Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children

TPP 140: AuthorJulie Lythcott-Haims on How Parents Can Help Their Kids Successfully Launch

Jan 10, 2019

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My guest for this episode is the brilliant Julie Lythcott-Haims., the author of the New York Times’ bestselling, and in my opinion, majorly game-changing-in-the-parenting-space book, How to Raise an Adult. She wrote it after noticing that prospective college students at Stanford University, where she was dean of admissions, were being over-parented and as a result, were lacking the resources to develop the resilience, resourcefulness, and inner determination necessary for success.

In this episode, Julie and I talk about about what it takes for a child to be successful—looking at how we define success along the way—and explore what we as parents can do to help our child develop the agency they need to become self-actualized adults. I loved having this conversation with Julie and am still noodling on the many takeaways and aha moments I experienced. I hope you get a lot out of it.

Julie Lythcott-Haims' How to Raise an Adult has been published in over two dozen countries and gave rise to a TED talk that became one of the top TED Talks of 2016 with over 3.5 million views and counting, as well as a forthcoming sequel on how to be an adult, for young adults. Two years later Julie published Real American: A Memoir, a critically-acclaimed and award-winning memoir which examines racism through her experience as a Black and biracial person.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

What is at the root of fear-based parenting
Why Julie says most parents are raising kids from a place of love, ego, and fear
Challenges and hardships every child should face in order to be ready to be an adult
How we do our children a disservice when we “become” their default executive functioning
How we can (and need to) redefine what success looks like
The connection between successful adults and a child doing chores (and how to get started if you’re not doing it now)
Why happiness in our kids stems from love
The benefits of hands-on work for kids developing a sense of agency
How to help our kids bolster their self-advocacy skills