COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Madeline Levine, Ph.D.Six Things That Matter More Than Perfect Grades

Well, actually, this piece could be entitled seven hundred and six things that matter more than perfect grades. But hey, I needed to pick a number and there is a word limit for blogs. While there is no debating, that for most kids, grades do matter, and that they matter significantly, the fact is that we’re thinking about grades in entirely the wrong way. Good grades as an indicator of engagement with learning, curiosity and persistence mean something both in the present and as indicators of being successful out in the work place. But getting straight A’s so you’ll get into Harvard, in order to get an internship at Goldman Sachs, so you can go to Wharton for your MBA, and as a result, will be set for life is a very poor way to think about grades. Unfortunately, this has become the paradigm for many young people and it bodes poorly not only for their mental health, but for their success out in the work world as well. Here is an example of the kind of thinking that all of our parental and cultural anxiety about grades results in. This is an actual transcript of one of my fifteen-year-old patients; let’s call her Chloe. She and I are discussing possible college choices even though she’s only a sophomore in high school.

Chloe: My dad is a complete asshole. He’s mean to people and he cheats in business. I really think he’s a jerk.
Me: Guess you’d like to be a different kind of person than your father.
Chloe: No, not really. He went to Harvard and he’s made a fortune. My mom went to a state school. She may be nice but she’s a loser.
Me: Why is she a loser if she’s nice?
Chloe: Nice is being weak. If she had gotten better grades and didn’t waste time being nice she would get more respect and make more money.
Me: So whom would you prefer to be like?
Chloe: Duh (complete with mandatory eye roll). My dad. No one cares if you’re a jerk. They only care if you “make it.” And I want to make it. I know I’m not really learning anything at school now. But I don’t care. As long as I ace my tests and get into one of the schools that rich kids go to, I’ll be happy.

A seasoned adolescent psychologist is not easily taken aback, but it took me a minute after this conversation to recalibrate my reactions to Chloe. While I’d like to think she’s an outlier, a particularly vapid kid with no sense of who she is yet or the kinds of skills that will actually stand her in good stead, I know she’s not. Unfortunately, she is typical of a breed of teenagers who have become so focused - by their parents, their schools, the culture, their peers and themselves on gaming the system, cheating when necessary and believing that money and material goods are the foundation of a life well-lived - that they have little opportunity to develop the kinds of ideas that used to be typical of teenagers. Decades ago, when I first began practicing, teenagers typically were concerned with friends, appearances, and most touchingly, the world. They talked a lot about “meaning,” wrote treacly poetry and cared, often deeply, about big social issues like civil rights, famine or war. Unfortunately, I rarely hear about these concerns in my office anymore.

Anyone who’s been alive for a few decades longer than Chloe, who has actually participated in life, knows that there are dozens of mistakes in Chloe’s thinking. No school guarantees either success or failure. Being a good person matters. Materialistic people are less happy than less materialistic people. Real learning, engagement, enthusiasm and persistence are what lead to interests and passions in life. And perhaps most of all, that connection to others matters greatly to well-being and that narcissistic preoccupation with looking important is certain to impair connection. That being said, and while there are many components to a life well-lived, here is my list of things that matter, not simply more than grades, but that matter if we want our kids to have meaningful, productive and moral lives.

• Having Friends – one of the best predictors of mental health. Kids who are too preoccupied with grades and put all their energy into studying don’t have the necessary time to cultivate strong relationships. Other people tend to be seen as ways to gain an advantage rather than as potential sources of mutual support. Sometimes parents say, “They can make friends later.” No they can’t. Being a good friend takes a great deal of practice beginning early in life.

• Character – integrity, honesty, reliability. These are the kinds of traits that we look for in friends, spouses and workers. This country has seen enough despair brought on by people who lack a basic sense of decency and responsibility to others.

• Resilience – Try to make it through life without a good set of coping skills. Impossible. Life throws lots of curve balls at us and will at our children. Learning how to manage: how to delay gratification, to exert self-control, to soothe one’s self, to fall down and get up again – are mandatory so that our children are not undone when faced with challenge. And they will be faced with challenge.

• Interests/Passions – I’m tentative about using the word “passion,” hence the interests/passions qualifier. I’ve had moms call me worried that their four-year-old child doesn’t have a “passion.” Life is their passion. Depending on temperament, for many kids, interest is enough. But Chloe is right when she says she isn’t really “learning anything.” Real interests and passions grow out of talent, time and practice. They make life rich.

• Collaboration – Every C-level executive I’ve spoken with underscores the need for collaboration in the workplace. In our “flat” world, problems are so complex, that they will not be solved by individuals sitting in a room and being hit by a bolt of lightening. People working together, often across cultures and time zones will solve them. And of course, we all know the benefit of having a collaborative spouse or best friend.

• Self-Reflection – Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Whether you’re a fan of psychology or not, having the time and inclination to understand one’s self is critical to making good decisions, to understanding motives and to appreciating the challenges that living presents. Kids who are busy “climbing the ladder” from early on will often say they don’t have time to “think about things.” Big mistake. Without thinking about things, one is likely to repeat mistakes and feel “lost.” A sense of self comes from many places, but can’t be constructed without time devoted to self-reflection.

Next time your child insists on staying up half the night to study, or turns down an invitation from a friend, remember this list. Put it up on your refrigerator. I’ve seen hundreds of unhappy kids over the years. While academic success is certainly to be applauded, it is only one piece of the puzzle that goes into being a good person with a sense of purpose and meaning in the world. The kind of person you’d probably choose to work with, be friends with or marry.

Should Teachers Return Graded Tests?by Dr. Denise Pope, Challenge Success Co-Founder

Jay Mathews, education writer for The Washington Post, wrote a recent column about teachers who refused to give students back their graded tests. Some of these tests were the standardized tests that the states or districts re-use each year, and the teachers were worried about kids cheating -- sharing questions and answers with next year’s students. But some of the tests that remained under lock and key were end-of-unit tests and midterms. Jay reported that many parents and educators thought this policy was unfair. Most of the learning that takes place after a student takes a test happens precisely when that student has a chance to see what she got wrong and learn from her mistakes. This doesn't necessarily happen in the 45 minutes during class time when the tests are passed back briefly and then recollected. Sometimes a student needs to grapple with the problem, go home and think about it, and use the test to help study for future exams and assessments.

I understand how difficult it is to make a great test. It can take hours and hours of a teacher's time. But if the end goal is for all students to learn, then we must find a way to allow kids to see their mistakes and correct them. At Challenge Success we help teachers learn to use multiple forms of assessment. Sometimes we suggest that students play a role in constructing their own test questions or essay topics. Often we urge educators to consider project-based assessments which are much harder to cheat on and can be "re-used" with each new group of students. We also urge educators to allow ways for students to revise their work and to redeem themselves. We have found that when teachers allow students to take home graded tests and then turn in test corrections, the students can learn from their mistakes and eventually understand the material in depth.

We know that cheating is a problem -- especially in high school, and we sympathize with the time it takes to design effective assessments. Ultimately, however, our students will work in the "real world" where rarely (if ever?) will they be judged on the quality of their work on a timed paper and pencil exam, based on questions they don't know ahead of time, and without the ability to use any of the resources (people, internet, work notes, etc.) on which they are used to relying when doing daily tasks. If the exam is easy to copy and far removed from the kind of work folks do outside of school, then perhaps we need to design a more cheat-proof assessment that will challenge students before, during AND after they receive feedback.


Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education. For the past thirteen years, she has specialized in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. Her book, "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001) was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001. Dr. Pope is a 3 time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award.

In Defense of Occasional Dullnessby Laura Pochop

We’ve hit the heart of summer, a season that conjures up sepia-toned memories for all of us grownups. Coppertone-watermelon-seed-catching-fireflies-ice-cream-truck-spotlight-tag-come-home-when-the-streetlights-come-on memories. Periodically, there’s talk of year-round school. It’s true, the current schedule was built around agrarian kids helping with the summer harvest. It’s been perpetuated by the myth of a stay-at-home mom in every house. It makes no sense educationally or economically. Still, I’m sad for the kids who’ll someday suffer through a theoretically ‘better’ schedule. Because they won’t get those magical, endless days of nothing-to-do, nowhere-to-be summer that we dreamed of all year.

Except they’re not actually getting that now. Rare is the kid these days who can look forward to even a week of ‘free’ time over the summer. Instead, they’re in sleep-away and day camps, sports and art camps, community service and Spanish camps, and even actual camping-camps. The older ones take summer school classes at Cal, study for the SAT’s, and travel to Cambodia to build village water systems. The littlest learn to swim, play drums and build complicated Lego structures.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in awe of the Bay Area’s Cheesecake-Factory menu of high-quality summer camps, and fiercely jealous of my own offspring. Some of their top life moments have sprung from creatively designed, brilliantly executed camps.

And yet, I fight to carve out time each summer when they’re not in camp. Taken to excess, the plethora of summer camp options goads us over-parenters to duplicate the rampant overscheduling of the school year, with its oppressive Team Snap reminders, carpools and nagging. It can also feed a sense of entitlement in our kids, who come to feel deserving of constant attention, programming and cool activities delivered by hyper-enthusiastic young adults 24/7.

Sometimes what kids need most of all is the absence of adult supervision and structure. To figure out how to be alone, how to invent their own games and create their own distractions. How to be bored.

This weekend, I passed a chalk-drawn hopscotch on the sidewalk, with the one-two-one-two pattern winding slowly, continuing for almost the whole block. It ended, finally, at ‘489.’ And I felt a rush of sepia-toned connection with the child who created it. There’s no Hopscotch Camp, is there?


Laura Pochop holds an MBA from Stanford University. She currently does sell-side investment banking and owns a specialty market with her husband in the Bay Area. Laura writes a column for the Piedmont Post where she offers commentary on living in our fast-paced, competitive society and the issues of raising three kids in this sometimes crazed environment. This piece was originally published in the July 10th issue of the Piedmont Post.

BEYOND A WAITRESSby Shoshana Wineburg

Five months ago, I started working nights at a restaurant. Though the restaurant is cozy and well-attended, I noticed something peculiar: many diners were not communicating with each other. They were distracted by their screens. Disturbed, I wrote an op-ed and published it in The Seattle Times. At the end of the article, I included this short bio:

 “Shoshana Wineburg graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a degree in American Studies. She waits tables in Seattle.”

Comments ensued. Most people responded to the article’s content; others could care less. They wanted to talk about my degree. One user wrote that my bio was “the saddest part of the article.” Someone else said my degree was not “worthwhile,” and that waiting tables after graduating from Stanford was “kinda depressing.”

I haven’t just waited tables after Stanford. I’ve done other things. But that’s beside the point. The point is that the comments represent a value system that measures success by achievement and income, not character. This is a type of success our culture breeds, a type of success that pervades our high schools and college campuses. We strive for status. We are defined by our name-brands. We are measured by our income.

I know this value system because I encountered it at Stanford. I know it intimately because I subscribed to it.

Like many other students, once I got to campus, I started looking forward. I made a post-college five-year plan. I had it all figured out.

Until I didn’t.

The problem was that as I equated my self-worth with my achievement, I got sick. It started as stress. Then it mushroomed into crippling anxiety. I spent days with a tightened chest and knotted stomach. The anxiety festered. By winter quarter junior year, I was miserable. I walked around campus with a plastered smile and glassy eyes exhausted from holding back tears. I slid into depression. Negative voices suffocated me. Writing my essays took forever. I imagined getting D’s. You’re worthless, the voices whispered. You’re a fraud.

