November Session

Ready or Not

Madeline Levine

Ready or Not

Ready or Not: Preparing Our Children to Thrive in an Anxious and Uncertain World

“Failure is mandatory to get better at anything,” said Dr. Madeline Levine her new book Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World. Madeline, explained that parents need to exhibit confidence in their children’s resilience. She said, “I’ve watched my own son and his and wife react as their toddler falls on her butt over and over—they know she has to fall down 100 times in order to stand up”. When children aren’t trusted to recover from small setbacks, they don’t learn how to deal with the inevitable failures they will face as an adult. In her book, Madeline refers to the outcome of parents’ unnecessary accommodations to anxiety as “accumulated disability”. It is one of the main reasons why mental health workers have seen such an uptick in struggling young adults; many of who need help with the basics of “adulting.”

She stresses the need to let your children benefit from the little mistakes (while safeguarding them from the fatal ones).

She also talked about the need to live your values. One line that really struck us as a powerful message to parents and educators, is;

You can’t teach values.. Kids “catch them”. They see what you do, and

when there is dissonance around what you say you believe in and what they see, they get confused.

The Meaning Of Success

Today, the qualities that define success have changed and the college you go to isn’t as critical as it once was. This is not to denigrate the accomplishment of gaining admission to a selective college. However, when Madeline spoke with the head of JP Morgan, the head of AI at Google, and the former Vice-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; they all said that the skills that matter in uncertain and rapidly changing times are different than traditional academic skills. Instead, they are looking for diversity of thinking, creativity, collaboration, and the ability to take risks.

Discussion Question:

What does modeling a healthy, balanced view of success look like to your kids?

The Price Of Privilege

In this controversial look at privileged families, Levine offers thoughtful, practical advice as she explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies parenting practices that are toxic to healthy self-development and that have contributed to epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in the most unlikely place — the affluent family.

Discussion Question:

An internal sense of self is the basis for all mental health. Where do you need to start in building your child's inner qualities, their inner sense of who they are?

Accumulated Disability

Levine defines Accumulated Disability as the pattern of excess accommodating to the kids anxiety, where the accumulation of these accommodations contribute to the loss of opportunity to develop resiliency skills.

She believes that we are often too reluctant to put up boundaries for our kids around things that matter like social media or sleep.

We are very tolerant of the fact that young children need to fall over and make mistakes, like the toddler that learns to walk. We must also let our adolescents "fall over" and make mistakes too.

Family Discussion Question:

List 5 things you need to stop doing for your kids. Priorize them. Talk with them about that list, then start not doing them. What challenges will your child face as a result of not doing these things? How will you remind yourself to stick with it?

The need for adults to grow and learn...

Levine speaks about how as a society we have put "far too much focus" on child development, and very little emphasis on our own adult development. She sees this as a MAJOR problem.

Kids are not looking forward to adulthood - (as we don’t give them enough reasons to think adulthood is great)
So, they are not in a rush (why some research is saying now that there is a "new" category called "emerging adulthood" where the adolescent brain doesn't become fully developed until they are 29-35 years old.
She says adults MUST come up with an activity that is not child centric! DO something for yourself and your own learning and growth!

Questions to ask yourself or your fellow parents after watching..

1) How can we as a community support the notation that we need to let our kids have "successful failures"?

2) What is an opportunity for our kids? Is over-scheduling them creating more opportunities or eroding the value of the ones that matter?

3) In what areas of your parenting do you "live your values"? In what area of your parenting do you "live the communities' values"?

4) How do we "move the needle"?

5) What do yo do for your own learning and growth that shows our kids that adulthood is fun?

Want more?

Watch the Ready or Not presentation (1hr presentation)

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