Failure is NOT a bad word! It could be the best gift you give to your child!
What?!?
Join the PTO for Montessori Parents in Action (MPIA) this Friday, November 10 from 8:30-10:00 for an open discussion on the book The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed with specific focus on Part 1 of the book “Failure: A Most Valuable Parenting Tool.”
Please come even if you have not had the opportunity to read the book. This is such an important topic as many parents struggle with deciding on when to step in to help a child and when to allow a child to fail and learn from that failure. See below to learn more about this worthwhile book to read and join in the conversation!!!
In this book, Jessica Lahey delves into modern parenting and the tendencies towards overprotectiveness: parents who run home to retrieve forgotten homework assignments, deliver forgotten lunches to school, mastermind children’s friendships and interfere on the playing field. Children are robbed of the opportunity to experience failure and in turn the opportunity to learn from failure and learn to solve their own problems.
Jessica writes, “Out of love and desire to protect our children’s self-esteem, we have bulldozed every uncomfortable bump and obstacle out of the way, clearing the manicured path we hoped would lead to success and happiness. Unfortunately, in doing so we have deprived our children of the most important lessons of childhood. The setbacks, mistakes, miscalculations, and failures we have shoved out of our children’s way are the very experiences that teach them how to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient citizens of this world.” Additionally, she writes “In order to help children make the most of their education, parents must begin to relinquish control and focus on three goals: embracing opportunities to fail, finding ways to learn from that failure, and creating positive home/school relationships.”
We hope you will join us for a group discussion of this well written and thought-provoking book.
