Book #55: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims

This book is both breaking my brain and making me scribble a bunch of notes of things to do at the same time. On the one hand, I CANNOT BELIEVE SOME OF THESE STORIES ARE REAL. Lythcott-Haims has a lot of anecdotes and stories from her time as a freshman dean at Stanford to perfectly exemplify the twenty-first century "helicopter parent"--parents who show up to college with their kids, who show up to GRAD SCHOOL with their kids, who go with their kids to their first job interviews and try to negotiate their salaries for them, who try to handhold their kids through life and never know how or when to stop and let their kids finally grow up. These parents have one goal in life--to help their kids get into the best college they can so that they can get a good job and make good money and become successful. And they will do everything they can to make sure their kids get there, from waking their kids up every day for school, doing their homework, and yelling at their coaches to get them on the varsity team, to paying thousands of dollars for SAT coaching and helping them to get into Stanford. These stories are so crazy and yet totally believable--because we all know people like that.

But Lythcott-Haims is trying to fight against the pressure and the craziness and to get parents to CALM DOWN. She argues that we cannot prevent every bump and bruise and scrape our kids get into. That is life--they need to learn how to fail, how to get hurt, and how to get back up again. This is called resilience and it's an important life skill they will not survive without once they get into the real world. Kids need to learn how to work and how to do things for themselves, life skills, other than just doing homework and doing well in school. They need to be able to make themselves breakfast, to get themselves up in the morning, to manage their time, and to call and make their own doctor's appointments. And you can start very young to make sure that they are able to do things on their own that they are capable of. She says that you should make sure you're NOT doing things for them that they are capable of doing by themselves. I was thinking about that, and today I asked Dane to try and buckle his bottom buckles on his carseat by himself. He's been trying to do it for ages, but today I pushed him a little bit and he DID it! Without my helping or coaching him at all! He was so proud of himself, AND it makes my life a lot easier because now he can get in the car and buckle himself in all by himself. Hallelujah! I knew he was capable of it and he could try to do it.

I've always thought that raising independent kids is one of my main goals as a parent. There are other important traits that are high up there too, but if you think about it, the whole POINT of being a parent is to give your kids the life preparation they will need to eventually grow up and be on their own. So it has been really interesting reading this book and getting specific ideas about how to help your kids be independent and self-motivated and hard-working. I don't really think we were in much danger of overparenting like some of the parents in her book--when you come from a big family, and plan to have a big(ish) family, I don't think that's usually the mindset you have--but this gives me even more motivation to consciously work on helping my kids to develop individually and to give them the chances to do things on their own, whatever age they are.

In the final chapter, Lythcott-Haims summarizes her point into these four principles, that I wanted to write down just for me to remember:

1. The world is much safer than we've been led to believe, and our child needs to learn how to thrive in it rather than be protected by it.
2. A checklisted childhood designed to lead to a narrow definition of success robs children of the proper developmental opportunities of childhood and can lead to psychological harm.
3. A child learns, grows, and ultimately succeeds by diving into what interests them, doing and thinking for themselves, trying and failing and trying again, and developing mastery through effort.
4. Family life is richer and more rewarding for all when parents aren't hovering over and facilitating every moment of a kid's life.

Book #54: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

I read this book last year (I think--no, two years ago!), but I joined a book club here in Frisco and they were reading this for November, and I thought it would be worth a re-read. When I read and summarized it before, I didn't think all that much about it. I just got through it, thought Flavia was a little weird, and moved on. But this time, I tried to think more about why I wasn't totally absorbed by this book either time I read it. I think part of it is the dynamics in the relationships for the main characters. Flavia is only eleven years old, but with a dead mother and a disconnected and still-grieving father, she might as well be on her own. She has little obvious relationship with her father or sisters--other than trying to annoy them as much as possible--and she doesn't have any friends or go to school or do... anything other than mess around in her chemistry lab. It's a little sad to think about how little love she has around her--and I think that affects how much I care about this book. She's a total one-man show, and there are no other rounded or interesting characters to follow. I know Bradley has written a number of other books in the series, but I don't really feel interested in reading any of them because I don't see any evidence there will be any change in that.

Not to make it sound like I don't like this book--I did! But I'd probably give it three stars instead of four because of that problem.

Book #53: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Fantasy is obviously not my main genre. In all the years I've been keeping track of what I read here on this blog, I've only read six "fantasy" genre books--and four of those are the LOTR series and prequel. And the other two are basically kids' books. But I've been meaning to read some Brandon Sanderson for a LONG time--he's a BYU professor (or at least he was when I was there) in creative writing, and all I ever hear about him is that his books are SO GOOD. But I finally was convinced by my friend Amanda to pick up this book and I am so glad I finally did. It's something like 1000 pages long (I'm not sure because I read it on my Kindle) but it was OH MY GOSH so good. I couldn't stop reading it and I couldn't get over it and I can't stop thinking about it! It's everything a fantasy epic novel should be--and the beginning of what will supposedly be a TEN-BOOK series, although only two have come out yet (which is super disappointing, like starting a TV show only to catch up to where it is already in real life--I hate having to wait).

Clearly from my numerous all-caps words here you can tell I am enthusiastic about this book. Basically everything was fantastic--from the way the world was built, to the quality of the writing (I loved that there weren't any boring or obvious moments where he slid in explanations for things--he built the world without any explicit explaining to the reader), to the characterization and the characters themselves. There's a number of main characters who we switch between their points of view throughout the book, and you get to know each of them fairly well through their perspective and through what they do. The story is set in Alethkar, a country built up of independent nations in the midst of a war against a country that assassinated their previous king. One main character is Dalinar, the brother of the murdered king and uncle to the current one. He is an honorable leader and one who cares about his men and the means before the end--and he's having crazy visions and dreams that he's worried about driving him mad. Another character is Kaladin, a soldier reduced to a slave after some horrible treachery done to him in war--he is almost driven to suicide before trying one more time to help himself escape, along with those suffering around him. You also follow Shallan, a would-be scholar who wants to apprentice herself to a powerful woman leader, and also has the goal to steal that woman's source of power and bring it home to save her family. All of these plots seem distinct and unrelated, but as the story goes on you begin to find out the connections between all of these characters and how their goals and struggles are all interconnected in the greater fight to keep Alethkar united--and to survive before the great Desolation comes.

I can't wait to read the next book in the series--and to hopefully check out some more Brandon Sanderson books soon too!