The Coddling of the American Mind:
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
GREG LUKIANOFF and JONATHAN HAIDT
Packed full of credible and current research; authors Lukianoff and Haidt reward us with required reading for all parents about how our good intentions of building our kid’s self-esteem and placing individualism first are backfiring
(badly ) along with our efforts to make everything equal for them - we are doing more harm than good. This is a well-balanced - apolitical book; that should help future generations of parents produce more resilient kids and more capable citizens who are less selfish, and grow to have great faith in themselves by what their parents do not do for them; vs what they are doing today.
“Instead of the strategy involving overprotecting, over-scheduling and over-parenting children in hopes of giving them an edge in a competitive society that has forgotten the importance of play and the value of unsupervised experiences. . . Parents will allow kids to develop a normal immune response rather than an allergic response to the everyday irritations and provocations of life including life on the Internet.
Parents can give their children the gift of experience, the thousands of experiences they need to become resilient autonomous adults.
The gift begins with the recognition that kids need some unstructured unsupervised time to learn how to judge risks for themselves and practice dealing with things like frustration boredom and interpersonal conflict “. (P236-237)
This is just a tiny taste of this very well-intentioned book. Again, the writers don’t have a political bent. They are advanced degreed scientists. The only horse they seem to have in the race is to help advance the human race. I could not be more thankful and awe-inspired of their contribution! We really need to figure out a way to get this book into the hands of every new parent on the planet.
Let’s do it!
The Coddling of the American Mind
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