My Thoughts

On Talking Injustice and Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talk

I attended my first TED conference in 2012 and was among thousands in the packed audience when Bryan Stevenson took the main stage and gave a talk, “We need to talk about an injustice,” that brought the audience of wealthy, connected, accomplished people to its feet. “We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent,” he told us. “Wealth — not culpability — shapes outcomes.”

When the talk concluded I looked around and saw tears in others’ eyes as they gave Stevenson the most thunderous applause of the entire five-day conference, and I wiped away tears of my own. Hearing this man speak reminded me why I’d gone to law school in the first place so long ago…

Read the rest of my reflection on Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talk.

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Watch my TED Talk: “How to raise successful kids — without over-parenting”

“How to raise successful kids — without over-parenting,” is live on the TED.com website after airing on PBS stations nationwide as part of the program “TED Talks: Education Revolution.”

It clocks in just under 15 minutes long, and (in accordance with the message of How to Raise an Adult) makes the case for parents to stop defining their children’s success via grades and test scores and focus on loving our kids unconditionally for who they are.

Click here to see my talk on TED.com, which aired on 9/13/16.

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Celebrating One Year of #RaisingAdults

On June 9, 2015, How to Raise an Adult and the ‪#‎RaisingAdults‬ movement entered this world. Thank you all for engaging, learning, challenging and following me and this book. Here’s to another amazing year!

We created a Facebook album to capture some of the highlights of the journey so far. Thanks for taking it with us. (more…)

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Ready. Set. Let Go.

We are so afraid of parenting wrong that we overdo it to try to get it right. In this piece, originally published in The Parents League Review, I implore parents to do our hardest to let our kids be. Read More

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My Responses to Caitlin Moran’s Feminist Five

A Q&A in Times Woman on September 3, 2015

Cailtin Moran, author of How to Be A Woman, asked me five questions that get at what drives me as a human as part of her “Feminist Five” feature in the Times Woman newsletter. This weekly email for women is produced by The Times & Sunday Times of London. Check out the excerpt of my responses to Moran’s “Feminist Five” questions. Read More

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Mitigating, Not Mocking, the Problem of Overparenting

My response to Bob Cook’s “Why Helicopter Parents Aren’t Going Away, No Matter How Much You Mock Them”

I got called out on Forbes this morning and wanted to offer a thoughtful reply. There was something about my recent NRP co-interview with Jessica Lahey that set-off Forbes contributing writer Bob Cook. It’s not that the core premise of How to Raise an Adult isn’t valid – he acknowledges that “[parents’] ‘help’ isn’t always helping.” His critique is centered around a parent’s deep fears of a tough economy and a highly selective college admissions process – that a high degree of parental involvement is rational for a time where there doesn’t seem to enough jobs available for today’s college grads. Cook also points to a cutthroat academic culture, where, as Cook puts it, “a test score can make all the difference on the path to that future.” Read More

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“A Parent’s Guide to Dropping Your Kid Off at College”

Featured in THE WEEK on August 24, 2015

Leslie Turnbull noticed that today’s parents seem “compelled to immerse themselves” in their daughter or son’s college transition, from the making the move-in process a family affair and getting involved in the class registration process. She turned to me to help understand the dynamics behind this trend and solicit advice for parents as they approach this significant “Off to School” moment.

Click here to read this Q&A featured in THE WEEK.

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“Helicopter Parenting Damages Kids – And Society”

My Interview on Here & Now on August 18, 2015

I spoke with host Meghna Chakrabarti about the harms of overparenting on the Here & Now show on WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station. In this interview, I talk about the impact that overparenting has on our children and on society, and describe three things we can stop doing now to start raising adults.

Click here to listen to my interview on “Here & Now” on 8/18/2015.

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Helicoptered Kids are Sputtering Out

My essay in The Dallas Morning News, 8/6/2015

Academically overbearing parents are doing great harm. So says Bill Deresiewicz in his groundbreaking 2014 manifesto Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. “[For students] haunted their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure,” writes Deresiewicz, “the cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential.” Those whom Deresiewicz calls “excellent sheep” I call the “existentially impotent”…

Read the full essay on DallasNews.com.

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