COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Dr. Madeline LevineA “Leg Up” or Cut Off at the Knees

In 1996 a young couple, Julie and Bill Clark, from Alpharetta, Georgia, invested $18,000 of their savings to produce a VHS (remember those) product called Baby Einstein. Julie, a former teacher and stay-at-home mom, and her entrepreneurial husband quickly added an extensive line of videos with names like Baby Van Gogh and Baby Mozart, beginning a Baby Einstein line-up that would eventually include multiple videos, educational toys and even a television show. The target audience for these videos was infants and children ages 3 months to 3 years (or perhaps more accurately, the parents who put their babies in front of these videos, so that mom or dad could jump into the shower, guilt free.) In any event, the Clark’s business skyrocketed, growing from $1 million to $10 million to $400 million in a little over a decade. Popularity and profits soared and, in 2001, Disney bought a majority share of the company. Estimates were that one in three American households with a baby owned at least one Baby Einstein product.

Parents bought these products for several reasons. They were clearly preferable to the standard fare of television and parents could control what their child could see, but most importantly, these products were touted as having the ability to enhance a baby’s vocabulary, musical ability or appreciation of art. In other words, they promised the elixir most seductive to parents- the opportunity to give their child an advantage, a leg up in what was assumed to be the competitive world of infancy and early childhood.

Unfortunately, researchers at the University of Washington found that babies ages 8 to 16 months actually had poorer language development than same age babies who were not exposed to the videos. Babies who watched “baby DVDs/videos” such as Baby Einstein or Brainy Baby acquired, on average, 6-8 fewer words per hour of viewing than babies who did not watch these videos. Older toddlers were not found to have any effect, positive or negative, from being exposed to the videos. In 2009, the Walt Disney Company offered a full refund for all Baby Einstein DVDs/videos purchased between 2004 and 2009.

If your child watched some Baby Einstein or other type of baby videos, don’t get hopped up. For most kids, words lost at a year are made up over the many following years. Throughout childhood, there will be many things that test as not especially helpful to their development, but hopefully many more that will. The real problem is that we don’t seem to know the difference between what actually gives our kid a "leg up", and what, at best only appears to, and at worst, is actually damaging them. A new smartphone app tells us how “normal” our infants I/O (intake/outtake) is. So now our phones can provide us with invaluable information like how closely your baby’s poop schedule resembles the poop schedule of other infants. Or whether your child is average at moving, smiling, cooing, peeing or eating. If, unfortunately, your child is hospitalized for some reason his or her I/O is important. For the vast majority of infants it is irrelevant except it means that parents are pouring over data points instead of pouring over their babies.

If by a "leg up” we mean to arm our children early and properly with the skills that are most likely to advance healthy development, here are some research-based tips for promoting learning, attachment, enthusiasm and well-being. Remember the point is not to be the swiftest (remember the tortoise and the hare) but to have the skills that will fortify your particular child through good times and bad. Childhood is not a race. It is, in the words of Selma Fraiberg, The Magic Years. Sometimes magic happens in the blink of an eye, and sometimes you have to wait patiently for magic to reveal itself. Worry less about “a leg up” and pay attention more to your child’s willingness to be challenged and sense of comfort and confidence in himself or herself.

            •Take time to get to know your baby. Attunement, that is the accurate reading of an infant’s internal state (calm, anxious, uncomfortable), is tied to almost every positive cognitive, emotional and behavioral outcome for children. This can’t be rushed, and means that rather than worrying about performance, you are learning to recognize and delight in your particular child’s signals.

            • What interests your child, interests you. If I could make it through three boys with rats and mice and lizards, you can too. The world is a never-ending source of wonder and engagement. Don’t be dismissive of your child’s interests. Many of them are likely to change and you can’t possibly predict where their interests will lead them. One of my oldest son’s friends was preoccupied with odd plants throughout childhood. He now teaches at a prestigious university and is one of the country’s experts on ferns.

            • Let your child lead the way on coaching, select teams and lessons. Often there is no faster way to kill an interest than to insist that your child is so talented that lessons are necessary. “Your voice is beautiful. I think you should take lessons twice a week” is one reasonably predictable way to help your child lose interest. The singing that was a pleasure has now become one more “work” place. Most kids will ask for instruction when they want more.

            • Welcome mistakes. Not only are they inevitable but they also help your child develop competence and resilience. Yes, I wrote a New York Times best-selling book and, yes, the first draft really sucked. To get better at anything kids need to push themselves and that means making mistakes. Model a healthy way to deal with mistakes and feedback. “I really learned something today when my boss pointed
out . . . ” as opposed to “My boss is a jerk. I cried all afternoon after he picked apart my project.”

