How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success

Finally, a parenting book that makes you want to do less and not more!

Backed up with impressive research, data, and personal interviews (if you are reading this on a Kindle, the book ends about 80% to leave room for the footnotes and bibliography), Lythcott-Haims claims we are doing our kids no favors by masterminding their future; in fact, we are doing just the opposite. Overparenting, or “Helicopter” parenting, was something many parents could wear as a badge of honor – proving to themselves and their community that they were great parents by getting their kids into the best grammar and high schools, shuttling the kids to various activities (ones that will look good on college transcripts) and telling them from a young age what they will be when they grow up and where they will go to school (a doctor, at Yale of course). The book is compelling and impressive, as the author takes you through her own realization that she was overparenting her own kids. Most parenting books have left me feeling like I have to do more, while this book not only gave me the license to want to do less, I felt good about it. The book centers on what we already know deep down about parenting, but we allow the “arms race”, as the author puts it, to make us feel we have to do more for our kids or else they won’t be able to compete with their peers. Lythcott-Haims gives valuable advice on how to deal with the community and your own family while adopting this approach to parenting, because in some communities you will certainly be faced with judgment. One of the best compliments I can give is that I have actually already changed since reading this book. Since I’m the first one in my extended family to graduate from college, I really wanted to provide my son with more opportunities. I had to work so hard, do so much for myself, and live on very little money and work hard while going to college. I thought this was awful and wanted my own son to just be able to focus on school. I never fully realized that these struggles have made me into the person I am today –...