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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

What's It All About, Alfie?

After yet another too-early wake-up powered by anxiety about college, I browsed through my Facebook links and found this short video by Dr. Ned Hallowell about raising successful children. If you don't want to watch, which takes about 9 minutes, you can skip right to my insightful summary.

What does he mean by successful? What we all mean, really, when it comes down to it: happy, healthy, productive, engaged in society, moral.

He lists five components of such a life and how parents can help children attain them.
1. Connect--with others. This is a spectrum running from love to meeting new people in a professional capacity. E.M. Forster was right: "Only Connect."
2. Play--engaging the imagination. This includes engaging imagination in school work for older children by asking questions that kick off creative thinking. (creating opportunities for Flow)
3. Work--practicing, suffering (motivated by potential for Flow)
4. Progress--we need to feel we're making it; so if a child is stuck, help them over the hump so they can feel it.
5. Recognition--doesn't have to be awards, but should be specific recognition of work. Not a general "you're so smart," but a celebration of effort, or product, or creativity, or progress. 

This list, my dozens of readers, really resonates with me. After delving into this blog on success, I've found these elements are essential to my well-being. So why not start insuring they're inherent in my children's experiences? 

Connection & Recognition, he adds, are the roots of morality. We want to raise Good children. So love them, connect with them, and recognize their efforts.

Does any of this connect with getting into an Ivy?
Should I care?
Of course I  most want happy, healthy kids. Of course I do. Don't you, my dozens of readers?

Yet it was me, not somebody else, who told the 8th grader that if she wants to get into a good college, she's going to have to do more than be an A student, play piano, and dance ballet. It was me, not somebody else, suggesting to the 8th grader that she needs to invent something or start an initiative or otherwise prove to the world that she's an engaged, potential leader.

I tell you this in the interest of full disclosure--and out of guilt. But, in my defense, I did say that whatever she does should derive organically from her interests. How about choreographing a ballet and teaching it to underpriviledged children? And make it about something to do with mathematics and science?

But no pressure. I just want her to be happy. 


  1. Oh no you didn't! But yes, you did, and now here we are. I feel two ways about this. First, you were being pragmatic. Nothing is ever good enough, the way "good enough" seemed to mean when we were children. Second, I might have actually amounted to something if you had raised me. Oh, wait, I have a third: I am so relieved my daughters are grown. We might start botching it with the grandfellas, but I'm sure the damage will be slight, as their parents will implement damage control.

    1. Ha-ha! I believe that having had a career, raised children, and maintained a long-term relationship, you have amounted to something!

      Of course, this is exactly the struggle. We want to amount to something, but can't appreciate what we've amounted to. So we want our children to amount to something, and the cycle continues. Pressuring, then relenting, reminding ourselves of "what really matters" in life.

      Yes, it's a double-edged sword, parenting.

  2. Good article ..thanks for sharing !