Remember that the best “leg up” you can give your children is to help them feel good about themselves, eager to test themselves out in the world and confident that there are loving, supportive and encouraging parents standing behind them.

The Allure of Perfectionism

This was written by a student (and friend) involved with Challenge Success. We appreciate his wlllingness to share his personal story with us.

High school was the first time where I ever saw something other than a straight line on my transcript. I was shocked. But I should have seen it coming. My entire semester of AP calculus had been a grating experience, but being the stubborn student I was, I refused to really do much about it. Although I didn’t fail the class, seeing the physical manifestation of my struggles printed on an official document was a particularly humbling experience—especially because it was in a subject that I never expected to have difficulty in. 

In middle school I had been placed in an accelerated algebra class with a dozen other kids under the assumption that we would all be able to thrive in advanced courses designed for students two years our senior. The first few years weren’t easy, but still reasonably challenging, and I found myself excelling in the classroom. And it all went according to schedule. That is…until the first semester of my junior year.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming expectations that I was holding myself to which ultimately did me in. After all, nobody was making me take the class—I thought I was doing myself a favor by throwing myself into such a rigorous academic climate. I thought that the thrill of being stretched past my limits would make me stronger. And although I didn’t know exactly what ultimate goal I had in mind for myself, I gravitated towards the hardest classes and tried to get the best grades. Not really to quench a thirst for knowledge, but rather to see it all add up on paper, to go beyond excellence—to be perfect.

But the inherent paradox in “perfectionism” is that by its very definition, it promises a state of flawlessness which can never be obtained. Had I approached the class (or perhaps its less-rigorous equivalent) with a more realistic mindset, and not with the expectation that utterly brilliant formulas would spout out of my pen every time it touched paper, maybe it would not have become so overwhelming. At the same time, it is important not to confuse “perfectionism” with the pursuit of excellence that every person should be striving for. It is always in your best interest to be trying your hardest, but it is equally important to reconcile the fact that although “hardest” may look different for everybody, it never means “perfect.”

Episodes of failure are just as important as those of success. My struggles with high-level math pushed me outside of my comfort zone and forced me to think of new ways of coping that were invaluable later in my high school career and also in college. Once I had accepted my limitations, I asked my teacher for help, I formed study groups with my friends; I formulated new ways of studying which made profound differences down the road. Embracing disaster was difficult, and coming to terms with my personal flaws was even more so. However, it was far better to learn and move on, than to live with the crushing frustration that inevitably accompanies striving to attain the impossible.

Encouraging Failure to Promote Successby Jennifer Trainor

I often ask my graduate students, all of whom plan to be teachers, an unnerving question:  how will they set up their classrooms so that failure is rewarded?  The question forces us to confront our fears, and assumptions, about failure: “Wouldn’t that just encourage laziness or lack of effort?” the grad students ask. “Give students permission to give up?” 

A similar fear often governs our parenting.  A friend confides that she’s worried: if her daughter doesn’t do well in school, she’ll lose confidence, and decide she’s just not that academic.  Not only do we worry that failure will mar our children’s chances at future success. We also worry that it will mar their very identities, hurt their self-esteem, and create a self-fulfilling prophesy, an acceptance of failure.

But if an identity built on failure is a problem, much research suggests that its opposite – an identity built on successful performance – can be equally problematic.  What happens when the daughter who gets 100% on every math test encounters a problem she can’t solve? What happens when the son who writes teacher-pleasing essays every time encounters an audience who doesn’t offer him the instant gratification of praiseful reward?  The value of failure is that it teaches resilience and, if handled right, can nurture an identity based not on perfection but on the willingness to try, to problem-solve, to self-critique and try again. 

Without such an identity, a child will learn to avoid challenging tasks: she will run from circumstances that threaten her identity as a “good test-taker.”  She will avoid situations – a challenging assignment, a hard teacher, the next level in the workbook -- that threaten her ability to perform as a “good student.”  I know, because this is the process by which I became “math phobic” in school.  Having developed an identity as a “good student,” I couldn’t tolerate a situation that challenged it.  And so I did what perfectionists do:  I declared myself “not a math person,” and avoided the subject all the way through graduate school.

I see such performance-oriented perfectionism in the college freshman I teach.

“What should I say in the assignment?” a typical “successful” student will ask. “Is there a rubric that says what you’re looking for?”

