The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 085: Jessica Lahey – Why Your Parenting Style Is Wrong

Episode Date: December 31, 2015

Episode 085: Jessica Lahey – Why Your Parenting Style Is Wrong Jessica Lahey is an extremely intelligent leader.  She truly understands the importance of an intense focus on continuous improvement.  Learning more about the most important job we (parents) will ever have is imperative to me.  Jessica shares detailed, research backed evidence to how we can better lead our children.  We are extremely fortunate to have Jessica share her knowledge with us, the loyal listeners of The Learning Leader Show.  Jessica Lahey is an educator, author, and speaker. She writes "The Parent-Teacher Conference" column for the New York Times, is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a commentator for Vermont Public Radio. Her new book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed is a New York Times bestseller. Episode 085: Jessica Lahey – Why Your Parenting Style Is Wrong Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “If your daughter forgets her homework on the kitchen table, should you take it to her?  Or should you allow her to fail and face the consequences?” Some Questions I Ask: What are the common characteristics of leaders who have sustained excellence over time? What are your thoughts on kids “playing up” a level in sports as a means to experience failure? Why do parents always publish pictures of their kids smiling perfectly on Facebook? Why is it a terrible idea to reward your kids for getting straight A’s How do you handle household duties?  How do you ensure stuff gets done? How do you discipline your children? How can we think long term when we see our children suffering? What does being a learning leader mean to you?   In This Episode, You Will Learn: Not getting overwhelmed by the enormity of a task… A “ how to” “Playing Up” and the power of playing against great competition and failing Not doing the homework for your children… Why? Facebook and why people only show their highlight reel and why it’s bad for children How giving your child a reward (money, toys, etc…) for getting good grades can hurt them long term Setting specific expectations – A How To Thinking Long Term… The importance of taking a complicated message and making it clear “Extrinsic Motivators Can Be Really Harmful For Creativity And Learning” Continue Learning: Go To Jessica’s website: com Read: The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed Read: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success Follow Jess on Twitter: @jesslahey You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 034: Jimmy Hatch – Shot While Searching For Bowe Bergdahl And Sky Diving With Gabby Giffords Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Jessica Lahey is leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio From JessicaLahey.com Jessica Lahey is an educator, author, and speaker. She writes "The Parent-Teacher Conference" column for the New York Times, is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a commentator for Vermont Public Radio. Her new book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed is a New York Times bestseller.

Failure, making mistakes, growth is messy. And, you know, we want our kids to do really well and we want them to, here's the worst part. This is the thing that irks me the most is that we expect kids to not only succeed and be successful all the time, but we want them to look effortless doing it. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other success. leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. We have a very

important episode tonight with our featured leader, Jessica Leahy. Jess is an educator, author, and speaker. She writes the parent-teacher conference column for the New York Times is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a commentator for Vermont Public Radio. her book, The Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learned to Let Go so their children can succeed as a New York Times bestseller. I love this conversation with Jessica Leahy because she is such a thought-provoking and intelligent learning leader herself, and she certainly has helped me a lot.

I learned so much during this conversation. A few of the things we got into. Why rewarding your child or children with money for getting good grades can be extremely harmful. We talked about her work that she's done, the research she's done, as well as some of the things that Daniel Pink has cited another previous guest of the show that tells you why you should not give money for good grades.

This is something I think a lot of us are guilty of. And then why parents always post flattering pictures of themselves and their kids on Facebook? What is it that created this? And what should we do instead? Ed. Jess talked a lot about this as well. And then her thought process on discipline. What about when your children don't do what they should do or they make bad decisions? How do you handle it? Again, more great insight from Jess on this very important topic. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Jessica Leahy. As I mentioned to you before, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you because what you study and what you've written about and what you do means a lot to me. I think it's really important for our listeners to, to, to, to, to hear your message. And so I have a question about people who you've spent time around, you, yourself, as far as

sustaining excellence, doing great things over a long period of time. And you spent time around those people. You've studied them. You've met with them, the likes of Dan Pink and others. And I'm curious, when you think about those people, what are some of their common characteristics that they all seem to share? I love this question because as a society, we tend to be so, we're into that 15 minutes of fame sort of idea, the idea that we can, you know, do something and it comes easily and suddenly, you know, we're world famous for it. But the people who I see that tend to be successful are people that are able to not get overwhelmed by the enormity of a task. And I think that comes a little bit from optimism. And it also comes a little bit from the ability to break big tasks down into smaller pieces. and sort of say, okay, I have this big thing I have to do. How am I going to get there? And that's

