Posted on 10/29/2022 6:31:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
RAISING SUCCESSFUL KIDS
Published Sat, Oct 29 20229:55 AM EDTUpdated 10:08 AM EDT thumbnail Esther Wojcicki, Contributor @ESTHERWOJCICKI SHARE Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via Email I raised 2 successful CEOs and a professor of pediatrics—here's the biggest parenting mistake I see 2:52 I raised 2 successful CEOs and a professor of pediatrics—here’s the biggest parenting mistake I see Here’s a wake-up call for American parents: We are doing too much for our kids. This is the origin of “helicopter parenting,” in which we constantly remove obstacles so that our kids don’t have to deal with challenges.
There were many unpopular parenting rules I followed as a young, single mother. But my No. 1 was: Don’t do anything for your kids that they can do for themselves.
That worked out for my daughters. All three grew up to be highly successful: Susan is the CEO of YouTube, Janet is a doctor, and Anne is the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe. They rose to the top of competitive, male-dominated professions.
Parents need to stop coddling their kids The more you trust your children to do things on their own, the more empowered they’ll be. The key is to begin with guided practice: It’s the “I do, we do, you do” method.
You can try this with all sorts of simple, everyday actions:
Waking up: Have them set their own alarm.
Getting dressed: Let them pick their own outfit.
Breakfast/lunch/dinner: Give them simple tasks like stirring the pancake batter, cleaning their lunchbox and setting the table. Getting their backpack ready: Have them run through a list of what they need to bring that day. Making plans: Let them come up with weekend or after school activities. Checking homework: It’s okay if they don’t get 100% of the answers correct. Let them learn from the mistakes. Chores are especially important. Washing dishes was a big one in our house. All my daughters stood on a little stool at the sink and washed the dishes after dinner.
And when we went grocery shopping, I’d ask them to get two pounds of apples. They had to pick out the good ones, which I’d taught them how to do, and measure pounds on the scale.
If we went over our grocery budget, they’d help me decide what to put back.
Don’t worry about perfection
I expected my daughters to make their own beds every morning. Ha! A bed made by a kid can look like she’s still asleep in it. But I didn’t fight them. As long as they did it, I was happy.
Mastery means doing something as many times as it takes to get it right. Being a writing teacher taught me this. In the 80s and 90s, one of the supposed characteristics of a good teacher was that your class was so hard that many students failed.
But the kids who got a D on their first paper found it impossible to recover and lost the motivation to improve, since they were starting out so far behind.
So I gave them the opportunity to revise their work as many times as they wanted. Their grade was based on the final product. And when it came time for testing, my students performed in the 90th percentile of state exams.
It was the learning and the hard work that I wanted to reward, not getting it right the first time.
Kids are smarter than you think
To be clear, I’m not saying you should make your kids do things they don’t understand or aren’t capable of, nor am I saying you should let them play in the street if it isn’t safe, or walk to the store if the neighborhood is dangerous.
The idea is to teach them how to cope with what life throws at them. One of the most important lessons I taught my daughters is that the only thing you can control is how you react to things.
When you trust kids to make their own decisions, they start to feel more engaged, confident and empowered. And once that happens, there’s no limit to what they can achieve.
Esther Wojcicki is an educator, journalist, and bestselling author of “How to Raise Successful People.” She is also the co-founder of Tract.app and chief parenting office at Sesh. Follow her on Twitter @EstherWojcicki.
They were married eight years. In fairness though, he cheated on her.
Spank them (when they small, obviously).
She raised 3 corporate demons.
You think Trump is a ruthless, heartless sociopath?
Trump ran a private family Real Estate / Hotel business, not a major corporation.
No Major Corporation would hire Trump to be a CEO. He definitely wouldn't be hired to run a Media corporation.
Jared might.
I wouldn’t describe 23 and Me isn’t a major corporation. And YouTube is a unit of another company.
The most important rules I would share:
Oy vey
CNBC had me wondering from the get-go
How many Shares of Trump stock do you own? None?
23 and me has an $800M Market cap
Meta has a $270B Market Cap.
I’m not talking about relative success, I’m talking about what UC corporations look for in a CEO.
A guy who does what ever their boss tells them to do, without question is #1 on the list. Being Jewish never hurt, either.
Actually, these skills she taught permitted them to succeed despite being liberals.
Most liberals don’t do anything meaningful.
Pair this teaching with the Torah (the real one, not the watered-down reform teachings) and you have very successful people l, genes speaking. And not leftist.
“ Being Jewish never hurt, either.”
You think we get favors? Preference?
Ha.
Your kids still living in the basement?
I said it didn’t hurt in a CEO selection process.
It obviously doesn’t.
More likely a brain surgeon LOL...
When my boys were young, they got in a mud fight. They came up to me, covered in mud, head to toe, laughing. I laughed too. From that moment on, they did their own laundry. There was no screaming on my part. I just told them that it’s time to learn a new skill. They needed a step-ladder to reach to the bottom of the machine, but they figured it out. They were excited. It was a fun day. I never did their laundry again. They soon found out they were the only children in their class who did their own laundry. They were proud that I trusted them with the job.
We figured out that the way to raise responsible kids was to give them as much responsiblity as they could handle. Long before they could drive a car, they learned how to use our tractor, and once they figured that out, they learned to use it with a trailer. The more we showed them that we trusted them with real jobs, they more they respected us. When they asked their dad if they could have a fire, Dad taught them how to chop the wood, and how to build a fire. They needed a little nudge when they turned 16 and had to get a job, but once they were hired, they realized there was a connection between how hard they worked and how much money they had. Since then, they’ve always managed to make their own money and they launched more easily than most kids.
Robert Heinlein beat her to this by 50 years: “Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
I did not prepare the path for my children, I prepared my children for the path.
And...
I was universally regarded as the mean mom. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. My children learned not to test me.
My children are still coming into their own, but they are all honest, honorable, and smart. Couldn’t ask for more as a parent.
Esther - stfu - no one really cares
Some parents these days don’t teach their kids anything. They just ship them off to schools when they’re old enough and let the teachers try to catch those kids up with the kids that did get taught at home.
Actually it does.
Companies are loathe to have white men and Jews are a double whammy.
Tremendous pressure to have women and special minorities.
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