25 Quotes by 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.

Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and that's what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.

Happiness and self-confidence can be the by-products of other things, but they cannot really be goals unto themselves.

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.

Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and that’s what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.

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?

When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem solve very well. They don’t learn to be confident in their own abilities, and it can affect their self-esteem. The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure and can develop an overwhelming fear of failure and of disappointing others. Both the low self-confidence and the fear of failure can lead to depression or anxiety,” Able said.

There’s a popular, potent story right now that says success is a straight line from the right school to the right college to the right internship to the right grad school to your chosen profession.” “Raise your hand if this is the path that you took.” About 5 percent of the hands went up. “That’s right,” she said. “In any group of people only 1–10 percent have taken a straight trajectory. The much more common route is circuitous.

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