How to Successfully Let Your Teen Fail w/ Jessica Lahey

This is a time where parents can help. Whether our team didn't get into their dream college, they got a low grade on a test, or recently were dumped for the first time. I think, particularly in a pandemic, all these things are magnified. And here to speak with me on this topic today is Jessica Lahy. She is a teacher, a writer as speaker. She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents learned to let go so their children

can't succeed. Jessica, thank you for joining me on today's ten hour episode I Have with You and Go Ask Gali. So welcome. I know it's a scary title. It is a really scary title. I mean, I like that you put a gift and failure in the same sentence, so it gives it some optimism, which which clearly caught my eye. Um, so tell me right now we are we're in a pandemic. Um, we're kind of quarantined. What is your mom's situation at home? Where? What are the kids? How old? What are they doing?

Mom's situation is such that when this all started, actually we had to rush to get everyone home. We had a kid who was across the ocean and had to somehow get back to this country and get all of his stuff out of his dorm room. So he did one of those things where a friend of his went through on FaceTime and appointed the camera at things and said should I pack that? Is that yours? And then

essentially shipped. It was a mess. But luckily now my older son is at a very small college in a very small town in rural Vermont, so they're able to really create an island, which is the only way that this really works for colleges these days. Um. And then my younger son just turned seventeen and he's in school part time. The school set it up so half the kids are in school Monday, Tuesday. The other half are in school Thursday Friday, and then everyone is on Zoom

on Wednesdays together. For him, it's working out pretty well because there aren't any cases at his school and yet he gets to be in his boy cave and it's a little of everything, and it seems to work pretty well. So I have two teenage daughters who are both remote learning. So right now they're in their rooms in case you hear a scream. One of them is with the college counselor and the other one is is in math class. But it's been an interesting journey here being with them

while they're in school. Right well, we're in Vermont, so luckily our numbers of the lowest in the country right now, so we're able to at least breathe a bit of a sigh of relief. Our kids can be in school and be fairly safe. And you know, in places where kids are all remote all the time, it's just so much more difficult. Because as a teacher, I was a teacher for twenty years. I've taught every grade from six to twelve. The secret source of teaching is not about

that face to face time as much in class. It's in all those moments when a kid is walking past you in the hallway and said, dude, that chemistry problem. I really didn't understand that. Can I swing by and ask you about that? Or you know, those moments when you just are having these casual conversations with kids while you're helping them deal with the total morass that's in

their locker. Those are the moments where the really great communication and um connection happens between teacher and student, and without that UM it's a very different picture. With Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I'm thinking about the pandemic and kids that are at home or sometimes at home, and how parents responses are right now. And I have some friends that are sort of homeschooling or sitting next

to their kid and they're becoming real helicopter parents. And then I have other friends who are like, I'm just gonna let them go lock themselves in the room and they'll do their work, and I'm just going to be very hands off. And so it's particularly interesting to me to talk to you about the subject because of the pandemic that the idea of the gift of failure in a pandemic is a little bit more charged. I think

there are huge downsides, there are also massive opportunities. And I'm you know, I'm not a Pollyanna, but I am really optimistic about education. I'm optimistic about teenagers. I love that. In earlier episodes of your podcast, your guests in particular, have made it really clear how the teenage brain works, and the opportunities that are available there and the things we need to protect about their brains. Anyone who's optimistic about teens, frankly is on team Jazz. I'm thrilled. I

love it. But there are some really important opportunities right now. And part of those have to do with the fact that um, one of your guests talked about when you're with your kids more often and maybe not making as much eye contact, conversations can happen. You also know better than anyone what your kids are interested in. So that brings me to outcome love because particularly uh in our little bubble in New York City, I see a lot of that. I see a lot of When a child

does really well on a test, they get love. They might even get a shiny star on the fridge, as you say, they might even get like a new iPhone or the shiny enticements you talk about. And then I have also seen kids doesn't do as well as their parents want. And you see them not only withdraw their love, but the look of disappointment on their face, and it makes me want to run over and hug their kid.

So talk to talk to us about upcome love. So oka love, and there's it's also love and exchange for performance. It's there's so many different ways you can talk about it, but overall it's a elite damaging thing that you can do to your kid emotionally. And not only that, it is a form of extrinsic motivator, a motivator that comes from outside of you. If you're studying chemistry because you want your parents love, you are not likely to persist

with the studying of chemistry, for example. So we know for a fact, based on forty years of really good research, that extrinsic motivators, especially with teenagers because of some of the things you guys have talked about on this podcast, like they're not fully formed frontal lobes, it's difficult for teenagers to keep those sort of long term goals of you know, I will get ext reward if I just do why and we know for a fact that with

human beings, extrinsic motivators, with very few exceptions, um, in order to get people to get motivated just don't work. So sticker charts generally speaking don't work with one exception, um, which would be potty training, because being out of diapers is actually sort of its own form of reward. Um. Being paid. We gave our kids eminem's when they were

when they did in the being paid for grades. Uh, you know, all of that sort of love and exchange for performance kind of stuff, but also the negative stuff like, um, you're under threat of being uh grounded if you don't keep a certain g p A or surveillance, surveilling your kids on their phones, surveilling your kids when they drive places, and watching where they go. Um. I've had kids tell me their parents actually critique the roots they take. Oh

my god, all of that quote unquote surveillance. And I'm not saying we can't do those things, but we have to understand what they are, which is an extrinsic motivator, and they do not work long term if we want kids to be motivated. So what we want is intrinsic motivation. Because there are long term mental health effects of the of the reward kind of right, yes, right, So let's talk about how not to do it, because it's please

really simple, so simple. First of all, let's stop putting report cards on the refrigerator, stop face timing them and put with grandma and instagramming them and more as you or as you say, the portal refresh. Yeah, exactly. So the kids come home with the report card, well I guess now, they don't even come home with it. They just open it up on the computer. Um, let's say they have an A. Let's say they have a C or a D or an F. Um. You know the joke now is that, um, you know B minus is

the NEWF. And so anyway, we get these grades home and we look at them, and we we have an emotional reaction, right, because of course we do. We want our kids to be successful, We want our kids to have opportunities. But when we talk to them about those grades, if we can keep it about the process unless about the end product, then number one, you'll be more effective in communicating with your kids about how to do better

next time. But they'll also believe us when we say what we care about is the learning because right now they don't they know that what we really care about are those precious a's and those precious gold stars and you know, all that kind of stuff. So if we can have a conversation with them about like, for example, you know, interesting grades, So what did you do to get this grade? What are you going to do next time? What are you going to leave behind and not do

next time that you did this time? What didn't work? Did you get enough sleep? Did you use flash cards? Did you highlight everything and just assume that you could memorize it all the night before the test? All of these process questions help them really buy our messaging about the fact that every step along the way as it was a process toward the next thing, and you know, making them feel bad about something that's happening right now is not going to help in a conversation about how

to do better next time. So essentially you're treating an A and A and a failing grade the same and the sense that it's all about process and less about product. They're doing that enough on their own, and talk to anyone who works with kids um and anxiety. They're circling the drain over and over. Why was it any eighty nine and not a ninety one? Why was? So the more we can pull the conversation back, it helps kids,

especially who are perfectionists. That helps kids who have really high anxiety levels, who are neuro atypical, who have learning issues. The more we can drag that conversation away from the product and back to the process, the better we're gonna do. And when does praise and and self esteem work? Okay, so two different questions. So praise the any t as any teacher can tell you, the more specific the praise,

and the more oriented towards the process, the better. So, for example, sweetie, I am so proud of you for sticking with that problem, because you know, a year ago you would have just freaked out, gone boneless, how to tantrum, given up whatever. I'm just really proud of you for

handling that. The self esteem question is really tricky because we were told during the six seventies, early you know, late sixties, early seventies, that the more we told our kids how wonderful they are, the better their self esteem

would be. But what we know from research on self esteem is that actually the opposite can be true, especially for kids who have low self esteem the more we tell them you are so great, you're so wonderful, you just fell out of the wound good at math, and it just comes so easily for you, blah blah blah.

