Parenting Essentials: The Gift of Failure
Jessica Lahey is a mother to two children and has been a middle and high school teacher for over twenty years. A few years ago, she began to notice an obvious and startling fear of failure in both her own children and her students — a fear that had the potential to undermine their autonomy, competence, motivation and their relationships with the adults in their lives.
She suspected that the fear of failure was directly related to the way we parent. A deep dive into the research bore her hypothesis out, and resulted in her New York Times bestselling book, “The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.”
Since the book’s publication, Jessica has been traveling across the US and around the world helping parents and teachers learn how to foster deep, meaningful learning by offering kids more autonomy at home and in school.
Jessica Lahey is my guest today and “The Gift of Failure” is the topic of this episode.