Something is going badly wrong for American teenagers, as we can see in the statistics on depression, anxiety, and suicide. Something is going very wrong on many college campuses, as we can see in the growth of call-out culture, in the rise in efforts to disinvite or shout down visiting speakers, and in changing norms about speech,1 including a recent tendency to evaluate speech in terms of safety and danger. This new culture of safetyism and vindictive protectiveness is bad for students and bad for universities. What can we do to change course?
In the next chapter, we’ll offer suggestions for improving universities, but first we must look at childhood. In chapters 8 and 9, we showed that there has been a shift, particularly in middle-class and wealthier families, to more intensive and overprotective parenting, and that this is, in part, a response to unrealistic fears of abduction, and to somewhat more realistic fears about admission to prestigious universities. We showed that the decline of free play may be part of the reason for children’s increased fragility. In this chapter, we draw on earlier chapters to offer advice for raising children who are wiser, stronger, and antifragile; children who will thrive as they become more independent in college and beyond.
We are mindful that pathways through childhood vary by nation, decade, social class, and other factors. The suggestions we make here are tailored for American parents who use the “concerted cultivation” style of parenting that we described in chapter 8. That’s the style that sociologist Annette Lareau found being used by middle-class parents of all races, and that political scientist Robert Putnam said had become the norm by the 1990s for families in the middle class and above. This time-intensive, labor-intensive strategy involves overprotecting, overscheduling, and overparenting children in hopes of giving them an edge in a competitive society that has forgotten the importance of play and the value of unsupervised experience.
But even though our advice grows out of our analysis of current trends in the United States, we expect that much of it will be relevant to parents and educators in other countries. South Korean parents, for example, are second to none in their fears about college admissions and their willingness to replace nearly all of their children’s free play time with expensive and exhausting test preparation classes.2 To take another example, British schools can hold their own in any competition with Americans to put safety ahead of common sense. Just as we were finishing this book, the head teacher of an elementary school in East London issued a rule that children must not even touch recently fallen snow, because touching could lead to snowballs. “The problem is it only takes one student, one piece of grit, one stone in a snowball in an eye with an injury and we change our view,” he explained.3 That is the epitome of safetyism: If we can prevent one child from getting hurt, we should deprive all children of slightly risky play.
We are also mindful that children are “complex adaptive systems,” as we described in chapter 1. They are not simple machines. We have shown many examples in this book of well-intended reforms that backfired, beginning with our example of banning peanuts to protect kids from peanut allergies. We therefore offer these suggestions with the caveat that any effort to change one part of children’s lives can produce unexpected effects in some other part. More research is needed, but we think these suggestions are likely to be helpful. We hope to start a conversation among parents, educators, and researchers, and we’ll track that conversation on our website, TheCoddling.com.
We organize our advice under six general principles. The first three are the opposites of the Great Untruths.
The first of the three epigraphs that we used at the beginning of this book summarizes the book’s most important single piece of advice: Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. That is eternally good advice, but it became even better once the internet came along and part of the road became virtual. It was foolish to think one could clear the road for one’s child before the internet. Now it is delusional. To return to the example of peanut allergies: kids need to develop a normal immune response, rather than an allergic response, to the everyday irritations and provocations of life, including life on the internet.
You cannot teach antifragility directly, but you can give your children the gift of experience—the thousands of experiences they need to become resilient, autonomous adults. The gift begins with the recognition that kids need some unstructured, unsupervised time in order to learn how to judge risks for themselves and practice dealing with things like frustration, boredom, and interpersonal conflict. The most important thing they can do with that time is to play, especially in free play, outdoors, with other kids. In some situations, there may need to be an adult nearby for children’s physical safety, but that adult should not intervene in general disputes and arguments.4
In that spirit, here are some specific suggestions for parents, teachers, and all who care for children:
Assume that your kids are more capable this month than they were last month. Each month, ask them what tasks or challenges they think they can do on their own—such as walking to a store a few blocks away, making their own breakfast, or starting a dog-walking business. Resist the urge to jump in and help them when they’re struggling to do things and seem to be doing them the wrong way. Trial and error is a slower but usually better teacher than direct instruction.
