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How to Raise an Adult, by Julie Lythcott-Haims
I have a confession to make: While I agreed with most everything the author talked about in this book, I did not enjoy reading it.
It was stuffed to the brim with quotes and ideas from other people, making it sound more like a very detailed research paper than a parenting book. Not only that, but the author spent so long diagnosing the problem that there hardly seemed time to read the solutions! Nearly half of the book sets up the problem, when a single introduction chapter could have done the job.
Additionally, this book was laser focused on parents who are set on their child getting into an Ivy League college and that simply isn’t me. I don’t care even a little bit which colleges my children decide to go to, and I’m even okay if they don’t go to college at all; I trust them to choose a path that fits their desires, and I believe their lives will unfold exactly how they’re meant to. No one college, degree, or grade will make or break the life they get to live. All that to say, I was not the ideal audience, which I think is kind of a shame since the idea of the book — raising adults — could have been applied much more widely than it was.
While this book turned out to be quite different from what I was expecting (“The Overparenting Epidemic” would have been a more fitting title — it did not feel like a “how to” book), I did still read the whole thing so I could offer you three top takeaways today! If you didn’t join in this month (or if you didn’t make it all the way through 😅), you can reap the rewards of my reading the book, below! 🤣
Watch Out for Your Ego
“Our kids’ accomplishments [have become] the measure of our own success and worth; that college bumper sticker on the rear of our car can be as much about our own sense of accomplishment as our kids’.”
We might overparent for many reasons, but this is the one that stuck out to me: we make our kids’ lives a reflection on our worthiness as a parent.
In the quoted example above, it’s about which college our child gets into, but this can happen much earlier, too — how many words our toddler can say, how our child is so willing to share toys, how well our child plays an instrument, etc. When our children achieve big accomplishments or act in a way we like, we feel proud of them (as we should!), but we often make it mean something about us, too. Like we’re doing this whole parenting thing correctly because Johnny is so very kind/talented/smart.
However, this way of thinking is problematic for two reasons.
First, we’re trying to take credit for the work of another human being. While parenting certainly factors into how a child turns out, it’s not the only factor! As humans we have soooo many different inputs, so let’s just give the credit to the child for how they turn out (while still parenting them in the best ways we know how).
Second, what if Johnny decides to quit the violin, starts to get less-than-perfect grades, or even falls off the swing and breaks his arm — are we now failing as parents?? No wonder we opt to overparent, then. It quickly becomes our coping mechanism to avoid feeling like failures ourselves. When will we give ourselves a break and accept that whatever we are capable of giving and doing, that is enough?
The simple (though not easy) answer is to love our kids and ourselves, regardless of successes and failures. When we let our ego run the show, we’re much more likely to jump in to help our child “succeed,” but is it really success if they didn’t do it themselves? According to Lythcott-Haims (and I agree!), we’re just setting them up for failure later if we keep doing too much for them now.
Teach Kids to Think
“When we overparent, it’s as if we get inside our kid’s head and live there . . . We supplant our thinking for theirs with our constant, vigilant, determined presence in their lives . . . We do all of this because we think this is what love looks like . . . But when we parent this way, childhood hasn’t been a training ground for our kids to learn to think for themselves; they merely “do” the various things on the checklisted childhood. We haven’t prepared our kids for success in college, work, or life if we haven’t taught them — made them, allowed them — to think.”
When we decide to be parents, we have this idea that we’re signing up to teach our tiny humans how to act and what to do, but it’s less apparent that we’re also signing up to teach them how to think. We’re not raising robots, who will always perform in calculated ways; we’re raising humans, who are complete wildcards!
We have this amazing opportunity to help them develop critical thinking skills rather than just telling them what to do all the time. It’s our job to help them understand WHY they’re doing things — and not just our whys, but their own whys as well! Lythcott-Haims even asserts that part of being an adult is migrating away from what our parents think as we learn to think for ourselves and form our own ideas and opinions.
According to the author, when we overprotect, overdirect, and hand-hold our children, we are inhibiting their ability to learn to think for themselves. When I thought about my own parenting, I quickly dismissed the overprotecting and hand-holding portions — I feel pretty good about how I handle those areas. But overdirecting? I started to notice just how often I tell Ada (5.5y) every step of what she should do next.
For instance, Ada has preschool 3 days each week, and we’re 7 months into this school year — AKA, she has some pretty established routines around how to get ready for school (fill her water bottle; make sure her hat and mittens are in her backpack; put on her wool clothes, regular clothes, and snowsuit [she goes to an all outdoor preschool]; get shoes on). Yet I found that nearly every school day I was repeating exactly what she needed to do next. Since reading this section in the book, I’ve moved toward asking her questions to get her to think instead: “What do you need to do to get ready for preschool?”
Lythcott-Haims says we need to “resist the natural temptation to give the answer, say what we know about a situation, solve the problem, and in other ways shut the dialogue—and their thinking— down.” Instead we can focus on asking what, how, and why questions to help them understand themselves and their thoughts better (and we’ll understand them better in that process, too!).
I just LOVE this idea! I don’t want to produce children who think and act exactly like I do; I want to give them the opportunity to think for themselves and become a unique human based on those thoughts. While I aim to teach my children certain values while they’re in my home, I hope they’ll learn to think for themselves so they can consciously choose to adopt those values, rather than going along with everything I say like sheep.
Be an Awesome Adult
“When they look up to us, can we be proud of what they see? Do we show them a harried, stressed-out person who is constantly staring at a smartphone, tablet, or computer and who seems to care only about whether homework has been completed, and grades and scores have been obtained, and the soccer carpool runs on time? Or do we show up in their lives as a person who walks through the world feeling good about ourselves, doing work that plays to our strengths and resonates with our values, and who makes time for meaningful human connection with them and with others?
It’s easy to forget that we’re constantly showing our children what “being an adult” looks like, but when we take a minute to think about it, do we like what we’re showing them?
Personally, I do a lot of things “just for me,” because I know that someday my kids will grow up and leave home, and I don’t want to feel like I have nothing left at that point. Plus I also want to show my kids that while they’re a big part of my life, they’re not the only thing in my life. Currently, I attend a weekly dance class, host monthly girls’ nights to cultivate friendships, and prioritize a weekly date night with my husband to keep our relationship strong. I also run my business and this book club as ways to keep growing and learning, and I pick up random hobbies here and there for additional fun and excitement.
However, my general way of being sounds more like what the author mentioned above — “harried, stressed out,” and “constantly staring at a smartphone.” I still haven’t figured out how to consistently live in a way that feels a little more peaceful and a little more joyful. And I WANT to figure that out, because that’s the kind of life I want for my kids, too! I know that if they see the example of an overwhelmed and snappy mom, they’re likely to become overwhelmed and snappy moms someday, too.
I’m not quite sure how to change my daily outlook, but this idea from the book provided a good reminder for me to regularly examine my own life, since my life provides the example for the lives my kids will imagine for themselves.
Honorable Mentions
Work to instill Self-Efficacy
“Self-efficacy means having the belief in your abilities to complete a task, reach goals, and manage a situation.”
Being an Adult is Recognizing that everything isn’t about YOU
“Inherent in . . . adult social roles [like being a parent or being committed to a vocation] is that you have responsibilities and obligations beyond your personal care and pleasure.”
Avoid Perfectionism and Embrace Failure
“Struggle happens to everybody, and . . . they need not be ashamed when they experience it . . . struggle teaches us lessons and opens up new possibilities.”
Despite the fact I didn’t enjoy reading this book, I did take away many helpful insights from it, as evidenced by 3 main takeaways PLUS 3 honorable mentions! I suppose the idea of “raising adults” really resonated with me because it comes pretty naturally for me to be more of a hands-off parent, watching to see what my kids will do (and what they’ll learn by doing things on their own!).
I like this about myself, and yet, I also find myself fearful of how other parents might perceive me — like they might think I don’t care because I’m not involved enough or because I allow my young children more freedoms than others do. I guess that’s the conundrum of parenting though — we all have different ideas about the “best” ways to parent, and we simply need to pursue the parenting paths we feel good about, even when other parents disagree.
What are your thoughts on overparenting and raising adults? Tell me in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out this conversation I had with @LynnetteSheppard about the book. Then grab this freebie from Lynnette about life skills every teenager should know (you don’t even have to give your email!).
Then check out this post to see what’s coming up next :)