Why preparing children for success is pointless

They attend good schools alongside the children of other educated, engaged parents. They are white males, with all the advantages, seen and unseen, that come along with that. If any one of those things had been different, parenting would be a greater challenge, no matter my parenting style.

I don't have the standing to offer any wisdom to the single mother working two jobs. I know very little about the struggles of raising children with serious mental or physical disabilities. I'll never have to have the kinds of conversations about hatred and vulnerability that every parent of minority or LGBTQ children eventually must.

My kids were practically fated to be okay as long as my wife and I didn't fuck it up catastrophically. If the David Brookses of the world were honest, their parenting advice would begin: Have a healthy kid, live in an affluent area with low crime and good schools , be from a socially privileged demographic, and make a decent amount of money.

From there on, it's pretty much coasting. But still. All us veteran parents believe we've learned a few things and are capable of helping the next wave of parents do it better. It's one of the essential delusions that come along with parenthood. There's no sense fighting it. And there are lots of young, educated professionals reading Vox who are thinking about when or whether to have kids, or who have just had children.

Hi, Jose! So, on occasion, I'm going to tell them some things I wish I'd known, or at least better appreciated, the day I found out I'd be a father.

It was Christmas Eve My wife wrapped up the positive pregnancy test in a box with a bow and told me it was an early gift. There is a large industry in America devoted to making parents anxious, mainly so they will spend money on products and services that temporarily ease their anxieties.

One recurring theme in that industry's messaging is preparation. Yes, after years of pressuring parents to do more, the parenting industry is now pressuring them to do less. Either way, the goal is the same: Prepare Your Kid for Success. Your child must be carefully tended to, exposed to the proper amount and intensity of stimulation, challenged but never discouraged, socialized but also individuated, taught the right skills and sent to the right lessons and schools but definitely not overparented Remember the research, though.

Most of your parenting choices pale in significance to who you are, how much money you make, and where you live.

Within those parameters, your choices are unlikely to substantially affect your kid's Adult Success at all. Whether she succeeds as an adult has to do with her genes, her friends, and a whole boatload of luck and circumstance. It's a weird way to look at things anyway: parents as program managers, kids as important projects with growth targets and deliverables.

Nothing is more likely to make parents miserable than that kind of illusion of control, the idea that they can or should be managing their kids' development, shaping, directing, and maximizing it. Those expectations make parents and children both anxious and unhappy. The alternative to managing your kid like a project is not giving up. It's not lack of interest, or neglect. Preschool system is designed by adults to serve them the purpose of nurturing children. Everyone sitting in their respective chairs paying attention to the one standing in the room.

Does it sound familiar? Does it sound like meetings or classrooms? The modern classrooms are more focused on lecturing them playing. Hence serves our parents more then children. Playing with children involves more f brain activity them lectures. We all are very familiar with flight of brain during lectures. This is hampering opportunities of learning on their own; not recognising their own talents. We also clearly understand the importance of high-quality education.

The teachers are being paid low wages that is directly proportional to the quality of their work. Kids are remarkably adept at teaching themselves what they like. By forcing a strict curriculum onto creative children, we actually damage this natural ability.

So why do we do it? It really worked! I like the way you tried a lot of different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it. That was a hard English assignment, but you stuck with it until you got it done.

You stayed at your desk and kept your concentration. That's great! I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work—doing the research, designing the apparatus, making the parts and building it. You are going to learn a lot of great things. Parents and teachers can also teach children to enjoy the process of learning by expressing positive views of challenges, effort and mistakes.

Here are some examples:. Oh, sorry, that was too easy—no fun. Let's do something more challenging that you can learn from. Claudia M. Mueller and Carol S. Duckworth and M. Seligman in Psychological Science , Vol. A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model. Mangels, B. Butterfield, J. Lamb, C. Good and C. Edited by K. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. Feltovich and R. Cambridge University Press, Lisa S. Blackwell, Kali H.

Trzesniewski and Carol S. Dweck in Child Development , Vol. Cimpian, H. Arce, E. Markman and C. Dweck in Psychological Science , Vol. Her most recent book is Mindset , published by Random House in Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.

See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Growing Pains Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.

Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their persistence or strategies rather than for their intelligence , by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine. Dweck A for Effort According to a survey we conducted in the mids, 85 percent of parents believed that praising children's ability or intelligence when they perform well is important for making them feel smart.

The following are examples of such communications: You did a good job drawing. I like the detail you added to the people's faces. Here are some examples: Boy, this is hard—this is fun.

Let's all talk about what we struggled with today and learned from. I'll go first. Mistakes are so interesting. Here's a wonderful mistake. Let's see what we can learn from it. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber?