Educating your child - 2 biggest mistakes we make and how to avoid them
An elementary school expert shared with me the 2 biggest mistakes we parents make when working with our children's schools. What are they?
1. We ignore our gut feelings. No one knows your child better than you. If something does not feel right, investigate it. Ask the right questions. If something does feel right, ignore outside pressures to change course.
2. We don't let our children fail. If your children forgets to bring her backpack to school one day or an assignment or her soccer uniform - let her deal with the natural consequences. It is through this failure that she will learn. If we do not our children fail, our children will not learn.
Of course, it can be painful to let our children fail! We never want to see that as a parent, but if our children do not learn responsibility and real world skills while they are under our care, they will have to learn as an adult and the consequences for not being, for example, responsible as an adult are far worse and far more significant than the consequences for forgetting homework in elementary school.
For more on how to let our children fail see:
Julie Lythcott-Haims' How To Raise An Adult. She's former Dean at Stanford University and shares her argument against helicopter parenting.
Wilson McCaskill's Children Are Not Made Of China.
Ray Dalio's interview on how humans only progress and learn by experiencing pain and reflecting on how to avoid it in the future. Ray Dalio is founder of Bridgewater Associates that currently has about $160 billion in assets under management. He's also dad of 4.
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