The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed [Paperback]

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Gripping…how can teachers snatch back their critical role and give children the necessary space to fail? They could start by making parents read Lahey.” — New York Times Book Review

In the tradition of Paul Toughs How Children Succeed and Wendy Mogels The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, this groundbreaking parenting manifesto focuses on the critical school years when parents must learn to allow their children to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from lifes inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults.

Modern parenting is defined by an unprecedented level of overprotectiveness: parents who rush to school at the whim of a phone call to deliver forgotten assignments, who challenge teachers on report card disappointments, mastermind childrens friendships, and interfere on the playing field. As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their childrens well being, they arent giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems and develop critical life skills.

This culture of overparenting has the potential to ruin a childs confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers dont just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important lessons in child development that children carry with them long after they leave the classroom.

Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their childrens failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wisels#