YARMOUTH, Maine — Jessica Lahey knows kids.
As a mom, middle school teacher, and bestselling author, she has raised two of her own children, taught many others in school, and spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about how parents can help children succeed in life.
And what has she concluded? That far too often parents don’t let their kids fail.
"We have taught our kids to fear failure," Lahey writes. "And in doing so, we have blocked the surest and clearest path to their successes. That’s certainly not what we meant to do, and we did it for all the best and well-intentioned reasons, but it’s what we have wrought nevertheless."
She makes the case in her book, "The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed." Much of the book's wisdom comes from her experiences teaching in the classroom.
"As a teacher, my job is to watch kids screw up and help support them as they learn from their mistakes," she said in an interview at North Yarmouth Academy. "But increasingly what I was seeing from the parents is doing an end run around the consequences or making sure that nothing can go wrong in the first place so there isn’t that opportunity to learn."
Why parents feel pressured to help their kids succeed is no mystery. The fear is that kids who don’t excel in academics (and sports, music, theater, and on and on), will be at a disadvantage in life before they even turn 18. The doors to good jobs and colleges will be closed to them, and they’ll never catch up.
While raising her own kids, Lahey admits she didn’t always practice what she now preaches.
"I wish I had given them more opportunities to really jump out there and screw things up, and take lessons from that."