For kids who are struggling at school, the more we tell them those sort of like intrinsic you know, uh, you're just so great, you're so perfect, the worst they're going to feel, the lower their self esteem goes, because what we're telling them is, oh, sweetie, that reality that you're conveying to me about how you feel dumb in algebra class, that's not that couldn't be true because you're so smart. And what we're telling them is your reality is not valid. Let me tell you what your reality

should be. And when those two things don't jive, it's really troubling for them. So let me let me ask you this so and tell me if I'm completely off base. What I try to do is the praise comes for from me to my children in the realm of who they are as people. So I'll say, I'm really proud of you as a person. Um. I love that you asked without me saying so, like, how can I help all that kind of stuff? And I try to keep the grade and the school stuff. Like you said, more

about the process. So I say to my kids all the time. They you know, if I sell a TV show, they go, when's it going to be on on HBO? You know? And I'll say, I don't care about that so much. I'm really enjoying writing this TV show, even though I could take my own life. But I'm trying to teach them that we sometimes overlook the process and go right to the end result. Right. Um, Now, that's

that sounds fantasy. That's perfect. And as a parent, and especially as a teacher of kids who have been made to feel stupid their whole lives, either because they've had untreated learning issues or whatever, my telling them you're so smart, you're so talented, is going to do very little for them. My showing them how far they've come in their writing over a month or six months. That is concrete evidence. And what's really interesting about this, And since you have girls,

you'll be interested in this. I was talking to Rachel Simmons has written about this beautifully in her book. One of the interesting differences between girls and boys when it comes to failure is this, boys are particularly good at it. Let's say they fail a test or a project just goes awry. They're pretty good at putting that thing over there and saying, oh, look at that thing that I failed at over there. I'm I'm cool, but that thing over there, I really failed at that. A girl is

more likely to say, oh, I am a failure. I not that thing over there, but I am a failure. And what's worse is that when presented with evidence of their success, of their of their competence, they're more likely to push that evidence off as due to luck, due to oh I had a good lab partner, good timing, that kind of stuff. That wasn't me. That was lucky. I was fortunate there. So girls internalize it. The failures tend to internalize. Boys tend to be a little bit

better at, you know. But then there's all sorts of other you know. Let me ask you a question about failure and success in athletics, because that see to be the place where they, in my humble opinion, really sort of test their success and failure. What do you say to those parents that are standing on the side of the field yelling at their kid. Because I've been in situations where it makes me so uncomfortable. But also I'm thinking, I don't think they should be allowed to like, I

don't think that's allowed, you know what I mean. Yeah, there's a whole chapter in Gift to Failure about sports that I found really interesting, mainly because I'm I wasn't a big sports parent until pretty much when Gift to Failure was happening and my son did cross country. But there is this really interesting survey. I looked at this guy who works with really high level athletes asked them

about their experiences in youth sports. He asked them about their favorite part of it and their least favorite part of it. Their least favorite part of youth sports was the ride home with their parents from the big game. I believe that. I believe their favorite part was when their grandparents came to watch them play. So my message for parents is almost always be more like a grandparent and less like a parent. Be there for the joy

of watching your kid participate in something that they love. UM. I also I have to throw back to um one of my very favorite pieces of advice ever that came from a friend of mine, UM Glenn and Doyle and wife Abby Wambach. So there was a wonderful Instagram post ages ago that um Glennan put up there where she said, you know, Abby, as a professional soccer player, has a lot to say about how everyone should play soccer. And yet when their daughter was playing soccer, Abby would ask

her two questions when she got off the field. Number one, did you have a good time? And how do you feel about how you played? And she said, if you know more about soccer than my wife, Abby, feel free to ask lots of other questions, but I highly doubt it. And those are the two most important questions you can ask a kid. And what essentially those parents screaming on the sidelines are doing is ruining their child's joy for

that sport. They are torpedoing that joy and essentially it becomes like that extrinsic motivator thing where you are going to undermine your kid's interest and joy in the sport over the long term. And and tell me about autonomy parenting, Yeah, autonomy supportive parenting. I aspire a woman named Wendy girl Nick. She has written a couple of books about the way

we parent and how that affects kids. And she did this cool experiment where she brought mother infant parents to her lab, and she gave the kids a task that would be frustrating for them. It was challenging, it was maybe even a little bit beyond their ability level. And she watched the mother and the child as they completed

