For Back to School This Year, Give Your Kids Room to Fail

August 24, 2017

It’s back to school time once again. So, as your summer winds down and your kids are getting ready to head back to the classroom, why not give another listen to The Goldwaters special episode on parenting?

In it, Anne-France Goldwater and her daughter, Dr. Samantha Goldwater-Adler, sat down to talk about some of the challenges they’ve faced as parents, and share some of the secrets they’ve found to raising happy, healthy kids.

For Goldwater-Adler, that meant realizing after having her first daughter that she possessed the skills to raise her children. It’s allowed her to step back as the two grow up, to give them space to find their own place in the world.

“With both girls, I try to watch what they’re doing and make sure they’re safe, but as much as possible I try to always keep in the back of my head, to give them enough space to explore and give them enough space to have disappointments,” she said. “It’s very tempting often to jump in and solve problems for them. It’s something I try to be very mindful of, to give them the room to figure it out for themselves.”

It’s a concept that her mother agreed with, especially when it came to school projects.

“I always made sure that you, and Daniel as well, would do your projects yourselves, write your projects yourselves. Then come to me after for corrections or suggestions,” Goldwater said. “I never believed in that thing where the parent sits down next to the child and doing the hard work for the child.”

Letting their children try things on their own, and sometimes fail on their own, is an important part of what the two felt makes for allowing their kids to be ready for the world.

To hear more of their tips, tricks, and reflections on helicopter parenting, social media and so much more, you can listen to the full episode right here:

And don’t forget, you can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast with iTunes, and RSS when the family returns from their own summer break next month.

PHOTO CREDIT: dhendrix73/Flickr

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