The Big Shift

How Not to Parent a Teenager

I don’t know how to parent a teenager but I think I know how not to parent one.

In other words, I don’t know how to stop a teenager from being rude or sarcastic, make her act with adult-like judgment, prevent her from experimenting with… stuff, and ensure that she starts studying for her math test five days in advance of the exam. I don’t know how to do any of that and, what’s more, I’m quite sure that the countless parenting “experts” don’t either.  

What I do think I know how to do is not close down communication with a teen so that you have an idea of what your kid is actually up to (as opposed to what you naively think they are up to) and so that you can possibly—if you’re really lucky--exert some modicum of influence on her behavior.

I like to call this “realist parenting” because it acknowledges what parents don’t control and what they just might control if they play their cards right. Realist parenting refuses to trade the possibility of influence for the illusion of power. Realist parenting starts with how things actually are, and acts within that reality.

Realist parents know that teens face a myriad of influences, from their genetic makeup to their peer group culture to the ever-present media. They know that we parents are but one voice--albeit an import one--in our teen’s development. They take an honest look at each kid, their peer group, and their attitudes toward the world, and try to guide their kids within those parameters. They accept conduct in their teens that they don’t much like in order to bear some influence on their teens from doing something even worse. Realist parents would rather hear the truth and talk about it, than try to enforce the unenforceable.

Realist parents know that some kids will readily comply with parental dictates, some kids will partially comply and partially rebel, and some kids will give us total hell. Realist parents attempt to go as far as they can but no farther in influencing the choices of their complicated teens. They know what worked for their obedient first child may not work for their wild and temperamental second child.

Un-realist parents, by contrast, like to think that if they use the right combination of carrots and sticks, they can keep their kids on the straight and narrow. And because they think they can stop their teens from doing stupid teen things, their kids simply don’t tell them about the stupid teen things they do. By overestimating their power over their kids, the un-realist parent loses the opportunity to influence her teen’s behavior by the only real parental weapon parents have —talking with them in a mature and thoughtful manner.

Un-realist parents may suspect that their teens are up to no good and play an endless game of cat and mouse. Their kids become experts in not getting caught. In the process of trying to catch their kids in the act, un-realist parents actually bid up the value of the undesirable behavior. A parent who does everything he can to prevent his 16 year old son and his friends from drinking alcohol probably only makes drinking more desirable, like it was during prohibition. That parent may successfully stop the drinking party at the neighbor’s house from happening one time, but he can do nothing to prevent the same kids from drinking at the nearby park, which involves more driving around and greater risks. By unrealisitcally trying to lower the risks he elevates them.  

More often than not, however, un-realist parents simply don’t know what their kids are up to. How do I know this? Realist parents tend to hear not only about their own kids’ lives, but about the lives of other kids as well. They know that the un-realist parent's kid smokes marijuana frequently and does everything he can to hide it from his parents. Unfortunately, the un-realist parent is missing out on the opportunity to influence the frequency that the teen uses marijuana or her decision to draw the line with marijuana or the all important choice to decline driving while under the influence.

There are many realist parents out there. But we tend to stay quiet for fear of being judged by the un-realist parents for being permissive or indifferent. So we realist parents often pretend to be more “strict” than we actually are.  It’s good for neighborly relations.

Maybe it’s time, however, that realist parents come out of the woodwork. Somebody’s got to tell the emperor that he has no cloths.  

New (School) Year’s Resolutions for Square Peg Parents

School is about to start, a nerve-racking time for square peg children (those who don’t easily fit into the school system) and their square peg parents (those who are willing to buck the system and advocate for their children’s long-term well-being).

If you, like me, have “square peg” children who do not easily fit into the round peg school system, then you just might find these resolutions of interest.

If you, like me, believe that schools need to change to accommodate alternative learning styles and to emphasize alternative skills, such as creativity and critical thinking, then these resolutions just might speak to you.

Five New (School) Year’s Resolutions:

       (1) I will not get angry at my kids for their performance in school or allow my family life to be dictated by school

Commentary: As the famous Pink Floyd song tells it, school is just “another brick in the wall.” Yes, it’s an important brick. But more important than school is providing a supportive family atmosphere that gives our kids the time and space necessary to identify their passions and become their best selves. Not every kid is on the same growth trajectory--thank goodness!--and parents need to allow for these differences even if schools don’t. Family, more than school, is the foundation upon which all other bricks are laid.

  

      (2) I will not give my children the impression that their future success relies entirely on their grades

Commentary: Square peg kids must know that they have more than one bite at the apple. A grade is a teacher’s assessment of a kid’s ability to regurgitate information, not the penultimate commentary of a child’s self-worth. Many, many “poor students” become highly successful adults.  A kid not ready for their college of choice at age 17 may be ready in two years. The world is far more forgiving of late bloomers than school. Let’s help our kids know that.

(3)  I will approach meetings at the school with the principal, guidance counselor and teacher with a sense of proportion and humor, and not feel guilty because my kids don’t perfectly conform

Commentary: A meeting with school officials can be very stressful for square peg parents because they know the purpose of the meeting is for the school to do everything they can to get their children with the program, and that the meeting will force the parents to walk a fine line between allowing children to grow at their own rate and placating the school. School officials mean well. They genuinely (but wrongly) believe that your child’s ability to conform to the system is hugely important to their future success. But they also want to make it as easy as possible on themselves. The classroom is set up for average kids not outliers. Your goals for your children and the school’s goals may not perfectly align. School officials are not your boss. You have agency. Listen to their advice but take it with a grain of salt.  

      (4) I will help my kids identify their passions and become better at what they care most about.

Commentary: Schools are set up to get every child to code, not (unfortunately) to help your child develop a love of learning, identify a sense of purpose and to become passionate. We parents have a critical role to play in guiding them.

       (5) I will work to transform the educational experience for my children and other children, for my country and the world

Commentary: Let’s channel our passion for our own children to help improve learning for all children.

 

How the 'Pursuit of Happiness' can save our economy

This piece also appears on Nikhil Goyal's blog in Psychology Today 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

--The Declaration of Independence

A few months ago, I met a high school senior who had recently been accepted to Princeton. “I really wanted to go to a small liberal arts school where I could focus on creative writing in an intimate environment, but my parents said I should go to the best school that I get into,” she related to me. She went on to say that her parents were also pressuring her to consider a more lucrative profession. What ever happened, I wondered, to the right to pursue happiness?

America’s founders believed that God instilled in every individual a sense of purpose, and it was the right of each person to discover and live out that purpose.  For them, happiness was the deep sense of satisfaction growing out of living a life of passion and meaning. So strongly did they believe this that they enshrined the pursuit of happiness into the American creed, deeming it one of three rights worth mentioning in the Declaration of Independence.

The right to pursue happiness has always been an odd bird, but somehow still central to America’s sense of self. The other two rights cited in the Declaration of Independence—Life and Liberty—establish our freedom from those who would harm us. With these two rights there is a corresponding legal obligation not to interfere with an individual’s freedom. But with the right to pursue happiness, there’s no corresponding legal obligation. No one goes to jail for failing to make another happy. The right does, however, imply a duty to create the conditions that best enable the pursuit of happiness. It’s a demand of our culture not of our legal system.

At the time of the nation’s founding, freshly liberated from British rule, Americans fully embraced the right to pursue happiness. They were fiercely independent of established authority, masters of their own destiny. One-hundred years into the American experiment—with the onset of the industrial era—Americans summarily abandoned the right to pursue happiness in exchange for unparalleled affluence. And another one hundred years later, with the industrial era on life support and a less hierarchical and more dynamic socioeconomic order on the ascendency, we have yet to fully reclaim it.  

As the industrial era set in, assured of unprecedented prosperity, the doyens of industry went to great lengths to snuff out the right to pursue happiness. The education system quickly followed suit. America’s emerging economic model required the creation of a massive and docile workforce engaged in monotonous and menial work. Henry Ford’s assembly-line reduced the once independently-minded American worker into a mere component part of a giant machine.  While at first not every worker acceded to these conditions, eventually, as other industries embraced scientific management practices, workers had little choice but to comply. The new culture of compliance not only affected factory workers but, in due course, shaped the self-image of all but the most entrepreneurially-inclined. It was hard to argue with the results: the standard of living of the average American increased by a factor of fifty in the succeeding decades.

Not long after, compulsory education, designed to move the child of the farmer from the fields to the factory, became the mirror image of the factory, complete with ringing bells and shift changes at regular intervals. The American education system did not enable the pursuit of happiness—far from it —nor did it advance critical thinking or independent thought. Kids were provided the skills, with a special emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, necessary to be compliant workers in the industrial economy. Despite sweeping economic change in the past three decades, the vast majority of schools still adhere to the factory model.

More than a century after Ford introduced the Model T, the majority of industrial jobs are long gone. Those that remain are vulnerable to more advanced machinery and a growing semi-skilled workforce in Asia. Even many of the information-age jobs are at risk to lower paid tech workers in places like India.

Notwithstanding this big shift, America's core institutions—family, school and work—are stuck in the old industrial mindset, unable to see and adjust to the new economic reality. These institutions are predisposed to moving people along, like a factory conveyor belt, into fulfilling the perceived needs of declining industries. Fearful of change, they conspire to set our sights low. Too many workplaces, counter to their own interests, still place a premium on employing the unimaginative but dependable worker; nearly all schools educate students to be that unimaginative but dependable worker; and most parents dutifully oblige, preparing their children to take their place in this decaying social order. Our core institutions continue to insist that young people trade their potential for happiness for the promise of wealth, status and stability, which, tragically, will make them both less happy and less wealthy.

When Americans finally become unstuck, they will find a whole new universe of opportunity waiting. The very forces that are wiping out the old economy and the old work are giving life to a new economy and new work. The technology that destroyed jobs creates the possibility of mass private enterprise. There’s greater opportunity than ever before in human history to innovate and connect with new markets. In the industrial age, the potential for entrepreneurship was scarce, requiring large amounts of capital or super-human initiative; today it's abundant, requiring nothing more than a laptop, a creative eye and an adventurous spirit.

In this new era, raising and educating our kids to obtain basic skills and follow a once defined path to success went from being a good bet to a bad bet. Raising and educating them to bring out their creativity, chase their dreams, and dare to be different is both less risky and potentially more rewarding. Far from being an obstacle to productivity as it was during the industrial era, the pursuit of happiness is key to thriving in the emerging connection economy. Our economic fortunes will likely grow in direct proportion to the number of people who throw off their industrial-era shackles, figure out what they were meant to do, and bring their talents to the marketplace.

We gave up the right to pursue happiness in the 20th century and desperately need to get it back in the 21st.

Is it ok that your teenager calls you an ass?

A few nights ago, I was sitting around with two other parents of teenagers doing what parents of teenagers do in such situations: talk about our teenagers.

We are all proud of our teens. They are “great kids with great heads on their shoulders.” They know that it's bad to drink and drive, and that nothing good can come out of snorting cocaine or having unprotected sex. They occasionally surprise us with acts of loving kindness. They can be exceedingly mature and generous.

But then one of the parents, a mother of two teens, decided to rain on the party and blurted out: “Jared said to me today ‘you are being an ass.’ I wish that was the worst thing he’s ever said to me but it’s not. It really gets under my skin. I would never in a million years have said that to my father!”

The other parent, a prominent doctor and very involved father, sighed, acknowledging without saying as much that his teen had also called him an ass. “I would never have even thought such a thing about my father, let alone called him it. I just had too much respect for him.”

“Did you have an open relationship with your father in the way that you do with your boys?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted.

Is there a tradeoff between preventing your kid from calling you an ass and having an open and honest relationship with him? And if so, which is better, being called a bad word but open with your teen, or being revered but closed?

One of the worse things that can happen is for your teen to call you an ass in front of your parents or in-laws. That does not go over well. Your parents will lecture you endlessly, as if you were the teenager, about the need to instill respect in your teenager.

Your parents have been off the parenting circuit for a very long time, going on cruises or playing Bridge with their friends in Florida. They are not accustomed to the adversarial behavior of a teenager. Their selective memory romanticizes your teenage days. Never mind that they allowed you to get away with ten times more than their parents allowed them to get away with. They value deference and respect. They don’t realize that the culture of parenting has changed, just as it had changed from the time they were kids to the time they became parents.

Indeed, allowing your teenager to get away with calling you an ass is really a function of larger change in our culture. Our society is much more irreverent to authority today than it was a generation ago. We see such irreverence on TV, film, and the internet. Our kids see it in how other parents and kids interact. We parent within the parameters of larger cultural norms. No parent is an island, notwithstanding the usual parental drivel “I don’t care that Mikey Smith’s mom gave him an iPhone.” Parents care a lot about what other parents do and say, whether we admit it or not.  We have become more tolerant of being called an ass because our friends and neighbors have as well.

Some decry the decline in reverence, but it’s really just a sign that society is beginning to place a higher value on independent thought and creativity than on compliance. Many parents have come to realize, based on their own experiences at work, that being compliant or obedient is not all it’s cracked up to be. It may get you a job but it won’t get you ahead. These parents have ceased instilling blind obedience in their children, but then feel guilty for allowing their kids to speak to them in a way they wouldn’t have spoken to their parents.  

I'm sure there are more than a few parents out there who think I’m out of my mind for countenancing such disrespect because their precious teen would never call them an ass. They credit their skillful parenting for their kid’s upstanding behavior. But those of us mere mortal parents with mere mortal children have a tough choice to make when our teenagers mouth off at us. We can go to war with our teen in the hope that she won’t dare do it again, and risk creating a chill in the relationship and shutting down conversation. Or we can simply and calmly tell her that we don’t appreciate the disrespectful language and move on, and risk producing a kid who…. Ummmm…Will be disrespectful her entire life? Is that really a risk? Seriously?

No, it’s not ok that your teenager calls you an ass. Yes, you can live with it.  

Four changes we must all make to thrive in the 21st Century

The chart below lays out four big shifts we must make in order to become more innovative and thrive in the future:

 

Old Order	New Order (Shift)	Rationale
Compliance: Exhort our children to learn the material and comply with authority	Creativity: Cultivate in our children risk-taking, critical thinking, and creativity	We need to produce a generation of innovators who can think for themselves
Competence: Train people to be adequate at a defined set of professions, based on stability, local economic conditions, or financial rewards	Passion: Bring out the sense of purpose and passion of every individual, encouraging that person to do what he or she loves and is best at	Purpose-driven people are more innovative, effective and happy
Uniformity: Uphold a single standard of intelligence, learning and professionalism	Diversity: Embrace a diversity of attributes/strengths as indispensable assets in today’s economy	A thriving society and economy requires a wide variety of people, including those with unconventional strengths and weaknesses
Hierarchy: Impose hierarchical management structures and teaching to maximize efficiencies	Self-organization: Create flatter, self-organizing structures in school and the workplace to maximize innovation	Self-organized teams and learning units are more nimble, and better able to learn and innovate

 Book Recommendation: Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner

“Lean out” parenting (Yes, you should be your child’s friend)

I’m for “lean out” parenting (I’m also for lean out schooling and management, but that’s for another time). Lean out is a twist on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandburg’s book title and burgeoning social movement “Lean in,” calling on women to ratchet up their professional aspirations and engagement.

When I say parents should “lean out,” I mean that we should do less punishing, less rewarding, less scolding, less praising, less hovering, less preaching, less controlling, less (over) protecting. Less is more. Of course this is a general philosophy and not an Individual Parenting Plan (IPP). There are 1001 legitimate exceptions, I have no doubt.

Some will view lean out parenting as a call for disengagement and chaos. Lean out does not mean bow out. And, of course, it does not mean that we should relinquish all control. We do have to get our kids to the bus stop in the morning. Rather, lean out means staying clear of what we can’t or shouldn’t control and doing more of what we can and should.

Most parents think they have a major say in their kids’ long-term behavior. This is a monumental illusion. The discipline we mete out has very little if any lasting impact on their behavior. Studies show that punishment works only in temporarily exerting control over a child and has no lasting effect. In one study, eighty percent of children repeated the behavior they were disciplined for that very same day.

Judith Harris first pointed out the futility of disciplining children in her seminal book “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do,” citing extensive research from studies of twins separated at birth. Researchers believe that roughly fifty percent of a child's personality profile—traits such as friendliness, openness, introversion, nervousness, etc.—are attributable to genes, which means that the other half is attributable to the environment. Studies show that peers and siblings have a much bigger influence than parents on a child’s behavior. Indeed, one of the most important decisions parents make is choosing a neighborhood or a school.

Anyone who doubts this more limited view of parental impact should speak to parents with both biological and adopted children. Almost invariably they will tell you how drastically different their adopted children are from their biological kids.

Notwithstanding the evidence, some parents, typically those with well-behaved children, credit themselves for their kids' stellar conduct. It’s a classic case of “confirmation bias"--we favor information that confirms our beliefs. Mercifully, some of these parents eventually beget a less compliant child, and wonder why all that skillful parenting no longer seems to work.  Given what we’ve learned about the power of genetics, it should surprise no one that well-behaved parents tend to produce well-behaved offspring.

Not only does standard-fare discipline not work, it can make things worse:

• We unnecessarily inflame our family life by constantly battling with less compliant children.

• We hold back our children from learning from the real world by imposing unnecessary restrictions. 

• We impede the development of an internal moral compass by fostering reliance on extrinsic controls.

• We make it more difficult to maintain an open and honest relationship by generating more resentment than necessary.

Parents can likely play a greater role in shaping the values and identities of our children than we can in conditioning their behavior. That probably has more to do with how we model own own values than with any long-winded speech we give or time-out we dish out. Even then, those values must ultimately be reinforced by the larger society if they are to have any staying power. None of us parents in a vacuum.

In short, by being disciplinarians, we trade some of our potential long-term influence on values for short-term control over behavior.

Dropping the pretense of punishment and rewards does not put us parents out of business. It creates the space for meaningful engagement with our children. It keeps the lines of communication open as they grow and makes it more likely that they will consult with us on challenges they face during their critical teenage years. It allows us to be their mentors and, yes, their friends, not in the same way we are with our adult friends, but friends nonetheless. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there’s nothing wrong with that. 

By leaning out, we can lean in in ways our children need most.

Confusing Parenting and Culture: Why it's impossible (and undesirable) to raise Bébé in the US

Dr. Marilyn Wedge argues in Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD in Psychology Today that US therapists (and their co-conspirators in school) tend to over-diagnose ADHD, and points out that French therapists rarely make such a diagnosis or prescribe medication. She goes on to say the following about the reasons for the lower incidence of ADHD in France:

French parents have a different philosophy of discipline. Consistently enforced limits, in the French view, make children feel safe and secure. Clear limits, they believe, actually make a child feel happier and safer—something that is congruent with my own experience as both a therapist and a parent. Finally, French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires." And spanking, when used judiciously, is not considered child abuse in France..

I agree with Wedge that the US tends to "pathologize much of what is normal childhood behavior." I disagree that we should mimic French parenting styles in order to gain control over ADHD. Rather than treating ADHD as medically pathological, as American clinicians are wont to do, Wedge treats it as socially pathological. It should be viewed as neither.

As Judith Harris pointed out more than a decade ago in The Nurture Assumption, parenting styles have very little impact on children's behavior. Culture, on the other hand, has a huge impact. In parenting the way that they do, French parents are simply reflecting and reinforcing French cultural  standards of behavior. Placed in an American cultural context, such parenting would have little impact. American culture, and not just parenting styles, would have to drastically change for French-style parenting to work for American parents.

Indeed, American culture is less constrained and hierarchical than French society. Wedge points out that French "children grow up in families in which the rules are well-understood, and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place."  This also partially explains why France is far less innovative than America. Strict behavioral norms impede creativity.

I'll take our wild children any day.

 

Why good students are bad thinkers

I recently spent some time discussing with my 16 year old son his 15-page reading assignment about the evolution of American pluralism. He read it through paragraph by paragraph, and we discussed some of the major ideas. It took him nearly two hours. He was exhausted, but came away understanding the content of the essay in a deep way.

Given the demands school places on their time, many good students take shortcuts, looking at the questions before reading the essay and cruising the text for answers. Who can blame them? There’s simply no way they can do justice to such an essay in a single night with all of their other school work and after school activities. I could have spent that two hours with my son working on developing those “study skills” instead of helping him analyze the material, but he wouldn’t have truly understood the big ideas or expanded his critical thinking capacity. That requires going deep.  

The inexorable march through the curriculum can leave even the best students lacking in critical thinking skills. Indeed, the skills required to do well in school often work against critical thinking, and create poor habits of mind that can last a lifetime. These students are not in an active dialogue with the text, asking themselves what they think about a specific idea and how it fits into their larger understanding of the world. They don’t synthesize. Many of these students will later in life read current events articles in the same haphazard way they read a classroom essay. They will not have become critical thinkers.

After I finished college, I spent several months in Israel studying Talmud—the Jewish oral law tradition—at a Jewish seminary. Studying Talmud spawned generations of rigorous thinkers in the Jewish world, some of whom later used those same critical thinking skills to reject the very precepts of the Jewish tradition. We sat around a table with our teacher going over a single tract of Talmud—a short paragraph of text—for an hour a day for about three weeks. The tract laid out the moral reasoning of who is responsible if one man’s ox gores another man’s calf. The purpose of this pedagogy was not to impart the facts around the ox and the calf, but rather to learn a crucial thought process that would allow us to study other texts down the line. The students argued—often spiritedly, slamming their fists on the table—while the teacher refereed, tossing out challenging questions and new twists. The teacher didn't care how long it took; he wanted to make sure that we mastered the thought process. 

While I didn't retain the particulars about which party was deemed responsible for killing the calf, I did acquire a method of thinking applicable to other complex moral situations. If this tractate of Talmud were taught in a typical American high school, there would have been none of the heated debate, which, studies show, is a powerful method of learning. The teacher would have spent 15 minutes on it and administered a multiple choice test on who was responsible for killing the calf.

True learning, especially in an age when you can look up everything on a smart phone in a matter of seconds, does not primarily involve absorbing the subject matter, it involves developing a thought process that allows you to analyze all this readily available information. Schools are largely stuck on the subject matter.   

Without a doubt, some teachers, in some schools, at certain times, facilitate genuine critical thinking. But it’s rare. According to Ron Ritchhart, a researcher for Harvard's Project Zero and Director of the Cultures of Thinking project, “Critical thinking has been floating around the world of education for years. However, it has often been treated as an add-on to the curriculum rather a core aspect of learning.”

Until this changes or unless you make up for it at home, don't expect your diligent student to be a strong critical thinker.

Do you give exceptional advice?

We have a new intern in my office, a senior in high school who was recently admitted into college. He’s a sharp guy with a lot going on upstairs. He came to my office, and we talked about his future.

Me: What are you thinking of majoring in?

Intern: Political science. I'd like to do advocacy or maybe foreign policy for a government agency.

Me: That’s great. Think of things that will make you stand out. Many people get good grades and do cool internships. If you want to set yourself apart, write opinion pieces for a newspaper, conduct a social media campaign, start a new campus group. Come up with something entirely new. These types of activities will get everyone’s attention and give you the experience and skill you really need to excel.

Intern: Nobody has ever said that to me before.

Me reflecting: Yikes. And I thought I was giving him run-of-the-mill advice. Here’s a young man who has every opportunity in the world in front of him—he's educated, smart, well-spoken, even potentially passionate—but the only advice anyone has given him is to get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job. Follow the protocol and you will be selected. Nobody ever told him he could be exceptional by doing something exceptional.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman elegantly describes the new economic path we have embarked upon and what it will take to adapt our society. "Parenting, teaching or leadership that “inspires” individuals to act on their own will be the most valued of all," he asserts. 

I wonder if some adults fear that inspiring a young person to attempt something exceptional might cause him or her to veer off the beaten path. If so, they are doing more harm than good. The beaten path is really, well, beaten.

My 8-Year-old’s quest for fire

One of the reasons I seriously doubt my teenage son will ever develop a drug habit is that he’s deathly afraid of both needles and fire. I can’t see him snorting anything into his nose either. My younger son, on the other hand, has developed a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your perspective) fascination with fire and, well, I’m sort of ok with it.

No, this is not my child

Last week, my 8-year-old came home from school with his 13-year-old female baby sitter, a free spirit who rarely bothers wearing shoes. I was on a work call when he barged into the room, magnifying glass in hand, asking me if it was ok if he went into the alley with the baby sitter and made a fire. I vaguely remember mumbling “sure,” though I doubt I fully processed the request.

What happened next was as predictable as a London soccer riot.  A well-meaning neighborhood mother, shocked at the spectacle of a three inch fire burning near a child, called my wife informing her of the towering inferno, which was “against the law and dangerous.”  Truth be told, I doubt there’s a parent in the neighborhood, other than yours truly, who would not have done the same.

This reminded me of the hit TED video “5 dangerous things you should let your kid do.” Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, which “puts power tools in the hands of second graders,” tells us that “learning to control one of the most elemental forces in nature is a pivotal moment in any child’s personal history…but these mysteries are only revealed to those who get the opportunity to play with it.” He goes on to say “let them play with fire on their own terms… trust me, they are going to get things out of it you can’t get playing with Dora the Explorer toys.”

 

Yes, I know, there are arguably more “appropriate ways” he could have indulged his fascination, such as going on a Cub Scout outing. But he doesn’t want to sit around while the scout master demonstrates his prowess assembling a kindle teepee. He wants to light up a few leaves on the driveway. I’m pretty sure making fires in the burbs was illegal in my hometown Columbus, Ohio, but that never stopped me from roaming the yard with my magnifying glass trying to catch a ray and fry a bug. And not once did a neighbor report me, or my parents rein me in. People understood that’s what kids do—they make fires with magnifying glasses.  

 As readers of The Big Shift know, I’m not a big fan of the zero risk parenting practices that have overtaken my generation of suburban parents. We mean well, but our obsession with safety is stunting our kids’ independence. Let them tinker.