really what we do as teachers for kids, because that's a big executive function thing. That's a frontal lobe sort of managing goals kind of thing. And people that get overwhelmed tend to just give up in the face of sort of sustained projects. But I love that idea of kids holding on to something for a long time and being able to move towards it. Yeah. Are there a few people that pop into your mind when you think of ones, they don't have to be famous people that have sustained excellence over time? Yeah, I mean, most of the, it's funny, the first people that came to mind when we were talking about it was freelance writers, because man, it is a hard gig. Every single time something gets published, there's this excitement, you know, how many people are looking at it and is it getting read? And then all

of a sudden, you know, 12 hours later, it's like, okay, well, that's over. What am I going to write next? And there's always that start writing is one of those things where you, you know, you're only as good as the last thing you wrote. And then there's always that next thing ahead of you. And it's funny when I hear writers say that as soon as they've published one thing, their next thought is, okay, what's going to be next? And having that momentary sort of, oh, gosh, can I do it again? Because it's that over and over and over again. And you just can't get overwhelmed by the fact that you're constantly being scrutinized based on the last thing you wrote. I gotcha. So Jess, I want to jump into you and your background because I first became aware of you because of your book, your New York Times best selling book, the gift of failure, how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed. A peculiar tile, interesting one, because I think this is something that all of us parents and people who are on the verge of being parents, you think about this.

because, you know, your number one job in life if you're a parent is to find ways to set your children up to be successful and hopefully not be one of those helicopter parents, but it's really hard. And so I love to learn about you, about what you've done prior to the point of your book coming out and what you've done since. I am one of those people that's had a very sort of winding road to figure out what I wanted to do, which is great. I think the idea that especially when I'm talking to parents,

about kids going off to college. The idea that they're supposed to know what they want to do with their lives is just ridiculous. I've done a lot of stuff, but mainly I'm a teacher. I went to law school to do juvenile law, and during law school, I was offered the opportunity to teach a class, and sort of that was that. I loved it. I loved it from the very first moment I walked into that classroom. So I dropped the whole law. I finished law school, but I dropped the whole law thing, but knew I was going to work with kids anyway. So from the, and then I kept, I was writing the entire time, So it was sort of a magical thing when teaching and writing came together in one profession. And I started writing about education.

That was really an amazing time for me when I realized that people actually do want to hear about what teachers do in the classroom and how we do it. Teachers don't tend to be listened to very often. So that was a wonderful moment for me. And then I wrote an article in 2013 for The Atlantic about failure and why it's so important and autonomy, supportive parenting. and that kind of went nuts, and that's how the book was born. So I've been writing for the New York Times and the Atlantic and Vermont Public Radio for the past three or four, four and a half years. What was the process for getting that first article for the Atlantic?

Like how did you have a, I mean, how does that come about? Because I think a lot of people would love to do that. I mean, was there a lot of study? Did you have to submit a lot of drafts? What was that like? Well, what's interesting about the Atlantic is I've been a fan since I was a little kid. I grew up outside of Boston, and the Atlantic traditionally is a Boston. is a Boston entity, and it used to be based right down the road from a friend's office,

and I would walk past it and sort of fantasize about working there. And then they rejected me right out of college for an internship. So I always had the Atlantic sort of out there as this bucket list thing. So I wrote an article that I was actually just going to put on my blog. And a friend of mine, a writer named Helene Olin, who wrote a fantastic book called Pound Foolish, about the personal finance industry, said, you know, this reads like an Atlantic article. You should think about sending it over there. And I did. And it was accepted the same day and printed the next day and put up online the next day. And by Thursday of that week, I was doing national

television for it. So it was fast. It was really quick edits. And that editor I worked with for four years at the Atlantic. So it's been a good partnership. Wow. That's incredible. So it basically went from this one article. I mean, what was it like, what was your process for writing the article? How much work went into it? How much research? What was it primarily about? You know, I had wanted to write about this topic for a while, but I can't write about my

own students and their parents. And so I got really lucky. My husband and I both keep a really close eye on sort of what studies are coming out, and he's a physician. And I found this study that was coming out from out of Australia. And it was, it had a lot of quotes. in it from guidance counselors and teachers about what happens to kids who have been over-parented and what those kids, mostly from an academic and psychological perspective. And so suddenly I had

these great quotes that weren't about my own students, and it worked really, really well. In fact, someone at my school confronted me and said, are you sure these are not quotes about our students because they sound just like conversations we've had? And I said, I promise. So that, you know, I'd say when I first started writing at the New York Times and at the Atlantic, I'd say conservatively there were 20 to 30 hours of research that went into each article before I started to write. Now I've gotten faster and more efficient, but it's still, you know, depending on the subject matter, you know, it's a good solid 10 to 15 hours of research before I even start to write anything. Wow. Okay. So let's dive in now to the book and why I was really excited. excited because I think, you know, it's really important, I should say, for us to think about this a little bit deeper because it's really, I think it's hard.