The following quarter was my quarter abroad. I was supposed to go to France. I convinced myself that the Eifel Tower would solve my problems. Who gets depressed in Paris? How could chocolate croissants not make me happy?

I got worse. I lost my concentration. I couldn’t read because I couldn’t register the words. I struggled to speak. Sentences came out disjointed, thoughts incoherent. I had sleepless nights and my eyes started twitching. I would walk around with my hand clasped to my chest, because the pain throbbed. Complex thoughts shriveled to simple ones. Could I get through the day? How much more could I tolerate? How much longer could I last?

I never got to enjoy the croissant because food lost its taste. I stopped eating. I stopped talking. I stopped living.

Had I not had a best friend with me, I don’t know what would have happened. Her presence was my blessing. It was she who convinced me to go home. She told me that I had been strong, but the real strength would be to admit that I needed help.

So I did the unthinkable for someone who had been hard-wired to succeed. I dropped out of Stanford-in Paris. I failed.

Here’s what failure teaches you. Failure teaches you humility. Failure teaches you are more than your shortcomings; your humanity extends beyond the W’s on your transcript. Failure teaches you gratitude. It forces you to reexamine what’s important and appreciate all you have. Failure is impermanent. You get through it. Along the way, you cultivate perspective. And empathy. And compassion. You learn that despite the fall, you’ll be okay.

When I got back to school, I promised myself that I would live with integrity. I dropped the honors and the double major. I spent my senior year taking classes that resonated with me. I took meaningful classes, classes that forced me to think critically, ethically, and philosophically.

Failure gave me the courage to pursue different paths and paradigms of success. After graduating, I spent time at a religious institute in Jerusalem. I worked with an NGO doing community empowerment with Israel’s Ethiopian Community. I lived on a mountain in Peru and taught English in the Andes.

Now, I’ve returned to the US. And, yes, at night, I work in a restaurant. It’s good money and it pays my bills. It’s not permanent. I don’t aspire to serve food my whole life. But for now, it’s what I’m doing.

We all want to find stable and satisfying employment. But ultimately who we are—how we think, how we communicate, how we empathize, how we love—is just as much a part of success as achievement. Too often we value the latter at the expense of the former. Too often, that recipe makes us sick.

I won’t be made sick. Not again.

Shoshana Wineburg grew up in Seattle, Washington. She graduated from Stanford in 2009 with a degree in American Studies. Following graduation, she lived in Israel and Peru and waited tables in between. She currently works at a restaurant in Seattle.

Giving Our Kids the Best Practice Years of Their Lifeby Harriet Cabelly

The taxi number was up on the refrigerator. She knew the time had come. She had missed the bus one too many times. I was upstairs biting my tongue.

I had rescued my daughter enough times by driving her to school when she overslept. “The next time you miss your bus, you’ll have to figure out how to get to school on your own,” I had said. “But none of my friends drive yet, how will I get there? I can’t take a taxi, it’s too much money.”

And so that became the solution to the problem, which quickly became extinct when she didn’t have enough money for her small pleasure items. When Esti had to dip into her weekly spending money and then some, getting up on time seemed like a better alternative than giving up her cash to a cab driver. I was out of rescue and savior mode and she was learning some great skills: responsibility, accountability, self-reliance. She obviously didn’t like it, but is parenting always about Liking and Pleasing?

It’s about preparing, guiding, teaching our children for real life. It’s about raising them with a future in mind; a future of successful living where the internal make-up of our children will propel them towards living lives of passion, joy, meaning, purpose, satisfaction; where challenges will not knock them out and keep them down but will rather raise them up with renewed strength and motivation to go forward.

Are we helping our kids towards this end? Are we encouraging independence, self-reliance and competence when we over-parent by doing everything for them, when we rush in to prevent them from falling, from making mistakes, from reaping the natural consequences of their actions? It’s by no means easy to sit back and watch our children ‘suffer’ knowing we could do something: intervene to get that mark changed from a C to a B, or get their class changed to the ‘nicer’ teacher. Are we not stripping them of vital opportunities to learn and practice the coping skills needed to deal with things not perfect to our liking?

We basically have eighteen years to do this preparatory work with our children and give them the best shot at creating an internally rich and satisfying life. We need to help them grow these intrinsic qualities of resourcefulness, zest and enthusiasm, perseverance, creativity and a host of others, as these are the perennial underpinnings in our forever transient world.

Experiencing and feeling a sense of satisfaction and pride that comes from struggling through to accomplish a difficult task, figuring out what to do when a problem arises, is what begins to build that resiliency muscle. “I did it myself” is a powerful statement of pride and joy the first time a 4 year old opens his milk container. That internal bit of new confidence will push him through next time despite the difficulty of manipulating the carton. With practice it only gets easier and he feels his own success. This is how we learn specific tasks, but more importantly, it’s how we develop an ‘I can do it’ attitude , a huge building block of competence and confidence.

“And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” (Batman movie)

We must teach our children to keep getting up and growing forward. We want to avoid overwatering their seeds and stunting their growth from blossoming into potentially high-reaching sunflowers.

If these are the practice games of their young lives, we need to teach them to play well, fall and deal with their cuts and bruises. For there will always be hurts. “I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.” (Brene Brown)

Harriet Cabelly is a social worker and parent coach. She's passionate about empowering parents to raise resilient, competent and passionate children. You can learn more about Harriet and her work at rebuildlifenow.com

COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Madeline Levine, Ph.D.Second-Hand Performance Anxiety:5 Reasons Why Parents Fret Over Their Kids’ Performance

Welcome to the season of parental anxiety. As surely as winter melts into spring and Uncle Sam demands his yearly tribute, we start worrying about end of semester tests, registration deadlines for the “right” summer camps and the arrival of college acceptance (or, heaven forbid, rejection) letters.

That parents fret about their kids’ performance is no secret. Why and what to do about it is less clear. In this blog I’m going to explore some of the reasons behind the handwringing. Yes, we all love our kids and we all want them to be successful. But that has always been true of parents, and yesterday’s parents didn’t obsess over every test grade and spend every spare minute shuttling them to rehearsals, matches and tournaments…did they?

No. They did not. (Ask yourself: did your parents parent the way you do? Did your friends’ parents?)

You probably know my position on overparenting. However well-intentioned, it doesn’t do kids (or parents) any favors. Research has proven this again and again, and has shed light on the damage it causes in the form of stress, sleep-deprivation and a variety of shortfalls in personal development, notably resilience and coping skills. Yet before parents can stop pressuring, driving and controlling their children they must first understand what’s driving their anxiety.

• The risk of going against perceived community values. Peer pressure is a powerful force. That’s true for adults, too. When everyone else is hiring tutors at the first sign of an A-minus and pushing their kids to pursue two or three extracurricular activities chosen with an eye toward bolstering their college application, to do otherwise is to go against the cultural norm. Even if we know in our heart that deviating from said norms is best for our child, no one wants to be perceived as a “not good enough” parent.

So many parents describe feeling like “a salmon swimming upstream.” To watch your neighbors spend thousands to send their child to the top academic enrichment camp while yours hangs out at the local YMCA day camp all summer is tough. Even knowing he needs that break from the rigors of school, it’s hard not to second-guess yourself. It takes conviction and self-assurance and, yes, great love for your child. It is also part of your responsibility to be more tuned to the needs of your child and her healthy development than to community norms.

• The belief that not providing all possible opportunities and enrichment experiences will put your child at a disadvantage. Here’s the remedy for this one: realize that many of the strategies we use to optimize our children’s potentials are based on faulty thinking. Ironically, pressuring them to achieve, scheduling them to the max, and dismissing unstructured play as a waste of time is not only not helping our kids, it’s actually harming them.

For the most part, our children don’t need a puppet-master directing them to the “right” activities. They do need the space and freedom to find their internal motivation and develop self-efficacy.