this the task. And then the next time the kids came back to the lab, she separated the kids from their parents because she wanted to see how the kids would deal with a frustrating task when the parent wasn't there. And it turns out that kids who have highly directive parents and the word there's another word for highly directive parents. It's controlling, but directive tends to go down a little easier,

you know, don't get us upset. Directive is are things like no, no, no, don't do it that way, do it this way or here, step one, step two, step three, no no no, don't ask any questions, no wise here, just do it the way I said. That's directive. Someone who's always there with the next step before you even think to ask the question, and so the kids never really have a chance to get frustrated and deal with

their frustration. That's directive parenting. Autonomy supportive parenting are parents who give the kids opportunities to struggle a little bit and will help redirect, but won't give any answers, won't take over that kind of thing. The children of the directive parents were unable to complete the task on their own when their parents was not present. They just didn't have the emotional wherewithal to stick with it. When they didn't have someone right there at that second, they got

frustrated to tell them the next step. Whereas the kids of the autonomy supportive parents who let the kids do it the way they wanted, how they do it in what or do they do it in what color? Inc they want to do it um those kids almost all of them completed the same task. So there's a huge difference there. And then you think about what happens when

those kids go to school. The ability to sort of say, Okay, I'm gonna take a breath, I'm gonna walk around the room a few I'm going to get a snack, and I'll come back to this and maybe i'll see it from a different angle when I sit back down. Those kids who can do that, they're gonna learn a lot more in a classroom than a kid who gives up because they get frustrated We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Welcome back with more. Go ask Gali, because so many parents look at their

kids as an extension of them. You must see so many parents that have a really hard time not being directive parents, particularly when it's around an area that is that they are sort of geniuses or have perfected or work in. You know, I mean, I have to tell you there were times when when my kids were younger and they had art projects or they had charts, what I had to do to stop myself from getting the ruler and all my great colored pens and my glitter

because you know, I'm like, presentation is everything. So I mean, so how could a parent know if they're being too directive or not directive enough with their team? Let's see, that's a really great question. Think about take a breath when you're answering a question for a kid, and think about whether or not it would be beneficial for them to have a minute to think about it themselves. For me, as a teacher in my classroom, I tend to have

a ten seconds of silence rule. Um if I put a question out to the class, especially if it's about a complicated question. I really don't allow anyone to sort of you know, O, I know the answer, or oh, I have a question until we've had really ten seconds to sort of think about it. Um that buffer space of silence often give kids the opportunity to reflect on the question before they just assume they don't know it or assume they do without thinking through the question itself.

And maybe they're going in the wrong direction. So just let there be a little bit of quiet. And if your kid gives up really easily when they can't do something right the very first time they try, it might be an indication that there has been some directive parenting going on in the past. And then the way you fix that is to just allow for some more time.

And even if that means that your kid is in the next room and they're like yelling for your help and you say something like, you know what, I'm chopping some green peppers right now for dinner. Just give me a couple of minutes. And in the meantime, why don't you go back and reread the instructions or think about it another time, or switch to the next problem and

come back to this one. Just start creating that comfortable space to feel frustration so that your kid can become more acquainted with it, and you know at a certain point that there's a certain amount of just being there

to listen. And by the way, when kids are working independently in my classroom and they raise their hand and they start freaking out, of the successes I experience in those moments have to do with my standing there and listening while they repeat what they think the problem is before they say, oh, oh, never mind, figured I just figured it out on my own, forget it. So try to do a little bit more of that being Um, why don't you describe the problem to me? How did

your teacher talk about solving this problem? Have you read the Why don't you go back and reread the instructions and make sure you're not forgetting anything. Um, it looks like you've got numbers one through ten. Okay, what's different about number eleven that makes it so that you feel stuck?