And when you, for example, just use the easy example of when your, when your child falls off their bike and they're crying and they're scrape their knee and they're hurting, it's sometimes can be tough to just sit there and let them pick themselves back up. But that's, that's the, I think the easy analogy to use when it comes to, to what, you you're talking about in your book, but I want to, actually, if you don't mind, I want to read something that, you know, is on your website in regards to picturing this. So you obviously know I'm going to say, but I want to read it and then I want to get your response to it for my podcast listeners who have not, you know, read this yet. Okay. So here we go.

Picture this. It's morning and your daughter has already left for school. Passing by the kitchen table, you noticed her diagram of the solar system lying on one of the chairs right next to where she was doing her homework the night before. She worked for over an hour on that diagram, measuring each planet to get its size right relative to the others. She colored it carefully, used her neatest printing. It's due today. And there it is on a kitchen chair. It was an easy mistake.

Anyone could have made it. You could have made it. It's a big grade and you're only a short drive away from school. You have two choices. Take the homework to school. Within 15 minutes, that diagram will be in her grateful. hands, she can turn it in for full credit and order will we restored to the universe. Also, your daughter will think you are amazing and wonderful. Or the other option, leave it right there

where it is and let her face the consequences. Talk to me about what we should do as parents and why. Well, I can tell you what I did in that exact situation. And this is in my book and it ran as an article, a first-person article over at Vox. My son left his very neat math homework on the table. I had to be at the school in an hour anyway for something else. And here's the thing. The criticism I get when I give the answer to this is all based on, you know, this is just not fair and we should really have each other's backs. And as a family, we need to model for each other that if no one else is going to have our backs, that our family will. And I get that. And I'll definitely come back to that. But the reason I didn't take my son's homework to school for him that day

and knowing full well that he was going to have to stay in from recess that he would lose credit is that he had been working for a long time on a strategy for remembering his homework. And you know how they say that with an addict that you may not be the one that when you tell the addict I think you have a problem with alcohol? You may not be the one that is like their breakthrough moment. You may not be the one person that makes them say, oh my gosh, I have a problem. I'm an addict. But there could be 30 more people along the line who are going to say something to them that is going to be necessary to them getting to the point of saying, oh, my gosh, I'm an addict. And so Finn and I had been working on him remembering his homework for months. And if I took the

homework that day, you know, all of those other times we'd had conversations about it are kind of like wiped away. I was afraid I was sort of negating all of that progress, whatever progress we'd made. What happened that day was actually fairly wonderful, which is that he did have to stay in from recess, and he did lose credit. And his teacher did sit with him and say, look, dude, it's time. You have to come up with a strategy for how to remember this stuff. And they had to sit together at recess, and my son came up with a strategy, and it's a strategy that he uses to this day. The strategy that I came up for him wouldn't work. The strategy his father came up for him wouldn't work.

He had to come up with a strategy. himself. And it was because of not having his homework that day that the strategy that has been in place now for two and a half years and works was created. So yeah, he was upset that day, not as upset as I was actually. He was a lot less stressed than I was. And, you know, I don't know, maybe his teacher would think, you know, that's a parent who isn't doing her job for not bringing in. But I've talked to him since and he is really grateful. I didn't take the homework that day. So, you know, I think it was a win for all of us, but it was really, really, really hard to not take the homework that day. It's really hard to do. You know, we want to make our kids feel

good. Yeah, it's interesting. This actually came up with my wife and I and one of our daughters. And I, this is a little bit earlier, it's before I read any year work, but I, this happened. And I was like, we got to go. Let's go. We got to take this homework in. And she said, no, we shouldn't because and there's a similar backstory without going too much into it with as far as remembering to put it back in the folder and making sure it's ready after we reminded her more than once. And she didn't do it. And she said, no. And it's funny that the punishment was the exact same thing, was staying in from recess, which is interesting.

