Julie Lythcott-Haims Quotes & Sayings

Young adults come to resent the people who did the thinking for them. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Do you think parents at your school would rather their kid be depressed at Yale or happy at University of Arizona?" The colleague quickly replied, "My guess is 75 percent of the parents would rather see their kids depressed at Yale. They figure that the kid can straighten the emotional stuff out in his/her 20's, but no one can go back and get the Yale undergrad degree."1 — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Wanting our kids to be successful is natural," says Palo Alto psychiatrist Stacy Budin. "But the less healthy part comes from the hyper drive in our communities for kids to set themselves apart and shine in one way or another, or in all ways. There's so much pressure for kids to achieve that it can become the focus of the mother's life to ensure that high achievement happens. Some mothers seem to have nothing but their kids' SATs and accomplishments to talk about. Then, when college admission offers come, the competitiveness, bragging, and comparisons are hard for all but the few who have the most to brag about. It's not great for kids and it's not great for mothers."32 And what's more, this great achievement race is all calibrated to a college admission system that is very, very broken. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Millennials in the workplace have been called "orchids"2 (can't survive outside the greenhouse) and "teacups"3 (chip easily and then are ruined), but to me the most prescient metaphor for young adults sent out into the world after being overparented is "veal" - a term coined by Massachusetts educator Joe Maruszczak - meaning they're raised in controlled environments and led, metaphorically, to slaughter. None of us took a course called "how to hold your kid back," but overparenting appears to be seriously poor preparation for life in the work world. In 2014, interested — Julie Lythcott-Haims

There is something that's a great deal more important than parental approval: learning to do without it. That's what it means to become an adult."15 — Julie Lythcott-Haims

A sense of purpose is essential for achieving happiness and satisfaction in life. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

What we do brag about is our kids' perfectness even as simultaneously we evince so little actual faith in their ability to do the work of living life on their own, the way every prior generation of humans somehow has. Instead of a belief in them, we have great faith that our skills, plans, and dreams are the right tools for constructing their lives. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHECKLIST If we want our kids to have a shot at making it in the world as eighteen-year-olds, without the umbilical cord of the cell phone being their go-to solution in all manner of things, they're going to need a set of basic life skills. Based upon my observations as dean, and the advice of parents and educators around the country, here are some examples of practical things they'll need to know how to do before they go to college - and here are the crutches that are currently hindering them from standing up on their own two feet: 1. An eighteen-year-old must be able to talk to strangers - faculty, deans, advisers, landlords, store clerks, human resource managers, coworkers, bank tellers, health care providers, bus drivers, mechanics - in the real world. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they're not prepared to live life on their own? — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Levine said that when we parent this way we deprive our kids of the opportunity to be creative, to problem solve, to develop coping skills, to build resilience, to figure out what makes them happy, to figure out who they are. In short, it deprives them of the chance to be, well, human. Although we overinvolve ourselves to protect our kids and it may in fact lead to short-term gains, our behavior actually delivers the rather soul-crushing news: "Kid, you can't actually do any of this without me. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

The data emerging about the mental health of our kids only confirms the harm done by asking so little of our kids when it comes to life skills, yet so much of them when it comes to adhering to the academic plans we've made for them and achieving more, ever more academically. They are stressed out of their minds and have no resilience with which to cope with that stress, and we continue along our pressurizing path, as if this trauma is not happening, or as if somehow our kids' struggles - this suffering - is, or will be, "worth it." The guidance center bulletin from any — Julie Lythcott-Haims

The cultivation of a willingness to defy, debunk, or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition, now more than ever, for intellectual and emotional freedom. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Saying you just want your kid to be happy puts enormous pressure on the child. They feel if they're not happy, they're failing. Periods of unhappiness are okay and our kids need to know that; it's the struggle that makes you who you are. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

We're depriving our kids of the chance to do the work of life for themselves. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

If you're overfocused on your kid, you're quite likely underfocusing on your own passion. Despite what you may think, your kid is not your passion. If you treat them as if they are, you're placing them in the very untenable and unhealthy role of trying to bring fulfillment to your life. Support your kid's interests, yes. Be proud - very proud - of them. But find your own passion and purpose. For your kid's sake and your own, you must. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I suspect that twenty years down the road they'll be having midlife crises, feeling they were in a straitjacket. Failure to recognize that an education has to be seized rather than delivered to you is the harm that's really done. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

like-minded college presidents and deans of admission to see if something could — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Our intentions are sound - more than sound: We love our kids fiercely and want only the very best for them. Yet, having succumbed to a combination of safety fears, a college admissions arms race, and perhaps our own needy ego, our sense of what is "best" for our kids is completely out of whack. We don't want our kids to bonk their head or have hurt feelings, but we're willing to take real chances with their mental health? — Julie Lythcott-Haims

When you intervene on behalf of your child, your child becomes the victim. You're expressing the message 'You're incapable, you're not sturdy enough to resolve this yourself, you need me to come in and take care of this for you.'" You are, in essence, disempowering your child. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Yes we dream of our selves, of what we will become," Chi Ling told me, "but it's the environment that tells us what is possible. I don't think our dreams are limitless; they are bounded by the society we live in and its conception of what is respectable and good. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Taking the long view, we need to teach our kids street smarts, like the importance of walking with a friend instead of alone, and how to discern bad strangers from the overwhelming majority of good ones. If we prevent our children from learning how to navigate the world beyond our front yard, it will only come back to haunt them later on when they feel frightened, bewildered, lost, or confused out on the streets. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Words like "perfect," "brilliant," "amazing," "wonderful," and "great" sound like compliments when they trip off our tongues, but over time they are daggers in the soul of a developing kid and end up undercutting resilience. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Resilience is built from real hardship and cannot be bought or manufactured. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

The best predictor of success is a sense of resiliency, grit, capacity to fail and get up. If you're prevented from feeling discomfort of failure, you have no sense of how to handle those things at all. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

But we should open our eyes to the many ways in which hypervigilance keeps them penned in from the more liberated life they deserve to live and that in turn would prepare them for adulthood. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Once parents started scheduling play, they then began observing play, which led to involving themselves in play. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology,3 researchers asked eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds which criteria they felt were most indicative of adulthood. Their criteria were, in order of importance: (1) accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions; (2) establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult; (3) being financially independent from parents; and (4) deciding on beliefs/values independently of parents/other influences. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Not only does overparenting hurt our children; it harms us, too. Parents today are scared, not to mention exhausted, anxious, and depressed. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

We're [as parents] striving for an unattainable, inauthentic shell, and ignoring the real nut, the gooey inside: love, laughter, and fulfillment from simple things. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

What will become of young adults who look accomplished on paper but seem to have a hard time making their way in the world without the constant involvement of their parents? How will the real world feel to a young person who has grown used to problems being solved for them and accustomed to praise at every turn? Is it too late for them to develop a hunger to be in charge of their own lives? Will they at some point stop referring to themselves as kids and dare to claim the "adult" label for themselves? If not, then what will become of a society populated by such "adults"? These were the questions that began to gnaw at — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I think I can, I think I can!" Another word for that mind-set is "self-efficacy," a central concept within the field of human psychology developed in the 1970s by eminent psychologist Albert Bandura. Self-efficacy means having the belief in your abilities to complete a task, reach goals, and manage a situation.2 It means believing in your abilities - not in your parents' abilities to help you do those things or to do them for you. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Moms seem so overinvolved in solving problems for their children instead of letting the kids learn to work it out. Whatever happens between the kids becomes a drama between the moms. — Julie Lythcott-Haims