Let your kids take more small risks, and let them learn from getting some bumps and bruises. Children need opportunities to “dose themselves” with risk, as Peter Gray noted. Jon’s kids love the “junkyard playground”5 on Governor’s Island, in New York City. It lets children play with construction materials, including scrap lumber, hammers, and nails (after the parents sign a long liability waiver). On their first visit, Jon watched from outside the fence as two ten-year-old boys pounded nails into lumber. One of the boys accidentally hit his thumb with the hammer. The boy winced, shook his hand out, and went right back to pounding nails. This happened twice and did not deter the boy. He learned how to hammer nails.
Learn about Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids movement, and incorporate her lessons into your family’s life. Remember the first-grade readiness checklist from 1979 that asked whether your six-year-old can “travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home?” Start letting your kids walk places and play outside as soon as you think they are able. Send them out with siblings or friends. Tell them it’s OK to talk to strangers and ask for help or directions, just never go off with a stranger. Remember that the crime rate is back down to where it was in the early 1960s.
Visit LetGrow.org, the website for an organization that Skenazy cofounded with Jon, Peter Gray, and investor/philanthropist Daniel Shuchman.6 The site will keep you up to date on research, news, and ideas for giving your kids a childhood that will lead to resilience. One of our simplest ideas: Print out a “Let Grow License” like the one below,7 then send your kids out into your neighborhood with less fear that they will be detained by busybodies who might call 911.8 Learn what the laws in your state require by typing “state laws” into the site’s search box.
Hi! My name is _______________
I am not lost or neglected. I have been taught how to cross the street. I know never to go off with strangers . . . but I can talk to them. (Including you!) The state allows parents to decide at what age their child can do some things independently. Mine believe it is safe, healthy and fun for me to explore my neighborhood. If you do not believe me, please call or text them at the numbers below. If you still think it is inappropriate or illegal for me to be on my own, please:
Read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Remember your own childhood! Were you under adult supervision at every moment? Today’s crime rate is back to what it was in 1963, so it’s safer to play outside NOW than when you were my age.
Visit the website LetGrow.org.
Parent’s Name _______________
Parent’s Signature _______________
Parent’s Phone _______________
Alternate Phone _______________
Encourage your children to walk or ride bicycles to and from school at the earliest ages possible, consistent with local circumstances of distance, traffic, and crime. Ask your school to provide a way for kids to check in and check out, so parents can keep track of children who travel to school independently without having to give them a smartphone to track them directly.
Help your kids find a community of kids in the neighborhood who come from families that share your commitment to avoid overprotection. Find ways for kids to get together in nearby parks or in specific backyards. You’ll need to work out boundaries and guidelines with other parents to be sure that the kids are safe from major physical risks, that they know to stick together and help one another, and that they know what to do when someone gets hurt. Kids are likely to develop more maturity and resilience in such groups than in supervised playdates or adult-organized activities.
Send your children to an overnight summer camp in the woods for a few weeks—without devices. “The old-fashioned generalist camps are where we see the most impact in terms of letting children develop their own interests,” Erika Christakis says, “where kids can make choices about what they do and don’t do.”9 YMCA overnight summer camps often fit this description, but even some narrower, interest-driven summer camps do, too—and many offer scholarships. The key, according to Christakis, is for children to be free of adult “guidance” or concerns about skill-building. Let them play and do things because they are interested, while practicing the “art of association” that de Tocqueville remarked on in 1835.
Encourage your children to engage in a lot of “productive disagreement.” As psychologist Adam Grant notes, the most creative people grew up in homes full of arguments, yet few parents today teach their children how to argue productively; instead, “we stop siblings from quarreling and we have our own arguments behind closed doors.” But learning how to give and take criticism without being hurt is an essential life skill. When serious thinkers respect someone, they are willing to engage them in a thoughtful argument. Grant offers the following four rules for productive disagreement:10
Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict.
