016: How We’re Failing Our Kids by Not Letting THEM Fail with Bestselling Author Jessica Lahey

I’ve been telling everyone about this book!

Ever since I read  The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey, it has truly changed my parenting. My mindset about the mistakes my kids make and little accidents they have is totally more peaceful, and the whole time I was absorbing the information, I was thinking, “How can I interview this author so I can share her amazing wisdom with my audience???”

Turns out all I had to do was post something I had done using the Failure Philosophy with one of my kids here on Facebook, and someone tagged her and now — here we are! 😀

Here are a few things we talked about:

• How teachers are finding that kids these days are literally “less teachable,” and how fear of making mistakes and inability to deal with frustration turned out to be at the root
• Jessica’s surprising story of how old her child was when he learned to tie his shoes, and how that wake-up call brought her middle school teaching strategies into her parenting
• What simple three-letter word we need to use so much more with our kids to help them focus on process and progress
• Why it’s so hard for us as parents to let our kids fail!
• The reason college kids are taking longer to finish college even though they are really smart and have high test scores… 
• One simple step to help our kids break free from their helplessness
• Why “self-directed executive function” should be part of your interaction with your kids, and some questions to ask them regularly 
• An easy equation for figuring out how much responsibility we can give each of our children at various ages
• Why the kitchen is an excellent place to promote failure and the motivation for us to do it!

If you have kids in sports, want more homework help, and wish you knew what to do with report cards or chores and more, The Gift of Failure is a must-read (or listen to)!

Resources We Mention for Letting Kids Fail

• You can find Jessica at her website.
• The Gift of Failure (Amazon/Bookshop.org)
• Mindset
• How to Raise an Adult
• Screenwise
• The Stinky and Dirty Show
• Jessica’s blog post on laundry
• If you enjoyed this interview, you’ll also enjoy my interview with Shannon Mi

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