This spring Fay School is bringing back its Ideas&Insights series for parents. This session will focus on redefining how we measure success for our kids.
Dr. Madeline Levine will provide insights. Levine authored the book “Teach Your Children Well”. The cover highlights the theme:
Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or “Fat Envelopes”
The presentation will take place on Monday, March 25 at 7:00 pm. The school promotes:
Fay School is delighted to welcome New York Times bestselling author Madeline Levine on Monday, March 25. Based on her New York Times bestselling book by the same name, in this talk Dr. Levine tackles our current narrow definition of success—how it unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21st century—creativity, collaboration, innovation—are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Dr. Levine gives practical, research-based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves by remembering that successful parenting is measured 20 or 30 years down the road, not at the end of any particular grading period.
Madeline Levine, Ph.D. is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant, educator, and author. She is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education that provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues and is a sought-after consultant and lecturer at schools and businesses across the country. She has been featured on The Today Show, The Lehrer Report, and NPR. Emailed over a million times, her August 2012 New York Times op-ed piece, “Raising Successful Children,” is one of the most emailed op-ed pieces in the history of The New York Times.
Questions? Please contact Erin Sullivan at 508-490-8219 or esullivan@fayschool.org.
The talk is free, but Fay asks for attendees to register. You can click here to do that.
The presentation will be held in the Harris Theater, inside the Harris Events Center (#9 on this campus map). Parking will be available in Harlow Circle (23 Middle Road) and behind Brackett House (31 Main Street). Signs will be on campus to direct visitors.
Levine’s website describes her most recent book’s thesis as follows:
every parent wants successful children, but until we are clearer about our core values and the parenting choices that are most likely to lead to authentic success, we will continue to raise exhausted, externally driven, impaired children who believe that they are “only as good as their last performance.” Real success is always an “inside job,” argues Levine, and is measured not by today’s report card but by the people our children become ten or fifteen years down the line.
Refusing to be diverted by manufactured issues such as “tiger moms versus coddling moms,” Levine confronts the real issues behind the way we push some of our kids to the breaking point while dismissing the talents and interests of many others. She shows us how to shift our focus from the excesses of hyper-parenting and our unhealthy reliance on our children for status and meaning to a parenting style that focuses on protective factors known to contribute to both academic success as well as a sense of purpose, well-being, connection, and meaning in life.
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL focuses on choice—how we view success, raise our children, and expend our energies and resources. It is also about the courage to make the changes we believe in. The time has come, says Levine, to return our overwrought families to a healthier and saner version of themselves.