Argue as if you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong (and be willing to change your mind).
Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective.
Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.
Children (like adults) are prone to emotional reasoning. They need to learn cognitive and social skills that will temper emotional reasoning and guide them to respond more productively to life’s provocations. Especially now that the internet guarantees that they will have to deal with trash all along the road of life, it is vital that they learn to notice and manage their emotional reactions and choose how to respond.
The second epigraph at the start of this book came from Buddha: “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.” Our advice is based on this insight.
Teach children the basics of CBT. CBT stands for “cognitive behavioral therapy,” but in many ways it’s really just “cognitive behavioral techniques,” because the intellectual habits it teaches are good for everyone. Parents can teach children the basics of CBT at any age, starting with something as simple as getting in the habit of letting children watch parents talk back to their own exaggerated thoughts. A technique Greg learned involves practicing hearing his anxious and doomsaying automatic thoughts as if they are being said in funny voices, like Elmer Fudd’s or Daffy Duck’s. It may sound silly, but it can quickly turn an anxious or upsetting moment into a humorous one. Greg and his wife, Michelle, practice this with their two-year-old, as a way of calming everyone down during moments of stress.
Dr. Robert Leahy, the director of The American Institute for Cognitive Therapy,11 suggests that when children are upset and may be subject to cognitive distortions, parents can walk their children through the following exercise:
Let’s take this thought that you have and ask some questions about it. Sometimes we have a thought about someone and we think we are absolutely right. But then this way of thinking makes us upset and makes us angry or sad. Thoughts are not always true. I might be thinking it’s raining outside, but then I go outside and it’s not raining. We have to find out what the facts are, don’t we? Sometimes we look at things like we are looking through a dark lens and everything seems dark. Let’s try putting on different glasses.12
Parents can get an accessible overview of CBT from reading Dr. Leahy’s book The Worry Cure. Also, Freeing Your Child From Anxiety, by Tamar Chansky,13 is recommended by the Beck Institute,14 which is another great resource for cognitive behavioral therapy. There are many books, blogs,15 curricula, and even cell phone apps for practicing CBT. Two apps that are rated highly by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America are CPT Coach (for those who are in active treatment with a therapist)16 and AnxietyCoach.17
Teach children mindfulness. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, “mindfulness” means “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”18 Research indicates that establishing a mindfulness practice reduces anxiety, diminishes stress reactivity, enhances coping, benefits attention, increases compassion (and self-compassion), and strengthens emotion regulation. Researchers see improvements in children’s in-school behavior, test anxiety, perspective-taking, social skills, empathy, and even grades.19 Children and teens who engage in mindfulness practices are better able to calm themselves and be more “present.”20 For more information and some easy mindfulness exercises for parents and children, see The New York Times “Mindfulness for Children” guide, by David Gelles,21 and Cognitively-Based Compassion Training from the Emory-Tibet Partnership.22
The third epigraph at the start of this book came from The Gulag Archipelago, the memoir of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian dissident of the Soviet era. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn criticized Joseph Stalin in private letters sent to a friend. He was arrested and sentenced to hard labor in the network of gulags (prison camps) spread out across Siberia, in which many inmates froze, starved, or were beaten to death. Solzhenitsyn was eventually released and exiled. In one moving passage, describing a time soon after his arrest, he is being marched for days with a few other men. He reflects upon his own virtue, his “unselfish dedication” to the motherland, when it occurs to him that he himself had nearly joined the security service (the NKVD, which evolved into the KGB). He realizes that he could just as easily have become the executioner, rather than the condemned man marching off to his possible execution. He then warns his readers to beware of the Untruth of Us Versus Them:
If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.23
How can we raise wiser children who will not fall prey to the Untruth of Us Versus Them and the self-righteous call-out culture it breeds? And how can teenagers and college students themselves create and foster a common-humanity way of thinking?