And if worse comes to worse? Right now, we're in a period where there's a lot of communication between teacher and student because you can email, you can text, there's the zoom thing, there's all kinds of ways you can do it is incomplete homework can actually be of great benefit to a teacher and a student because it conveys information, especially when that student writes a no to explain, Look, I did number ten this way. Number eleven is just

not working this way and I don't understand it. But if you fix or do number eleven for them, the teacher has no idea that it's a problem. So when that kid goes on to the test on the material that number eleven was on, of course the kid is still not going to understand it and not be able to manipulate that information in novel ways. So your job as a parent when it comes to homework, especially for older kids, is redirecting, reiterating, listening, um, and have some

patience with the struggle. So I was just going to add one thing to this, which is doing college essays. Now. My husband and I will not help. We won't. And it's it's excruciating because it's very important that my daughter, it's her voice, it's what she has to say. But you know, it's hard when you know it's going to an Ivy League school and there's a sentence that's like, um, like the thing about me is and you go anyway, let me say, just really quickly, since it came up college,

you're gonna write, You're gonna write my daughter's essays. You are not the best person to help with the college essays. Often UM, Often English teachers will help with that. UM. You know, if there is ever a time to get a tutor just to read something, UM, this is a great opportunity. Having their friends read it. A lot of peer reading can really be helpful because, as someone who has helped kids with college essays, I can spot parents writing in a college essay from thirty paces. It is

so easy to spot. Kids who are applying to college are expected to sound like kids who are applying to college. And at a certain point, UM, the kid needs to come through. And so that's just just for background, having the kid come through in an essay like that's magic when that happens, and the minute a parental hand is

on it, it's over. You know, would you say that about UM learning in general, that this should go to their peers if they don't understand an assignment, or I mean, should they work together with other students as opposed to go right to the teacher the parent first. Does that seem to work? It depends on it depends on the age. UM. I will tell you that after I learned about the research and how the brain actually learns best, I did switch to a lot more peer to peer teaching. UM.

It changed the whole dynamic in my classroom. It will allowed kids to feel competent about their own learning when they could teach it to someone else. Any teacher will tell you you don't really know something until you teach it to someone else. Anyway, it'll it also one of which this the counselors at school loved and my school loved, which is um peer to peer teaching requires kids to really practice some perspective taking an empathy because they can't

just give the right answer. They have to be able to understand why so and so got the wrong answer, what was his thinking behind that answer that he got that wrong? So in my classroom anyway, I did a lot more sort of letting the kids um work on each other's work. And in fact, my husband teaches medical school and residents and he was working on a test

the other night while we were reading before bed. It's it's a very exciting household around him, and he said, oh my gosh, I am loving this test because Essentially, what it comes down to is a lot of peer support for the learning, as opposed to one person from up high, the so called stage on the stage saying here's how it should be done. Um. It's learning cooperatively and in small groups. We know for a fact is

more effective than lecture learning. So um. When it comes to the parents, though versus appear, there are times for both. And I say that from the perspective of someone whom my husband has spent the past two nights with our high school kid working on a subject that's particularly difficult for him right now. And sometimes it goes great, and

sometimes it's hard to hear it from a parent. Yeah, well we've been had we've had some big fights in the past, and uh we've also luckily, my husband George and I get to say to our kids all the time, we don't know how to do your math, Thank God, because we don't know how to do their math. Um. Now. There's a great book, by the way called Common Core Math for Parents for Dummies, written by a guy named Christopher Danielson, and it's essentially for parents who would like

to be able to stop saying that. Well, any any title that says Dummies as a book for me UM and getting away from the academics. How can a parent be more patient with their teens if they fail, particularly during a pandemic. So if your kid sneaks out and sort of risks the family from some kind of COVID

nineteen UM infection. I feel like I'm quote unquote more educated about the academic process, but it's more about the life stuff that I'm worried about in terms of parenting and failure and how do you how do you talk about that? I think the first place to start is with our own thinking about teenagers, and we tend to just blame everything on hormones, but it has to do with the fact that teenagers have very different brains from hours.

We used to think kids were finished developing at age ten because they're a brain reached adult size, But as we now know, thank goodness for the fm R I, we now know that they're nowhere near fully cooked, and that they actually won't be until their mid twenties at the earliest UM, mostly because the stuff that needs to come online the frontal lobe between UM, this process called myelination, just that wiring up that front part of the brain that's the part that thinks about risk, that's the part

that thinks about long term consequences, that's the part that thinks about long term goals. If we give ourselves a break by remembering that we are not dealing with fully formed adults, that will help us give our kids a slight break. Um. But one of the things we can do is help be their training wheels and help lead them through consequences. Okay, I know you want to go to this party, but let's talk about some of the things I'm worried about when it comes to this party.

