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Empowering Kids In An Anxious World


The Good News About Bad Behavior. And by "play" she means play without screens or adults keeping watch. "Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised," Lewis says. And this kind of parent-free play helped them develop important skills they'd use for the rest of their lives. "They were able to resolve disputes. They planned their time. They managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health."


The Self-Driven Child.



He says academics are important, but that, in most cases, kids should be in the driver's seat, learning to manage their work, their time and, ideally, being able to pursue their own interests. That freedom, Stixrud says, helps them develop internal motivation in a way that rewards and grades just can't. Stixrud's daughter, Jora LaFontaine, who now has a Ph.D. in economics, says she still remembers first grade, when she brought a paper home from school. Her parents were supposed to sign it every day, proving she'd read for fifteen minutes. The first day, though, Jora says her father looked at it, laughed, "signed every single line on it and said that he did not want to turn reading into homework or a chore." When she was an A student in high school, Jora attended a talk her dad gave about why parents shouldn't focus on grades. William Stixrud remembers his daughter pushing back that night in the car. "Driving home she said, 'You know, I liked the lecture, but I don't really believe that you believe that stuff about the grades," Stixrud remembers. "Most people I tell this to laugh," Jora says, laughing herself. "So, I said to my dad, 'If you don't get grades, you're not gonna get into college. Or at least you won't get into a good college." ... and if you don't get into a good college, you won't get a good job ... "So my dad said, 'I will give you a hundred dollars if you're willing to get a C in one of your classes,'" Jora says. A hundred dollars. Stixrud says, his daughter already took school seriously, and he wanted her to understand that "one thing that seems like a disaster is just not that big a deal." Jora didn't take her father up on his offer, but she says it meant a lot, knowing that the only person really pushing her to succeed ... was her. In that way, she embodies the spirit of both books' message to parents: As Lewis writes, "to build self-control, we need to stop controlling children." Link to the complete article:  https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/07/18/620074926/empowering-kids-in-an-anxious-world

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