William R. Stixrud

Like many, I had parents who tried to engineer their lives for “success,” but paid no attention to my passions, interests, and approach to life. Firsthand, I’ve seen that parenting style’s folly and futility and want to take a different angle with my daughter and with other children I have influence over. Enter The Self-Driven Child. This book helped concretize abstract beliefs into a coherent philosophy. It distills basic child psychology into a workable format that helps children “own” their lives while helping parents maintain peace of mind.

Parents often feel that their children are extensions of themselves, so they seek to imprint their desires on their kids’ lives. As the child matures, this can become psychologically oppressive and even abusive. Instead of fanning this flame, William Stixrud and Ned Johnson invert the paradigm. Rather than obtaining maximal control over your kids’ lives, these authors say, give them as much control as they can handle to teach them responsibility and enjoyment.

In this book, Stixrud and Johnson try to induce this paradigm shift in readers by outlining its benefits. Then they seek to extract what this looks like practically in a typical American parent-child relationship. They address unconventional approaches to early career development along with how to prepare your child not just for college, but for life. Honestly, their take on college is a bit “gloom and doom” for my tastes and unrealistic. For those self-driven, a university experience need not be – and in fact is not – so macabre. But their overall message of encouraging self-control and becoming self-driven is very much welcome in a culture where engineering your kids for success has become dominant.

I wish more parents (like my own, even now as I am in my forties) would read and adopt the authors’ general approach. Personal traits like happiness, contentedness, collegiality, and self-discipline have mattered more in any job I’ve had than degrees and awards. Schoolwork is meant to cultivate these virtues, not be the final word on them. I want to pass that wisdom onto my daughter, and this book can help me envision what that looks like habitually as I raise her.… (mais)

E isn't even old enough for preschool and I still find myself struggling with these issues. I also found it fascinating to, retroactively, observe my parents' evolution over the years. My mom is now writing a thesis on helicopter parenting, so... there's that.

It was an incredibly researched and focused book. I particularly liked the end where they argue the benefits of a gap year for some students. But was also curious about their perceptions on the change(which were never included). When did it become THE thing to helicopter parent? Why are we seeing more than we used to? But it's worth overlooking because the rest was so interesting.

The cited studies on video games were fascinating and testament to their commitment to presenting the whole picture. And now to put it into practice(because isn't that always the struggle?)...… (mais)