And a lot of parents automatically think that kids can't weigh risks very well. Parents will say, like, you know, I don't know what it is about teenagers. They just don't get it. That's not true. Actually, teenagers are really good at weighing risks and consequences, but they tend to value the possible positive outcomes more than the possible risks.

So our job as parents is to help guide them toward thinking that is more adult, that is more in line with the real risks versus benefit equation, having more of those conversations about the why of what you're concerned about. Teenagers are really interested in the why and less so

in the because I said so and so? Those why conversations not only give them more immunition ammunition for their brains to consider, it also helps them know that we trust them with being able to handle these wise, that we're actually seeing them almost as equals, because we can have these kind of conversations with them, because we too often just dismissed teens as not able to function, and that we do that at our own peril, because they're going to have less respect for us and we're going

to underestimate their abilities. Do we let our kids quit? Should they quit music lessons? Should they quit the school play? I know they shouldn't quit school, But at what point do we let them relinquished? It definitely comes down to a couple of things. This is one of the hardest questions I ever have to answer, because it really comes down to your priorities in your home. In our home, for example, um, music is something that's lovely, but it's

not a priority in our home. In my friend Sarah's house, she told her kids, you will take lessons in an instrument until you leave this home. I don't care what instrument it is. You could change it up weekly if you want. But you were playing an instrument until so if you've been playing cello since you were six and you suddenly want to switch it up to violin, fine

with me. When the pandemic started, some local stores ran rental um specials and her kid was like, you know what, for the pandemic, I'm going to switch to mandolin, and he did. So. It really depends on your family's priorities. UM, I will tell you that this story has been it happens to be a favorite of mine. So I thought, because you know, there's research that shows that kids who are good at music tend to also have an affinity for maths. So I'm like, great, perfect, my kids are

gonna learn piano. Darnett. I'm gonna make it happen. So our friends up the street rolled there, used piano down to our house. Luckily they were uphill it moved into our house. Um. We had a honeymoon period of a couple of weeks, and then it became the thing we thought about the most in our home, and it was undermining my relationship with my kid, and I was not willing to go there. It wasn't that important to me.

I wasn't willing to sacrifice our relationship for the piano, so we found another sucker further down the hill willing to take the piano. A couple of years later, my kid, my older kid, who rejected the piano, picked up guitar on his own. Um, we found out one of the things about him is he doesn't like taking lessons face to face with someone. He likes using a service called jam play or YouTube to sort of learn things online

by himself, valuable information I hadn't had before. Once he learned guitar and became really interested in guitar, he came to me sheepishly and he said, so, UM, if you see a used keyboard like on our town list server or something, I think I might really like to teach myself piano the same way I learned guitar. And of course we made sure that we found a used keyboard, and he taught himself rather tirelessly how to play piano

and got his younger brother interested. And now my kid, who I never thought would be interested in music and certainly would never take a music lesson if it there's no possibility, he's upstairs in all of his free time producing digital music that's what he does, that's what he wants to do. That may even be what he wants to go to school for. So the very thing that I decided to keep my nose out of because I knew the minute my mom stink was all over it,

it was out. It's like my I wanted my kids to read A Wrinkle in Time more than anything in the whole entire world. And the one book neither one of my children will read is A Wrinkle in Time. My mom stink was on it. And so at a certain point comes down to our priorities, and it comes down to letting our kids have goals that are their own and not our goals. A kid said to me recently, can you please tell my mom that I don't want to learn how to play piano? She wants to learn

how to play piano, So bagush, darn't it? Why doesn't she take lessons in piano? Our kids are not our mini knees. Now. A quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go ask Gali. Let's get back to the discussion. What kind of free resources can parents give to teens, you know, recommended apps or something to help them understand that rejection happens and that they are not failures. Besides me telling my kids, are you telling your kids or

a listener telling their kids? For me? The best resources? UM. One of my kids favorite shows growing up with Miss was MythBusters. We watched every single episode and when I finally got I got to interview Adam Savage UM for the Atlantic, and my son getting to meet Adam Savage

was like it was the event of his lifetime. And MythBusters was all about the repeated iterations of trying something, figuring out what goes wrong, leaving behind the parts that go wrong, and taking forward with us the parts that go well. Resilience is not a matter of just pushing forward when you do something wrong, because that makes no sense. It's about learning what to take forward with us and what to leave behind and how to do better next time.