Give people the benefit of the doubt. Use the “principle of charity.” This is the principle in philosophy and rhetoric of making an effort to interpret other people’s statements in their best or most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible. Parents can model the principle of charity by using it in family discussions and arguments.
Practice the virtue of “intellectual humility.” Intellectual humility is the recognition that our reasoning is so flawed, so prone to bias, that we can rarely be certain that we are right. For kids in middle or high school, find the TED Talk titled “On Being Wrong.”24 The speaker, Kathryn Schulz, begins with the question “What does it feel like to be wrong?” She collects answers from the audience: “dreadful,” “thumbs down,” “embarrassing.” Then she notes that her audience has actually described what it feels like the moment they realize they are wrong. Until that moment, the feeling of being wrong is indistinguishable from the feeling of being right. We are all wrong about many things at every moment, but until we know it, we are often quite certain that we are right. Having people around us who are willing to disagree with us is a gift. So when you realize you are wrong, admit that you are wrong, and thank your critics for helping you see it.25
Look very carefully at how your school handles identity politics. Does it look and sound like the common-humanity identity politics we described in chapter 3? Or is it more like common-enemy identity politics, which encourages kids to see one another not as individuals but as exemplars of groups, some of which are good, some bad? If the school is using a curriculum developed by an outside organization, find out which one, and look closely at the website of that organization to see whether they embrace a common-humanity or a common-enemy approach. If you are concerned that the school is leading students to embrace the Untruth of Us Versus Them, and you are a parent, express your concerns to the principal. If you are a high school student, see whether any of your peers have concerns about this, too. Brainstorm ways to bring a common-humanity perspective to your school.
Efforts made by parents have a greater chance of success if schools share parents’ concerns about defeating the Great Untruths, and these efforts will be undercut if schools adhere to the Great Untruths. If you are in a position to influence policy at a school—as a teacher, as an administrator, or as a parent—you can have an enormous impact. Here are a few suggestions for educational changes related to the problems we covered in this book. We begin with ideas for elementary schools:
Homework in the early grades should be minimal. In the early grades, it’s always good to encourage kids to read with their parents and on their own, but homework beyond that should not intrude on playtime or family time. Other than encouraging reading, minimize or eliminate all homework in kindergarten and first grade. In later elementary grades, homework should be simple and brief. As Duke University psychologist and homework expert Harris Cooper puts it:
In elementary school, short and simple homework can help reinforce simple skills. Further, short and simple homework can help younger students begin to learn time management, organizational skills, and a sense of responsibility, and can help keep parents informed of their child’s progress. But for elementary school children, the expectation of big improvements in achievement from long assignments is likely to be unmet.26
Give more recess with less supervision. Recess on school property generally provides an ideal and physically safe setting for free play. However, as we’ve noted, when adults are standing by to resolve disputes or stop children from taking small risks, this may breed moral dependency. To see an example of the positive effects that can come about when kids are entrusted with much greater autonomy at recess, search the internet for a video titled “No Rules School,”27 about a New Zealand elementary school principal who gradually removed adult supervision from recess so kids could have “risky, unmanaged play.” Kids there climb trees, make up their own games, and play with boards, scraps of wood, and junk. Kids get to calculate risks, take chances, and experience real-world consequences. Of course, there are (by intention) risks here. To implement this policy, much needs to be worked out regarding physical safety and preventing bullying. But if discussions about recess policies began with a screening of that video, the conclusions reached would likely be more aligned with the concept of antifragility. (In fact, the principal of the New Zealand school reports that bullying has gone down since instituting no-rules recess.) A simple way to give kids more unsupervised play time in a physically safe setting is to create an after-school play club by keeping the playground (or a gymnasium) open for a few hours after school each day.28 Such free play, in a mixed-age setting, may be better for kids than many structured after-school activities. (It is surely better than sitting at home after school interacting with a screen.)