Kids with no down time miss out on the vital developmental tasks of childhood. It’s through unstructured play and “hanging out” that children hone social skills, imagination, persistence, and a sense of self. The foundation gained in childhood is critical for eventually building a healthy adult.

• A dearth of career opportunities. It’s true that the economy is grim, that jobs are in short supply, and that our kids will graduate childhood and enter a super competitive “flat world.” I won’t deny this reality and I do understand why parents feel they must give their kids every advantage. But—again—the things we’re doing to provide that advantage are the exact opposite of what most kids need.

A singular focus on academics keeps kids from developing other life skills critical for success in a global economy: the ability to self-motivate, collaborate, problem-solve, and persevere when the going gets tough. These are the very skills business leaders say so many young employees lack; instead, they display a sense of entitlement and a distressing lack of work ethic and “grit.” When we turn our children into good-grade machines and neglect the rest of their development, we set them up to fail in the business world.

• “How else can I measure myself if not by my kid's performance?” This question has two potential meanings. One is, if my child doesn’t excel academically, then how do I measure my success as a parent? The other variation is, if I’m not the parent of an academic superstar…then how do I measure my success as a human being? Let’s discuss them one at a time.

First, academic success is not the be-all end-all. Every kid is not a whiz kid. Every child is not above average. (Talk about a statistical impossibility!) Yet, whether the school system labels them as “gifted” or not, every child does have his or her own unique and marvelous gifts. Learning to fully appreciate and nurture those gifts—and not just the skill-du-jour—is, in my opinion, the key to successful parenting.

Here’s the thing: not every child wants to be a neurosurgeon. All can be fulfilled in their chosen professions. (Research is clear that income and prestige are no guarantees of happiness.) If you can let your child follow his passions and make his own way—and enthusiastically support his choices while offering love and guidance—you’ll likely create a happy, healthy, confident adult. Parent this way, with an eye toward authentic success 20 years down the road, and you can count yourself as a success.

The second iteration of this question (which might be phrased “If not a parent, who am I?”) raises deeper, more complex psychological issues. For a variety of reasons—our own insecurities, loss of connection to our roots, lack of community support—we put all of our eggs in one basket. We confuse our own identities and needs with those of our kids. We look to our children’s achievements as tangible evidence that our own lives have value—and when they fall short of our expectations, no wonder we feel anxious.

• An over-involvement with child-centered activities and a neglect of adult activities. For the reasons I just mentioned, too many parents put children at the center of the family. We spend our time in the bleachers watching them play sports. We allot our disposable income to their activities. We structure our lives around them. In the process we eschew date nights, friendships and activities we enjoy. Then, we wonder why we get so upset and frustrated when our “investment” doesn’t appear to be paying off.

It’s time to rediscover our own needs, our own identities, our own relationships with friends and partners, our own sense of fun — Our own life. Not only will this alleviate the anxiety we feel over how our kids are doing, it will go along way toward preventing the entitlement and self-centeredness so many kids exhibit.

Finally think about this: We simply cannot control our children’s future no matter how many enrichment experiences we buy and how many tutors we hire. Actually, this realization may be the most powerful catalyst for behavior change there is. It lets us off the hook and allows us to let go a little. It gives us permission to stop worrying about our kids’ performance and grades—their heads—and start paying attention to their hearts. It allows us to model an exciting and vital view of adulthood. When we can make this leap it will feel much better to our kids…and to us.

COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Madeline Levine, Ph.D.Put On Your Own Mask First: A New Year’s Message To Parents

Put your own mask on first, then assist children with theirs. Anyone who has ever flown has heard this bit of wisdom. It’s also a familiar analogy for how we should approach parenting. We can’t help our kids if we’re not okay ourselves. Most of us know this in theory. But how many of us live like we know it?

We parents worry about our kids’ grades, their social lives, their emotional health, how much sleep they get. We worry about whether they’ll get accepted to a good school and what their employability will look like. And (might as well admit it), we worry about how they stack up against our friends’ children.