So I'm all about, you know, showing kids real examples of people who have tried and failed and pushed forward. And there's all kinds of iconic examples about it. But you know, things like Miss MythBusters and other adults in their lives that have had big failures and yet have managed to come back as smarter and stronger. UM. I'm I'm all for those stories and and our own stories. Oh my gosh, we don't even tell our kids when

we screw up at work. If we were to come home and say, oh my gosh, I hit reply all on this email and now everyone is pissed because I said some things I shouldn't have said, and I don't know how to fix this. What do you think I should do? Opening up that we make mistakes and that we hope to get better and learn from them. And frankly, Alie, what you're doing is going to experts and saying how do I do these things better? And if your response is to go back to your kid and say, you

know what I've been giving. I've been paying you for grades, and I found out from this person who has researched this stuff that meant that may not be the best way to keep you engaged in school. And so I have these other ideas. I'll still give you allowance, but that learning from your mistakes and doing better next time, that's modeling for them exactly what we want to see from them. So if we do that, if we model that behavior for them, that's like the best parenting we

could ever do. It's funny because you know, my husband and I sort of come from parenting from two completely different points of view. I was he was very academic. I was very creative. And what we learned and what our kids absorbed like sponges, was our failures or are things that were hard for us, you know. For me, I've always been very open with my kids about like I had a depression in my twenties, but I got

through it and I'm stronger. Or um, I failed biology and I went to summer school and I failed it again. And I'm trying to counteract the fact that my husband never got below and A. But you know, but he's had he's had failures himself, and they seemed to light up the most with that stuff, much more than our successes. Yeah.

I was asked to write about my greatest failure after Gift to Failure hit the best seller list, and um, I told my students what I was going to write about, which was getting a D on a law school exam and and and going. And I heard that story. That's not the real story. And my student has looked at me and they said, that's not your biggest failure. Why

would you tell that story? And I realized that I had told my students a story that I was unwilling to share with anyone else, which was that the first draft of the Gift of Failure was quote unquote unpublishable, as per my editor. And so they talked about getting a ghostwriter to help me, and I begged for um probationary chapters. I said, you tell me everything I did wrong, and I will take these two chapters that you've given me as a gift to try to get it right.

And if I get it right, then this is just two chapters, and blah blah, we can move forward and I can have more. And two chapters turned into four, which turned into six, which turned into no ghostwriter for me,

and a New York Times best selling book for me. Now, the thing is, if my kids just saw the success and they hadn't seen me cry about the editing I had to do, if they hadn't heard me talk about it at the dinner table, you know, oh my gosh, my structure was just all wrong and I didn't understand the organization of this book. If they hadn't heard that thing, then it's like, yeah, mom had a New York Times bestselling book. Yeah, that's that's great overnight success, blah blah blah.

But they know that's not the whole story. What they know is is that that was emotionally just devastating to me. And I had to hear all of that really difficult feedback in order to learn how to write my next book. And they were here when the edits for The Addiction Inoculation came back, and there were very few edits because what I had done with my feedback from my first book was make a giant checklist of what not to

do next time. And so my editor on this new book said, well, you learn some stuff, because we really the editing on this is going to be light. And I shared that information with my kids, and they know that this the success of this book in the process. Yes, I'll be thrilled if it does well. Yes I'll be thrilled if it hits the best sello list. But I've already succeeded with this book because I learned how to write a book out of the process of writing the

gift of failure. And I'm really proud of myself, and I know they're proud of me for the right reasons. That is such a great story and it's not only a great story for teenagers, is a great story for adults, for anybody. Once I told that story, I'm telling you the writers came out of the woodwork and they're like, oh, thank goodness you told that story because I was feeling so bad because that happened to me too, and this was my process of learning. You are such a incredibly bright, educated,

um energetic, amazing human being. The fact that the gift of failure was a failure in its first try is makes all of us feel a little bit more comfortable. Thank you so much, and thank you for being a go ask Alli. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast Go ask Alli. You can find us wherever you subscribe to podcasts and follow me on Instagram, the Real Ali Wentworth or Twitter Ali e Wentworth. Go ask Ali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I

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