Discourage the use of the word “safe” or “safety” for anything other than physical safety. One of Jon’s friends recently forwarded to him an email that a third-grade teacher sent to parents about recess and about children forming “clubs.” (Kids who played together at recess were not allowing “nonmembers” to join in.) Reasonable minds can disagree about the wisdom of compelling kids to be inclusive at recess, but the last line of the email alarmed Jon: “We are thinking about how everyone at recess can feel safe and included.” This is the seed of safetyism. It is painful to feel excluded, and it is good for the teacher to use kids’ exclusion as a basis for discussion to help kids reflect on why inclusion is good. But the pain of occasional exclusion doesn’t make kids unsafe. If we mandate inclusion in everything and teach kids that exclusion puts them in danger—that being excluded should make them feel unsafe—then we are making future experiences of exclusion more painful and giving kids the expectation that an act of exclusion warrants calling in an authority figure to make the exclusion stop.
Have a “no devices” policy. Some parents will want to give their kids smartphones to track them when they begin traveling to school with no adult, or to help with the complex logistics of pickup or after-school activities. The school policy should be that smartphones must be left in a locker or in some other way kept out of easy reach during the school day.29
Here are some ideas for middle schools and high schools:
Protect or expand middle school recess. In middle school the focus becomes more academic, so some middle schools have done away with recess. But the American Academy of Pediatrics notes in a 2013 statement that “cognitive processing and academic performance depend on regular breaks from concentrated classroom work. This applies equally to adolescents and to younger children.”30
Cultivate the intellectual virtues. The intellectual virtues are the qualities necessary to be a critical thinker and an effective learner. They include curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility. The process of developing intellectual virtues must begin long before arriving on a university campus. The Intellectual Virtues Academy, a charter middle school in Long Beach, California, was created in 2013 to do just that.31 The school operates on a foundation of three core values that are antithetical to the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: a culture of thinking (ask questions, seek understanding, and practice the habits of good thinking), self-knowledge (practice ongoing self-reflection and self-awareness), and openness and respect (strive for a strong sense of community marked by collaboration, empowerment, and intentional openness and respect for the thinking of others; this is also an antidote to the Untruth of Us Versus Them). You can learn more about cultivating the intellectual virtues and about how to incorporate them in schools at intellectualvirtues.org and in the writings of Jason Baehr, a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and one of the founders of the Intellectual Virtues Academy.32
Teach debate and offer debate club. A great way for students to learn the skills of civil disagreement is by participating in structured, formal debates. It is especially important that students practice arguing for positions that oppose their own views. All students would benefit from learning debating techniques and participating in formal debates. In addition to the obvious benefits of learning how to make a well-supported case, debate helps students distinguish between a critique of ideas and a personal attack. The International Debate Education Association has suggestions for how to create a debate club.33 Students (and their parents and teachers) can also watch Intelligence Squared debates to see skilled debaters in action.34
Assign readings and coursework that promote reasoned discussion. A schoolwide commitment to debate can be supplemented by readings and coursework that teach the habits of good thinking. We suggest that schools offer media literacy classes that teach students the difference between evidence and opinion, and how to evaluate the legitimacy of sources. In addition, Heterodox Academy (an association of professors that Jon co-founded to promote viewpoint diversity) has produced a free, illustrated PDF edition of chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s classic work On Liberty.35 Mill’s book is perhaps the most compelling argument ever made for why we need to interact with people who see things differently from ourselves in order to find the truth. Heterodox Academy has also created OpenMind, a free interactive program that rapidly teaches basic social and moral psychology as a prelude to learning conversational skills for bridging divides.36 Another suggestion is Annie Duke’s 2018 book, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. Duke draws from her experience as a successful professional poker player and decision-strategy consultant. She delineates practices that can help students see why the habits of good thinking require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning. By examining “tilt” (the term poker players use to describe when someone is too emotional to make good decisions), Duke makes it plain that we can’t always trust our feelings. (Find more suggested resources at TheCoddling.com.)
