Teach Your Children Well

Carol Dweck’s concept of fixed versus growth mind-sets. At any given Mensa meeting of extremely high-IQ individuals you will find professors, surgeons, researchers, engineers, cops, firefighters, cooks, cabdrivers,

While we all hope our children will do well in school, we hope with even greater fervor that they will do well in life. Our job is to help them to know and appreciate themselves deeply; to approach the world with zest; to find work that is exciting and satisfying, friends and spouses who are loving and loyal; and to hold a deep belief that they hav

one in five American children and teens shows symptoms of a mental disorder and one in ten suffers from “mental illness severe enough to result in significant functional impairment.”

No school or profession can guarantee success, financial or otherwise. The child who values close connections with mentoring adults is unlikely to feel successful at a large, impersonal school, no matter how prestigious. And the child whose blood runs music is not likely to feel successful in a dental program. While every protective parenting bone

competence, the ever-present parenting hand only breeds dependence, destroys resilience, and as a result, lessens self-esteem.

When my kids were little, river rafting and camping became our yearly vacation ritual. I was a born-and-bred New York City girl who believed that participating in the great outdoors meant putting the screens on the windows in the summer.

Since self-esteem comes from actual

Such a system is completely unsuited to the needs of an expanding global knowledge economy, where problem solving, innovative thinking, adaptability, and initiative promise to be of far greater value than the ability to know the “right” answer, because that answer is not likely to be static.

Academic excellence will always matter, and parents are right to maintain a high bar for their children. But there are other skills that are likely to be particularly important to success in the twenty-first century—creativity, innovative thinking, flexibility, resilience in response to failure, communication skills, and the ability to collaborate.