I guess that's just the universal punishment for not finishing or bringing in their homework. Yeah, I've actually written about that too, about not doing that. It's not a good thing. But, okay. Yeah, but anyway, so we did. We ended up, you know, I listened to her because she's much smarter than me and we did not take it in. and she had to face kind of the wrath of, you know, of turning it in a day late and missing recess for the day.

And I do believe it is a great learning experience to fail because it seems to be kids today more. And maybe this has always gone on just because I'm a parent now. I see it more. But kids are more shielded from potential failure, whether it's in sports. And I feel like I see that a lot in sports or in the classroom with parents doing homework for kids. I know you write a lot about that too, where it's like how can you help out without taking over? So could you expand on that a little bit? Sure. You know, one of the things that I see a lot in with my students and that actually one of my colleagues who's a math teacher sees it a little more

clearly than I did as a Latin teacher. She would complain that, you know, she would see homework that was beautifully done that had really interesting concepts on it. And then she would ask the student how they completed that problem, and the student couldn't articulate how they completed the problem. In fact, the student doesn't understand the steps they used to finish that problem because they weren't the student's steps. I mean, maybe the student nodded their head as the parents said, oh, do you understand and, you know, as they were showing them how to do it. But the problem with that is that then you end up with a situation where the student looks like they have completed homework. They think they're all set because the answers are right. The teacher thinks they're all set because the answers are right,

but the student still has no idea how to do the work. The parents are all set. They know how to do the work, but the student doesn't. So that sets up, you know, that's a setup right there. So then, you know, a few months later, the parent comes in angry and says, you know, the progress reports have been great. The progress reports have been fine. How did he get this, you know, D on his final exam?

And we say, oh, my gosh, we don't know. We can't figure it out. The homework's been perfect all along the way. So it sets up the student and it sets up the teacher and the parents. it's certainly going to be surprised when the final grade rolls around. So I don't know who we think we're helping when we jump in and do our kids' homework for them. But apart from that, I think the best thing to remember is that our job as parents when it comes to homework is to be supportive, to be there. If they get really, really stuck, and if they get really, really stuck, our job then is to redirect, not to take over.

and to be just someone who will say, I understand how this is frustrating for you. And then to really give them feedback that you're proud of them for pushing through when they got frustrated. That's our job is to sort of redirect, to support, to redirect and encourage not to do the work for them. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense when it comes to that because I know sometimes it's easier and quicker just to take over and do it. And I think that's probably why we do it, where it's like, I just, you know, I want to move. on to the next thing or just get it going. It's not just that. You want to alleviate the frustration.

You want to, you know, and then don't want your kid to feel dumb. Right. You know, recently it was interesting. My son came home and he had some homework that he didn't, he hadn't fully understood from school that day, as happens. And he said, wait a second, can you tell me, and he asked me a question that revealed that he really didn't understand it. And so my job at that point was not to reteach whatever it was the teacher taught while, you know,

I can certainly help explain things. My job is also to be there and to say, look, let's write a little note to the teacher saying, you know, clearly he didn't fully understand this concept because he misunderstood this very basic thing, but to talk him through it and say, okay, well, why do you think that? Why do you think if you have one positive number and one negative number that you're supposed to divide them? Where might you have gotten that idea? And why would that make sense and why would that not make sense? And so let's talk about what might make more sense.

It's parents that try to help kids with homework, you know, it's really the easiest thing to sort of want to give the right answer because then we can all feel better and move on to number two. But that's not certainly what I would do as a teacher. And when I watch teachers talk kids through work in a really skilled way, they never hand the answer to the kids. They always help them through the process of learning the material better through self-discovery. Let's transition to sports a little bit. I mentioned that briefly earlier, and I heard you speak up a little bit because this is a big thing, I think, today with parents wanting to get their kids developed in the sporting world, whether it's specialization in one sport at a very young age, which I am so opposed to, or trying to put them against competition who maybe will help lead to wins instead of learning moments because I believe going through tough moments in sports. is really a good thing for a kid. Now, you know, growing up, you know, I played all sports, football, baseball, basketball,

swimming, tennis, golf, whatever, you name it. We ping pong. We played it all. And my younger brother and I, we competed against each other a lot as well as against others. And one of the things that my parents did for us that we didn't even really fully realized at the time at younger ages, whether it was grades like, you know, one through six, they would bump us up a grade when it comes to who we played against. So if we were in second grade, we played against the third graders and third and fourth

and so on. And the purpose behind that was to always push us from a competitive standpoint. And especially me who was an undersized for my own age, let alone for the grade above me and the age above me, it was to push us against and force us to compete against greater competition so that eventually our level would need, would have to be raised if we were going to survive. And we took some beatings and it was tough and it was hard and there were some really bad moments that weren't very fun. However, in the end, it worked, I think it worked out. I mean, my brother and I were able to earn college scholarships to play football and have decent careers.