In these questions, I see the symptoms of perfectionism:  Where the student needs risk-taking, he exhibits caution. Where he needs intellectual engagement, he seeks external rewards. Where he needs problem-solving skills, he looks for answers in an authority figure.  Eventually, he will turn in a perfectly executed but intellectually empty essay, and he will not get an A. 

Now here’s the damning part. It’s early in the semester and rather than ask questions about what went wrong and learn from the experience, he will drop the class and shop around for another, less challenging, less threatening to his identity.

So how do we encourage problem-solving, rather than perfectionism? How do we nurture a positive stance toward failure?  The experts tell us to focus on effort, not performance.  In one fascinating study, two groups of students were given a test. All did well, but half of the students were then told that they must be good test-takers; the other half that they must have worked hard.  When they were given another test, guess which group out-performed the other? Those who were praised for innate abilities gave up on questions they couldn’t easily answer. Those who were praised for effort kept trying, and succeeded. 

With my own children, I’ve learned to praise the attitude, not the innate attribute. “You love playing that song,” I say, rather than “You’re good at the piano.”

“You’re determined to figure it out” (not, you’re so smart).

“You’re dedicated to this game” (not, you’re a great player).

What would it mean to take this a step farther: to praise children for courage in the face of failure? To remind them that failures are generative – they lead to exploration, problem-solving, and learning? Such a step might seem counter-intuitive, but paradoxically, allowing for failure, even encouraging it, may set children on a path to true success.

Jennifer Seibel Trainor is the author "Rethinking Racism," (Southern Illinois University Press), as well as several essays on education. She teaches in the English department at San Francisco State University, and lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Failure, Adversity, Perseverance, SUCCESS by Stephanie Rafanelli

A pack of ninth graders rush into my classroom and insist that I come to the girls’ bathroom as quickly as possible. One of their friends is sobbing and refusing to come out. Apparently, she has earned an A- on a quiz, her lowest grade ever. This bright and capable student is paralyzed by the idea of perceived “failure.”

Resilience and grit have been buzz words in both educational postings and the popular media recently. Resilience is the ability to recover from a challenging situation or set-back rather than being crushed by it. Grit is defined as:

perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.
[Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 6, 1087–1101]

Explicitly embedded in the definition of resilience and grit is failure. In fact, the only possible way to develop and then demonstrate these traits is through experiencing adversity. In elementary school, we do a better job of encouraging this process, whether it is the difficulty of swinging across the entire set of ‘monkey bars,’ processing a rejection from a friend, or mastering a list of new spelling words. While each event may seem small, the child learns something valuable about himself and about the world. Each of these “successful failures” is recalled as he approaches the next big challenge.

However, in middle and high school, several factors coincide to make academic failure particularly fraught. Uneven cognitive, emotional, and physical growth, a newly keen awareness of others’ perceptions, and seemingly higher stakes all combine in dramatic fashion. Failures seem more visible and more consequential. By keeping the long-term view firmly in mind, educators and parents can diffuse the trauma. Expectations ought to be explicit and multiple opportunities for revision and mastery should be standard. Growth and effort can be emphasized over a singular incident. Assessments should include process and an opportunity for self-reflection.

A poor grade on a history test may feel devastating in the moment. In all likelihood, your child will survive, learn something about how to better prepare for the next test, and practice moving on from disappointment. It is critical that our children practice these small, successful failures so they are better emotionally prepared for the more powerful experiences that lay ahead. When the student sobbing in the bathroom arrives at college, will she select classes based on ones she knows she can ace? Or will she challenge herself and then be devastated when she earns a C on an assignment? Will she be resilient enough to persist until she succeeds? Loss of a job, the break-up of a relationship, a family sickness – life is full of surprises and disappointments. A lifetime of “successful failures” allows us to develop grit.

Stephanie Rafanelli is both a school coach and a parent education facilitator for Challenge Success. Stephanie has been a middle school science and math teacher for nineteen years. In addition to almost two decades in the classroom, she has served as department chair, both academic and also grade level Dean, a parent and faculty educator, and a leader of curriculum reform. She has founded and run several summer and afterschool programs such as Sally Ride Science Camp for Girls and Menlo Summer Explorations. Stephanie is an educational consultant for multiple organizations. When she is not thinking about education, Stephanie is usually creating chaos with her three children.

COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Dr. Madeline LevineWhy Our Children Need Successful Failures:And Plenty of Them

Remember your toddler’s first steps. Remember how your child let go of your leg or the sofa edge or the playpen railing, and on legs so wobbly that locomotion seemed impossible, he or she moved to take a step towards you. And you crouched down so your eyes were level with your teetering toddler and held your arms out so that there was a safe harbor to fall into. You held your breath, your own limbs quivered and your face urged your child to go, to try, to take those first steps.

One. Two. Oops.

Down on his well-padded butt with a look of stricken surprise on his face. But you smiled broadly, clapped in delight and erased the fear from his eyes with your own laughing eyes. You urged him to get up again, to try again. And he did. Again and again. Up, standing, teetering, swaggering, walking, running. A million fall downs and a million get up and do it agains. These forays were some of your young child’s earliest failures. But they were also necessary, strengthening his motor coordination, his resolve and his confidence. Few of us think of this as failure, but if success is about mastery, then falling on your butt is about failure - necessary failure, imperative failure, successful failure. Because without these failures your child would never have learned how to walk, how to run, how to ride a bike, play lacrosse or soccer. It is the rule, rather than the exception, that failure precedes success.

Yet, as our kids grow, we become not simply less enthusiastic about their failures, but far less tolerant. A poor grade, a missed goal, a school rejection all become harbingers not of future success, but of inevitable failure. “I can’t believe you got a C on your math final. That means you won’t be placed in advanced algebra and you might as well forget about those fancy schools you want to go to.” “You’ve practiced that kick a hundred times, how could you miss it when it really counted? You’ll never make the traveling team now.” “What happened in your interview? Did you blow it? Should I just sign you up for community college now?” While all of these parenting responses sound harsh, they are unfortunately not unusual. Not because we are awful parents intent on stripping our children of whatever modicum of confidence they possess, but because we actually are frightened that our children will be cutting off their “options” when they stumble.

This perception that mistakes and failures become increasingly fatal as our children grow is reinforced when schools do not allow their students to redeem themselves when they have an inadequate grasp of content. It’s kind of crazy to think that your child takes a test, may do poorly for a million different reasons, and then is expected to go on to the next level of content without ever having had the opportunity to master the original content. As a writer, I can assure you that the first draft of a book, without the opportunity to rework each and every sentence, would be a poor substitute for a polished manuscript. This is how all of us learn. We put ourselves out there, try something just beyond our easy reach, learn from our mistakes and then can move on to even greater challenges. In education, this is called the “just right challenge.” In the just right challenge, your odds of success can be 50/50- Successful enough of the time to feel confident, unsuccessful enough of the time to be challenged. Otherwise we’d all still be reading “Dick and Jane” books (boy does that date me!)

The same is as true of psychological development as of educational development. If your daughter gets blown off in the cafeteria by her best friend Kayla and you run right over to “talk it over with the girls” or even worse tell your daughter “to forget about Kayla, she’s a terrible friend,” then you’re not allowing your daughter to learn the emotional components that can buffer failure. What happened between her and Kayla? Is there some way to remedy the situation? How does she handle disappointment? What may feel briefly like a social failure has the potential to help your daughter learn the repertoire of coping skills – collaboration, maintaining self-control, being curious, compromise - that she will need to navigate the inevitable disappointments and failures she will encounter in life.

This isn’t to say that a kid who fails more than he or she succeeds doesn’t need attention. If this is chronic, he probably does. But if we go back to the model of mom and her newly mobile toddler, we see the most effective way to encourage learning and confidence. Allow mistakes, encourage them, tolerate failure and make sure your child knows that it is the continued attempt, the effort, and the perseverance that you value most. Remember Thomas Edison’s advice, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Enthusiastically share your own successful failures with your kids. Let zest, not discouragement, drive your child’s learning.

The Right Fit vs. Collecting Colleges as Trophies: A Student's Perspective on College Applications

For me, the college applications process started early and finished late. And it was anything but easy. I “narrowed” my top choices to a list of 19, and I started mailing out my apps the summer before my senior year of high school. By the time that the school year had even started, I was already getting admissions letters in the mail. But 19 sounded absurd to me, even at the time. After all, wasn’t I only going to end up going to one? And this is only one example of the handful of likeminded questions that were running through my head. The more I considered it, the less it made sense. But at the same time there was something speaking louder, which I couldn’t resist: the pressure to conform.

I wanted to be a part of the college frenzy that was running rampant throughout my high school. I mean, it had started harmlessly enough—a few kids with Princeton shirts in middle school, rumors of summer camps at Duke—but by the time senior year rolled around, competition was so fierce that people didn’t even talk about where they were applying. In their eyes, every person who found out was just another number to compete against. So they kept their heads down, their mouths shut, and suddenly got very “busy” every weekend the SAT was offered, and got exponentially more frenzied the closer it got to the January 1^st deadline.

Nevertheless, it was an exciting time. Most students kept their lips sealed about their plans, but I could get a pretty good clear picture of the kinds of schools they were thinking of, and how big their dreams were. And this secrecy only fueled the competition. At least…it provided me the push I needed until crunch time…until I was about halfway through the process, and I still had a stack of ten apps on my desk, and midterms were just around the corner. Until I started to lose it.

But it actually wasn’t the workload which ended up bogging me down, nor was it the logistical balancing act that put me over the edge. It was the sincerity of the application questions themselves, which looked at me in the eye and openly asked me “why do you want to attend ___________?” And for many of the schools, I realized that I didn’t have an honest answer. Sure, it would be nice to get in, to get the thick envelope, and to be able to tell my friends and teachers about it in late March. But because there were so many schools on my list, (that I had skimmed off the top of the U.S. News and World Report rankings) the reality was that there were many that I wasn’t interested in attending, and many that probably weren’t interested in me. I realized that even if I somehow came up with a convincing answer to the question, the college itself might not really be a good match—that for four years I might be the only kid on campus who wasn’t actually excited to go there. Regardless of how good it might look on paper.

The college-crazy culture that I had been living in had only been feeding my delusions. Each raised eyebrow and incredulous “wow, nine-TEEN?” had only encouraged me to go out and collect colleges like trophies. So I made the tough decision to cut my list drastically—to only focus on the schools that I really had a good, honest answer for—regardless of whether or not they were the “brand name” schools. It was a hard decision to make, but it was better to make it in high school than to stretch out the drama, up the ante on the tension, or in the worst case scenario: to burn out and to lose my passion for learning at a school where I really didn’t belong.

FAST FORWARD FROM MARCH TO DECEMBERBy Stephanie Rafanelli

Remember that early parenting moment where your child falls and skins her knee for the first time and looks to you to gauge an appropriate response? Should I cry? Am I going to be OK? The calm, quietly attentive parent lets her daughter know, yes, there is a little blood and maybe even some stinging, but you will make it. We learn early that our child’s reactions will mirror ours. Our resolve or, alternately, panic, will become theirs.

Every March, a dozen or so former students wander back over to my middle school classroom to give me their college news. While most are ecstatic, there are always a few who are devastated. More often than not, these students point out that their parents are really disappointed. I wonder, is this a case of a parent’s panic being reflected through the student? Is the young adult really as dejected as he seems? Yes, college is more consequential than a skinned knee. Still, I have seen this student in action for years – conquering a difficult project, experiencing an unsuccessful student council bid, or maneuvering social upheaval. He has had practice in succeeding, failing, persevering, and staying engaged. I fundamentally believe he will be OK and probably thrive. Even at his second or third choice college.

Luckily, I have the December and January visits still fresh in my mind. Last year’s senior is now soaring as a freshman. “I am so excited about the language program – I can take classes in both French and English!” came the report from a student attending college in Canada. “I get to shadow the robotics team at a competition in April,” declared a pleased freshman now on the east coast. From a student in southern California, “I found ‘my people,’ Ms. Raf. Everyone I meet has some kind of combined major.” The angst of not being accepted at one particular college is forgotten as I am regaled by stories about the roommate, the lab schedule, or (my recent favorite) the great cafeteria food.

I know a skinned knee hurts. By now, your high school senior has had, hopefully, a few literal and metaphorical skinned knees, and she can understand both from your words and your loving support that she will survive. Ideally, your child has a network of adults – an advisor, past teachers, a coach – who can remind her of this message. Plant the seeds of next year’s conversation now – What drew her to the school to which she was accepted? What is she most looking forward to? Are there local alumni from that school who might be willing to meet for coffee? Who, among her teachers or advisors, will be excited for a full report in December? I, for one, can hardly wait to hear . . .

Stephanie Rafanelli is both a school coach and a parent education facilitator for Challenge Success. Stephanie has been a middle school science and math teacher for nineteen years. In addition to almost two decades in the classroom, she has served as department chair, both academic and also grade level Dean, a parent and faculty educator, and a leader of curriculum reform. She has founded and run several summer and afterschool programs such as Sally Ride Science Camp for Girls and Menlo Summer Explorations. Stephanie is an educational consultant for multiple organizations. When she is not thinking about education, Stephanie is usually creating chaos with her three children.