Left to their own devices, as it were, many children would spend most of their free time staring into a screen. According to the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media, teens spend on average about nine hours per day on screens, and eight- to twelve-year-olds spend about six hours; that is in addition to whatever they are doing on screens for school.37 A growing body of research indicates that such heavy use is associated with bad social and mental health outcomes. Because this topic is so complicated and the research base for making recommendations is still small, we offer just three general suggestions that we think will strike most parents and many teens as reasonable. (We’ll say more on our website as more research comes in.)
Place clear limits on device time. Two hours a day seems to be a reasonable maximum, as there does not appear to be evidence of negative mental health effects at this level. For younger children, consider banning the use of devices during the school week entirely, in order to delay for as long as possible the incorporation of device-time into daily routines.
Pay as much attention to what children are doing as you do to how much time they spend doing it. In chapter 7, we presented the principle that social network sites and apps should be judged by whether they help or hinder adolescents in their efforts to build and maintain close relationships.38 Talk with your children about the apps that they and their friends use and how they use them. Which ones are essential for their direct communication? Which ones do they experience as triggering FOMO (“fear of missing out”), social comparison, and unrealistically positive presentations of the lives of other kids? Read Twenge’s book iGen (as a family, if you can) and then bring your teenager into the discussion of how to minimize the potential hazards of heavy device use. These devices and apps are extremely appealing and addictive, so it may be difficult for children to self-regulate. You may need to use a parental-restrictions app39 or the parental-restrictions setting on your child’s devices to manage and monitor usage.40 And pay attention to what you are doing, too. Is your device use reducing the quality of your time with your child?41
Protect your child’s sleep. Getting enough sleep will help your child succeed in school, avoid accidents, and stave off depression, among its many other benefits.42 Yet most teens in America aren’t getting enough sleep, and one reason is that so many are staying up late peering at their screens, experiencing painful social comparisons, and disrupting their sleep-wake cycles with light.43 Electronic device use should be discontinued thirty to sixty minutes before bedtime, at which point all devices should be placed in a box or drawer in the kitchen (or somewhere away from the child’s bedroom).
As we reported in chapter 7, kids grow up more slowly these days.44 That trend—taking longer to reach adult milestones—has been going on for decades,45 but it has been especially visible with iGen. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with delaying adulthood, but if that’s happening, then shouldn’t we consider delaying the start of college, too? Today’s college students are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety and depression than did the Millennials or any other generation. They are cutting and killing themselves in higher numbers. Many are embracing safetyism and are objecting to books and ideas that gave Millennials little trouble. Whatever we are doing, it is not working.
We propose that Americans consider adopting a new national norm: taking a year off after high school—a “gap year”—as Malia Obama did in 2016. It’s an idea that has been gaining support among high school counselors, experts in adolescent development, and college admissions officers.46 High school graduates can spend a year working and learning away from their parents, exploring their interests, developing interpersonal skills, and generally maturing before arriving on campus. The year after high school is also an ideal time for teens to perform national service as a civic rite of passage.47 Retired General Stanley McChrystal is the chair of Service Year Alliance, an organization that supports recent high school or college graduates in finding full-time, paid opportunities to spend a year working on projects to benefit American communities.48 General McChrystal is at the forefront of an effort to create a national expectation that all Americans spend one year in some kind of service between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. “Through such service,” he says, “young Americans from different income levels, races, ethnicities, political affiliations and religious beliefs could learn to work together to get things done.”49 We agree, and we believe that whether that year involves service or work, it would be good for America’s polarized democracy if that year were spent in a part of the country very different from the one in which the young adult grew up.50
Robert Zimmer, the president of the University of Chicago, was interviewed in 2018 about the school’s reputation for intellectual excellence and open inquiry. He noted that many students arrive on college campuses unprepared for a culture of free speech:
High schools prepare students to take more advanced mathematics, and they prepare them to write history papers, and so on . . . [but] how are high schools doing in preparing students to be students in a college of open discourse and free argumentation?51
If parents and teachers can raise children who are antifragile; if middle schools and high schools can cultivate the intellectual virtues; if all high school graduates spend a year doing service or paid work away from home, before beginning college at age nineteen or later, we think most students will be ready for anything.