What we don’t worry about is whether our own (metaphorical) mask is securely fastened. I’m sure there are a few parents who wear their self-denial like a badge of honor, who think living for their kids is the ultimate virtue. In most cases, though, the “kids first” life sneaks up on us. We wake up one day to find that they’re getting the lion’s share of the family’s time, resources and attention.

What lucky kids, right? Not really. From my 25 years of clinical experience, children who constantly occupy the center of their parents’ universe tend not to fare so well in life.

Kids model what they see. When Mom’s life is a lonely endurance race defined by a stressful job, nightly cooking and cleaning marathons, and weekends devoted to cheering on her offspring as they kick a soccer ball around, that becomes “normal” to kids. They may well grow up to build their own existence around joyless hard work, self-deprivation and little down time.

Or—and this is hardly an improvement—kids can become insufferably self-centered and entitled. Hey, if Mom lives to serve and adore me I must be something special! they quite logically conclude. The world exists to serve me. Me, me, me!

Perhaps I’m exaggerating a trifle. But you get my point: a healthy family life is one in which all members share the load and where everyone gets to play. That definitely includes moms and dads.

So here’s my New Year’s challenge to you: take an honest look at your life and be real with yourself about what you see. Are your needs being met? Are you taking care of yourself? Have you lost that “zest” that makes life fun and interesting? And what can you do in 2013 to change that?

A few suggestions:

To thine own self be true. Ask yourself: Am I living in congruence with my values? If you want one thing yet do the opposite—valuing fitness yet not making time to exercise, wanting to save for retirement but not doing so because your mortgage takes up all your income—the answer is no. And that’s a recipe for certain unhappiness.

We don’t live in a perfect world, but most of us can bring our reality closer to our ideal. Make 2013 the year you aim for that. Living in alignment with your values may be a matter of “just doing it” (getting up 30 minutes earlier and taking a brisk walk) or it may require more daunting changes (downsizing to a smaller home).

Incremental changes can result in a leap in happiness. A single step can shift your perspective.

Get healthy. (Or at least healthier.) Again, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. No one is asking you to go vegan and train for the New York marathon. But you can slowly make the switch to organic food and take a Zumba class a few days a week. Taking care of your health, and maybe shedding the 20 pounds that’s crept up on you over the years, is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

Find a form of exercise that you enjoy and will actually look forward to. It will become your “me time” and you will figure out how to work it in. We find a way to do what matters to us. (If the kid has to catch a ride to soccer practice so you can get to your workout, fine. It will teach him self-sufficiency!)

Nurture your relationships. When people write these kinds of blogs they usually say to plan regular date nights with your spouse or partner. Good advice, as far as it goes; making time for romance does keep you from languishing in the decidedly unsexy “Mom” rut. But I think it’s just as critical—if not more so—to make time for our friendships. (And I don’t mean a once-a-year phone call on your old college roommate’s birthday. Friendship takes commitment and face time.)

Happy women are not socially isolated. They’re not “just” wives and mothers. They’re also friends. They have relationships with other women who know them deeply. Friends give us someone to kvetch to, to work out with, to try out new restaurants and see movies with. If there’s no one you can call right now and ask to meet you for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, you’re missing an essential element in your life. It’s time to change that.

Learn something new. A big part of being a vital, healthy adult is refusing to stagnate. Take a creative writing course at your local community college, master a new language, or learn how to knit. Keeping your brain engaged sharpens innate natural abilities, staves off depression and makes life more rich and meaningful.

A big part of your job as a parent is showing kids what being a happy, fulfilled adult looks like. Sure you’re paying bills and providing for your kids and working hard...but are you having fun? If not, why would kids ever want to grow up?

Finally, when you “get a life” you won’t be so enmeshed in theirs, so invested in every test grade and the outcome of every game. Your kids will have breathing room to make mistakes, to figure out who they are, to find their own way. That’s what kids need—and that giving it to them also means giving yourself what you need is the real beauty of this thing we call parenting.