And I fully believe a lot of that stems back from early childhood when we were forced to play up against bigger, stronger, faster kids who were better than us. and we had to raise our level in order just to survive, so to speak. What are your thoughts on that when it comes to the athletic world in parenting? You know, there's this, when I talk about this concept of pushing kids sort of to the next level, I think a lot of the research of Wendy Grolnick, who is, she's a fantastic woman. And what she does is she studies autonomy supportive parenting. And what that means is parents who support the kids independence and autonomy. me. And one of the things she found is that if you have a kid who has really directive micromanaging

parents that they never really learn how to redirect themselves and get through, push through their own frustration because parents are always there to sort of make the next decision for them, give them the next answer, give them the next thing to do. Whereas kids who have parents who sort of step back and let kids take these challenges for themselves, these are the kids who know how to sort of get frustrated, redirect and push through. And that's sort of the ideal situation. And so what you described there for me sounds a heck of a lot like that. That sounds like a kid who has put in a position where they are allowed to get repeatedly frustrated.

Not so much that the kid gets frustrated and quits. I mean, there's this concept in learning that I love called desirable difficulties. And it was a part of a book that came out last year called Make It Stick. And desirable difficulties are about the fact that the best way kids learn, the way the kids learn more durably and really help get information into long-term memory over short-term memory is to give them just enough difficulties so that they're really pushed to the limit of their frustration and patience and ability to figure out concepts and that they figure things out for themselves. And that will create longer, better learning. but it also creates kids who see something that's novel, frustrating, presented differently than they're used to seeing it presented, and don't just say, flip out and say, oh, my gosh, no, too hard, can't handle it and throw their hands up in despair.

But kids who say, oh, okay, yeah, I've sort of, I've seen something kind of like this before, I can probably figure it out. And that's an incredibly valuable thing to give kids. It's this habit of not wanting to see our kids frustrated. I think it's so hard for us to see our kids feeling bad about themselves. And I think that's kind of a remnant of the failed self-esteem movement, that we want to help them over that frustration as quickly as possible so that they don't, you know, they're not sitting there spinning their wheels.

But letting kids spin their wheels and be in a position of frustration or be in a position where they're like, oh, wait, am I a little bit over my head is a fantastic way to teach kids that, yeah, when they are a little tiny bit over their head, that's a good thing because that's stretching their brain and stretching their skills and stretching their body. I think that can be a great thing in athletics and it's certainly a good thing in academics. Do you think a lot of this or some of this stems from the fact that parents seem to be judgmental of one another, especially now in the Facebook world of posting pictures of kids getting straight A's and all that stuff? Do you think that's where some of it could come from?

Because before social media existed, it wasn't day. quite as much. At least it wasn't accessible to see people bragging about their kids. Right. Well, and not only that, there's this great image that made the rounds on Facebook and Instagram and everything recently, which was an Instagram picture where everything's perfect in the middle, inside the frame, and then everything outside the frame is just chaos. You know, the things are neat and tidy on the couch, and then there's like three loads of laundry and all these other things outside the picture. And, you know, failure, making mistakes. stakes growth is is messy and you know we want our kids to do really well and we want them to

here's the worst part this is the thing that irks me the most is that we expect kids to not only succeed and be successful all the time but we want them to look effortless doing it and in all this talk there's a great the cover story on the atlantic this month is about the um the suicide cluster in palo alto and i talk to people all the time who are involved in that in helping those kids. And one of the things that I hear over and over again is it's not so much the pressure to succeed that's stressful. What's really stressful is the fact that it has to look easy on the outside.

And that's really damaging, I believe, to kids, this idea that everything, they have to look perfect and well-groomed and it has to look easy and everything has to be just in its place so that if we take a picture of them and post it on Facebook, everything will. look great. But that's not how childhood works. So I, you know, I also think that there's a lot of denial of the denial of those small frustrations. And it's the reason that my book is called the gift of failure is I wanted to desensitize us to that word a little bit because it is such a frightening word. It's such a really, really scary concept that our kids could fail at something. But failure is a great thing. It's what, you know,

As a middle school teacher, that's what middle school is all about. It's a reason middle school is so valuable as a learning experience. What are your thoughts on rewarding children for getting straight A's, taking them out to dinner, the arcade, whatever may be. I have done this, so I know, I'm sure listeners have. Of course. What are your thoughts on this? Okay. So, all right.

So there's 40 years of research, and this comes straight from the mouth of Dan Pink. We were at a conference recently together, and this is straight from the mouth of Dan Pink. There's 40 years of research showing one really clear thing that extrinsic motivators, motivators that come from outside, and those can be positive or negative. Those can be rewards or those can be punishments or, you know, grounding, surveillance, that kind of thing. Not only 40 years of research, but studies of the 40 years of studies, meta studies, to show that all of that is really harmful for motivation.

It's harmful for motivation and it's really harmful for creativity. So, you know, in short, in the book, I say, if you want your kid to not be interested in learning math, then pay them for their math grades. I mean, it really is that simple. And the reason that it feels like it shouldn't be that way is that when we offer kids a lollipop to do something, it'll often work. And it will work as a one-off. It'll also work for tasks that are really attention-intensive, short-term, uncomplicated tasks, like tasks that require us to do one thing, not a whole series of things in some sort of order, not for tasks that require creativity.

Use extrinsic motivators for the short-term, you know, intensive tasks. That's fine. But when it comes to something that requires planning, something that requires, you know, a change of gears in the middle, or a big goal that requires you to sort of set a series of goals to reach that goal, or when it requires creativity. And, you know, in my mind, education at its best is long-term focus oriented and creative. Then it is a disaster for intrinsic motivation. It is, it really lowers the odds that you will get a kid who's interested in school for learning, not just for the grades. But on the other hand, we all do it. I'm not saying you can't ever do it. I'm just saying as a

practice, paying your kid for grades, promising your kid a car if they make on a roll their entire senior year, whatever the thing is, it is really, really harmful for the learning. I'm not saying they won't get all A's. I'm just saying they'll be less interested in the learning than they will be in the grades because what we're saying to them is, look, this thing that runs the world, and honestly, you know, if we look at it from a really, you know, from a realistic standpoint, Money does kind of run things. Look, if money runs the world and I'm willing to give you money for your grades, this thing that's really important to me, this money, I'm going to give you that for your grades, then what you're focusing them on is the grades. You're not saying, I will give you money if you can prove that you've learned a lot because grades and learning are not the same thing.

You're focusing on the end product, not the process. So your son brings home a report card with straight A's. What's the first few things you say to him? Well, in our house, the kid has to actually ask me to look at the report card because it's not what I'm mostly concerned about. And my older son, it pisses him off to no end that he, I'm interested in the comments. I'm really, I've been very fortunate in that both of the schools that my kids go to are big into the narrative comments. In fact, the one that my younger son goes to is revamping its entire grading system to focus more on narrative comments than on grades. because narrative comments actually have information in them.

If you tell me that my son has a bee in math, that doesn't give me any information. I don't know what he knows how to do and what he doesn't know how to do. So that's one of the main reasons that I've written quite a bit actually on what's wrong with the kind of grading that we do these days. I want to read the comments. That's what's really important to me. So if my kid brings home a report card and I have looked at it, the one thing I won't do is put it on the refrigerator, especially in front of my kid. The other thing I won't do is take a picture of that

report card and put it up on Facebook or Instagram or email it to the grandparents. I will send the narrative comments off. And in fact, I did that today. My older son got a report card not in the sense of grades, but from his advisor, sort of on how his goal setting and his leadership and all that kind of stuff. That's what I'm really proud of. When a teacher says in a narrative comment that my kid is willing to take emotional risks and take intellectual risks and fail and try again, that's the stuff that I want to know about. I actually care less what the grade is. I love it. That is great advice. It's really good. It really angers my older son. He's like, please just look at the grades. Well, the other thing is, and this is related, is that, you know, so many parents view the parent portal for the grading system as

kind of a fact of life now. For many parents of older kids, what they have access to is, you know, you can log in on the computer with a username and password that the school has given you, and you can look at your kids' grades whenever you want, at a lot of schools. At some schools, they've chosen not to open it all the time. Some schools

have chosen not to open it at all. And I applaud those schools because from talking to administrators, parenting portals, the way they are currently being used, are one of the most destructive things we have ever done to parent-teacher relationships, student-teacher relationships, and parent-child relationships.

And the administrators that I've talked to about it and the teachers I've talked to about it that have opened it, say if there's one genie they could put back in the bottle, one thing, one decision they could undo, it would be to close the parenting portal, to never have opened it in the first place, because it's really doing terrible things for our relationships with our kids. And it's creating havoc with parent-teacher relationships. So, yeah, stay off the parenting portal. I've written about it actually at the Atlantic, and I will continue to write about it. Well, speaking of relationships that parents can have with kids and how it can be strained,

what about household duties? Laundry as an opportunity for competence. Talk to me more about that. You know, one of the things that has happened in parenting in sort of how we, you know, it's funny. It used to be called child rearing, and the word changed to parenting. It used to be about the child, rearing the child, and now it's about parenting. It's about us, the parents, which I find interesting. One of the goals of child rearing or parenting used to be, you know, to create competent adults

who knew how to do everything and run their own household when they left your household, whether that was, you know, in the traditional male sense of, you know, putting up the barn and the fences and taking care of the livestock or whatever that was or the traditional female role, which is, you know, now not the way it works anymore. but, you know, you still have to be able to fix things around the house. You still have to be able to fix the toilet when it clogs. You still have to be able to get the clog of hair out of the bath drain. You still have to know how to do, how to cook things and how to do laundry so that when you

go out on your own, you're not an infant. And so many teachers and college counselors I've talked to say, you know, one of the things we have to do when those kids show up to whether that's, you know, college or boarding school or whatever is teach them how to do their own laundry because they don't even know. Kids really want to be needed and they want to be useful. And when we take all of that away with them with the excuse that, you know, their kids, their job is to be a kid, they're going to have to work, you know, when they get older. I guess my question for those parents is, well, when exactly are they going to learn how to do all

of those things that they're going to have to do when they get older? You know, that's the reason I use household duties is that as a family, we help each other out. I don't get paid for unloading the dishwasher. So why on earth would I pay my child to unload the dishwasher? It's a part of what we do to support each other as a family. I think kids really do need to feel needed in the family and they need to feel like, you know, they no longer have to financially support the family, which they used to. Now it's a matter of just being a part of the family and helping.

And I think that's important to them. So what is it like in your home when it comes to household duties or I don't know if you call it chores or not or something else? In fact, in the book, I followed the advice of a wonderful psychologist named Amy Miller McCready and took the word chores out of my vocabulary. It really is part of just participating in the family household duties. Gotcha. So what are some of the duties that your kids do? They're responsible for the animals. They are responsible.

You know, if the dish, it's sort of, it's not like a, we don't have like a list on the refrigerator. It's a, if you notice things, you help out kind of situation. There are certain things that they are responsible for. We heat our house with wood because we live in New Hampshire and lots of people have wood stoves. So keeping the wood circle out in the mud room, that's their job. If the dishwasher's full and I'm about to cook dinner, that's a kid's responsibility to undo that. Laundry. I have boys and certain things happen during adolescence.

I don't want to get too graphic, but I don't want it to be an odd. I don't want it to be weird for them if they have to do their own laundry for some reason. And if they have to take all the sheets off their bed and do the laundry, I want that to be a normal thing so that they're not weirded out by that. So that was a neighbor's advice, actually. So I made sure that by adolescence, they knew how to, you know, they were responsible for that. Lots of other things. I mean, I've been away a lot lately, and it's been really great because my younger son really likes to cook. And so his dad has been doing a lot of cooking together.

And I've been hearing about it a lot this fall, which has been great. My older son actually really likes to cook a lot too. So when he's home, he'll cook from time to time as well. Nice. What about discipline and disciplining when they don't do the right thing? Yeah, it's been interesting. Some of the pushback I've gotten about sort of the way I describe parenting in the gift of failure is, oh, it's so loosey-goosey, it's so laissez-faire.

It's actually, I'm a much more strict parent than I ever was before I started giving my kids more control over the how and the when and the why they did things, like their homework or their chores or whatever word you want to use for it. One of the things I try to be really, really careful about is making sure that if I have an expectation that's not met, and really that's the core of all this, is when I give kids more control over, for example, how they do their homework, well, we have to lay out expectations really clearly or they're not going to be sure whether they've met those expectations or not. And I'm talking like really specific. Like the expectation for homework is that they will do their homework.

They will do it well. It will go in their backpack and it will come out of their backpack and end up in their teacher's hands. And if that expectation is not met, then they are going to be responsible for setting up the meeting with the teacher for us all to sit down and figure out how that's going to change. You know, grounding them, keep making it so they have to stay in their room after school or something because they didn't turn in their homework.

I don't think that makes much sense because the consequence doesn't really match or doesn't help at all. It's not a practical remedy for the thing that was not done. So if a kid leaves their dishes out and they haven't washed their dishes or they haven't put their dishes in the dishwasher, well, they're going to have to do their dishes eventually and it's going to be a lot more disgusting because the food's going to be all crusty and growth. Or, you know, if the – and I have done this actually, if they don't bring the wood in, I happen to like it really cold in the house and they really don't. So if the wood doesn't come in and I can't keep the fire going, then the house is just going to get cold.

Or if they haven't done their laundry or they haven't separated out their laundry and put it in with the rest of the laundry, they're not going to have clothes and they're going to wear dirty clothes to school. And, you know, those are consequences that are really small, but they also push them toward, you know, a place where they understand that their failure to do something has very real consequences on their lives. Yeah, it makes so much sense. I love this. I could talk to you for many hours. I know I personally need it, and I think we all do to some extent if we don't take enough.

It's funny, because we go out and I think a lot of people, and when I say that, I'm in this boat too. We really study hard at whatever our job is or whatever we can to get better, even if we go to seminars. We try to learn as much as we can to get better at our job, or even if it's like a golf coach. we really try hard, but I don't know as a whole if we do enough hard work around trying to consciously be a better spouse and parent. I think we do. I think we do put a lot of work into being a good parent. It's just that our idea of being a good parent is the warm, fuzzy, you know, saving my kid

from feeling dumb or saving my kid from frustration or saving my kid from ridicule or whatever. And that's not necessarily for the long term anyway. I think we tend to think a lot about short-term moves as parents and not think about the long term and what will help our kids be more competent over the long haul. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's why your work is so important. It really is because there's a lot, I think, for us to learn to continually to dive in and learn more about this. Do you have a – did you say you have a big TV appearance coming up? Is that right?

Oh, I actually was supposed to be on a national television show next week, but the host has gotten ill. So it's been postponed actually until February. It'll be hopefully in February. Awesome. I definitely want to link it up when that happens. Absolutely. On my website are all of my Today Show appearances and stuff like that. Great.

You know, interviews and all that kind of fun stuff. Awesome. Well, yeah, I know we're up against it. So I want to wrap up here. Where can everyone go to find you online? Sure, it's Jessica Leahy.com, and Leahy is L-A-H-E-Y. And there, there's stuff on the book, there's all of my journalism, all of my interviews. Hopefully soon there's going to be frequently asked questions.

There's going to be a chapter of the book, actually, for kids. I do a lot of touring around schools and talking to students as well as to parents, and I've gotten a lot of requests to turn that into sort of a bonus chapter. So that's happening, all kinds of fun stuff. So if you sign up actually on my website, you'll get very infrequent updates on what's there and what's coming up. Sounds great. One final question around my podcast. It's called The Learning Leader Show for a specific reason, the fact that I love studying the art and science of leadership and the fact that this is something that can be developed over time.

I don't believe in born leaders. I think people have some natural tendencies toward things, but overall leadership can be a learned training. And I love, though, when you first heard that phrase, what's the first thing that popped into your mind when you heard learning leader? I actually spent part of the summer last year at the Gardner-Carnie Leadership Institute, which is for teachers, teaching kids leadership skills. That's their entire philosophy is that leadership is a learned skill. And I just, I could not believe the stories I heard there about what people were doing to teach kids' leadership. But one of the biggest things that I sort of took away from that was all the kids, all the successful kid leadership programs I saw involved kids who had learned how to self-advocate. And that's, I think, one of my biggest goals in sort of the work I do and the teaching I do and my book.

A lot of it is circled around, a lot of it circles around how we can teach kids to be their own best self-advocates and develop their own voice. Those are the kids who know how to lead because they aren't afraid to put their voice out there. That's so good. Yeah, this whole thing has been great, Jess. I really appreciate you being here with me and sharing your time. Like I said, I definitely want to continue this dialogue because I think there's personally a lot of room for improvement. it's so important that I'm just glad I stumbled upon your work and that we've been able to have this conversation and we'll certainly keep it going.

Thanks. I'm glad you did too. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks again, Jess, and we'll talk soon. Okay, thanks. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur,

CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.