or better then i can use that as leverage and say okay well how are you going to
00:37:33.840
achieve that goal goals are really really powerful things and it's the reason that the entire chapter
00:37:38.680
on grades in the book is really about how to help your how to talk to your kids about goals but that
00:37:44.420
also means that we have to model that for our kids the other thing unfortunately that we have to do
00:37:50.240
is just realize yes this is the system we're stuck with right now um as much as i'm optimistic that
00:37:57.100
the system is changing there are a there's a whole lot of people out there working to move away from
00:38:02.240
grades and move toward things these things called standards-based report cards standards-based learning
00:38:07.320
mastery oriented learning rather than getting a b minus and you know the parent goes in to talk to
00:38:13.760
the teacher and say okay great a b minus what does that mean what does my kid actually know how to do
00:38:19.520
um there are ways of of evaluating kids that that would give actual information about what they
00:38:25.380
know and don't know and that's called standards-based learning standards-based evaluation so until we have
00:38:31.840
that i think at what we have to realize is that our job as parents is to temper some of what they're
00:38:37.220
hearing everywhere to um give them space to breathe to you know i go to a lot of schools i get called into
00:38:45.380
a lot of schools that have had suicide clusters and they bring me in to help the parents understand
00:38:50.680
ways to talk to kids that aren't about heightening anxiety and are more about helping kids know what
00:38:58.360
their goals are and create their own strategies for achieving those goals and that's that's called
00:39:04.600
self-directed executive function and executive function is sort of you know one of the new big areas
00:39:09.280
if we can just strengthen executive function we can help kids learn better but that's true
00:39:13.380
so let's do a little bit more focusing on goals let's do a little bit more focusing on the process
00:39:18.620
of learning over the end product especially with kids who are anxious especially with kids who are
00:39:25.380
perfectionist the more we talk about process unless we talk about product the more we can get their
00:39:31.740
brains off of this spinning and spinning and spinning over the idea of getting you know a 100 instead of a 97
00:39:38.120
and the more we can focus them on okay but but what are you learning and how are you learning and
00:39:43.780
what study techniques are working well for you and what are you going to do next time if you got a low
00:39:48.220
grade this time all of that process talk is is really essential for helping kids get focused on
00:39:53.940
what's important and in the end it's not the grade that's important because grades are not great
00:40:00.060
indicators of learning anyway it's it's what's being mastered so that's our job as parents so also that
00:40:06.580
means no more doing the kids science fair yourself oh gosh yeah i got i've gotten to write about that
00:40:11.720
a couple places and there is nothing that will motivate a kid more and i say this from experience
00:40:17.520
than having to sit next to a really crappy trifold poster board with some made-up data at the last
00:40:27.300
second with sharpie drawn graphs that they know is crap and that everyone that stands in front of it
00:40:33.420
and asks them how they arrived at their data knows it's crap the kids embarrassed and um when that
00:40:40.620
happened with my own kid uh the kid the the project that my kid created the next year completely under
00:40:45.840
his own steam was amazing because he didn't want to endure what he had gone through the year before
00:40:51.420
where he knew he he just completely thrown his hands up in the air and given up and forgotten about it
00:40:58.120
and not planned well enough um the next year the thing he created was not only great from like an
00:41:04.480
objective you know or grade perspective whatever he was proud of it and uh and that letting my kid go
00:41:11.080
to the science fair with a piece of crap project was one of the best things i ever did for my kid
00:41:14.700
i love that well jessica this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more
00:41:18.540
about the book and your work well everything is always at jessicalahey.com everything from the show
00:41:23.600
notes for the podcast i do about writing um with my former new york times editor kj delantonia called
00:41:28.700
hashtag am writing with jess and kj you can find me on twitter at jess lahey i mostly tweet about
00:41:35.000
education and child welfare and that kind of stuff you can find me at instagram at teacher lahey and
00:41:41.040
on facebook as well fantastic well jessica lahey thank you so much for time it's been a pleasure
00:41:44.740
you are so welcome thank you so much for having me my guest today was jessica lahey she's the author of
00:41:49.440
the book the gift of failure it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find
00:41:53.580
out more about her work at jessicalahey.com also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:41:58.680
slash gift of failure where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:42:02.340
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:42:18.360
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and while you're there check out
00:42:22.120
our podcast archives we got over 380 episodes there all available to listen to it's at artofmanliness.com
00:42:27.980
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00:42:31.960
support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly