Empowering Parents to Foster Success in Their Children Through Learning to Let Go: The Gift of Failure

Robert Menzies: A very good read! Great price for this book. Gifts for my 2 adult children!!

Canada on Jul 05, 2022

boy.momma: This is a wonderful parenting book. Definitely gave us new strategies to work on with our sons and changed the way we parent.

Canada on Nov 08, 2020

Reid McCormick: Growing up, I never handled failure very well. This was most evident on the baseball field. Baseball success is built on failure. The best players ever fail 70% of the time. Whenever I struck out or hit a weak ground out, I was furious. I didn’t understand how all my preparation and hard work could result in failure.

It was not until my senior year of high school when I started to manage my understanding of failure and success properly. I am far from perfect but I am a lot more developed than I was back in high school.

Today, I am a father and unfortunately, I see anger issues manifesting in my oldest child. One moment she is gleefully coloring a beautiful drawing with a rainbow of crayons then suddenly I hear a loud wail and she is angrily crumbling up the paper and chucking it across the room.

So it apparently runs in the famil…but how do I break this pattern?

Reading The Gift of Failure is definitely a good step.

Small failures have a huge impact, and these impacts are good. I already catch myself overparenting constantly, but what am I really trying to do? Prevent a scuffed knee or a broken toy? That’s it? Is that worth it?

We...

United States on Sep 22, 2020

Kumar: A must read for people that want to crush it in life. Great for parents that want to live vicariously through their kids - let your kids fail, it's important.

Canada on Aug 02, 2019

HG Tate: Hugely helpful book. It has been a real eye-opener for my approach to supporting my son's learning and life-skill development. The basic principle is not new, and many of today's adults were brought up with these principles. However, education and views on child rearing have changed (not necessarily for the better!) over the years, and the main concept of supporting our children to become intrinsically motivated, independent and self-reliant has to be re-introduced to this generation of overprotective and overinvolved parents (of which I have become one of). The book is a very easy read, with clear examples and ideas for parents/teachers to use.

United Kingdom on Dec 20, 2017

DMM: Lahey is a teacher and a parent; this dual perspective makes her uniquely qualified to give advice about raising kids. Lahey's book contains a lot of interesting research and theories but what I really valued was the the practical advice about letting children fail in small ways to prepare them for the future and to help them become more self sufficient now. Highly recommended.

United Kingdom on Oct 21, 2015

Bookphile: This book had a profound effect on my thinking about how to be a parent. I don't think of myself as the type who hovers, but I'm starting to understand that I hover more than I realize. It's not that the author is advocating for hands-off parenting. Instead, she points out a lot of the ways in which parents take the reins and deny their kids all sense of control, and how detrimental that can be. We want our kids to grow up to be responsible and capable adults, but how can they do that when we take away their sense of autonomy? This book made me realize it's more important for me to teach my kids life skills like how to manage their time than it is for me to be managing every detail. My doing so comes from good intentions and a desire to see them succeed, but at the same time it conveys subtle messages to them I don't want conveyed.

I read a lot of psychology and social science books because the research just plain fascinates me. While this book offers a lot of anecdotes, it's also infused with an excellent grasp of research. Lahey's background in education shines through, and her suggestions are grounded in the same evidence-based research that I've read. If kids seem...

United States on Sep 29, 2015

Tetman Callis: Jessica Lahey and I have never met in person, though we have been online writerly acquaintances for about five years. She has read my writings and commented on them (as has, in one case, her son, Finn), and I am professionally acquainted with her sister, Anna Jones. All this to let you know that while this comment is as unbiased as possible, there is a connection between us.

THE GIFT OF FAILURE is an important book, useful and lucid. Jessica has researched many resources -- the book's bibliography is six pages of small type, listing 154 sources -- and has distilled their findings, conclusions, suggestions, prescriptions, proscriptions, warnings, and encouragements into a tight, well-structured, and eminently readable guide for the possibly perplexed American parent. If you have school-aged children, please allow me to urge you to read this book and keep it handy.

The one caveat I will raise is that Jessica is writing from a certain solidly middle-class perspective, in the older definition of the middle class as a well-educated, professionally successful, and financially privileged population. Some readers may find her casual references to such luxuries as private...

United States on Sep 09, 2015