Last week, I attended the standing-room-only Safe Community Coalition event featuring author Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford and the author of How to Raise an Adult. Like many of us, Ms. Lythcott-Haims bought her home in a prestigious school district and did all the "right" things as a parent to prepare her children for the "right" college.

	Julie Lythcott-Haims

A few years into her tenure at Stanford, she began to notice continually increasing parent involvement in college students' everyday lives. She was sharing this with her family at dinner and, horrified, realized she was still cutting up her 10-year-old's meat.

Are we so afraid of parenting wrong that we overdo it to try to get it right? Ms. Lythcott-Haims evoked the visual of a perfectly manicured bonsai tree versus wildflowers, saying that children cannot and should not be shaped and pruned into what we want. They should bloom and flourish like wildflowers.

She suggests we ask ourselves, "Am I living what I believe is most important in parenting? Do I live it every day?" When we hear another parent has signed up their kid for a prep course, an activity, an AP class, it's very hard not to rush in and do the same. We want to create options for our children! But if we do it for them, they have no ownership in the process.

Recently, Ms. Lythcott-Haims's son was struggling with a heavy junior year course load, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted. After much discussion with her husband, they decided they had to get their son to a healthier place. She asked the son if he wanted to drop a class, and with a look of relief, he asked, "Can I?" Regardless of "what colleges want," she knew it would be best for her son to manage his work without being completely overwhelmed. Isn't that what parenting is all about?

She encourages parents to recognize character as much as we recognize grades or athletics, and she stressed the importance of chores and contributing to the home. Click here to see Ms. Lythcott-Haims's "A Different Kind of Checklist," a few examples of practical life skills kids need before they go to college and how parents unintentionally hinder them.

Susan Huebsch is a ninth grade math teacher here at Langley. She grew up in Pennsylvania, very close to Wilmington, DE. Her mother was a math teacher and her father was a middle school principal. She  has one sister, a writer for NPR's website.

 

After she completed high school, Ms. Huebsch attended Duke University, where she double-majored in computer science and mathematics. She then received her master's degree in computer science. She enjoyed geometry so much that after she had her two children she decided to go back to school to get her teaching license.

 

Ms. Huebsch is married and has two boys, a freshman and junior in high school. One of her favorite things to do is talk with family and friends, learning about them. "No matter how long you have known someone, there is always something else that will surprise you," says Ms. Huebsch. She also enjoys yoga, scrapbooking, playing word games and watching her sons play baseball.

 

She says, "I feel that my biggest accomplishment in life at this point is being part of a happy family and home and making a life for us while remembering to help others as well." Her best advice to students is "Pursue the opportunities you have in high school with as much energy as you can . . . and learn from the negative things that are bound to happen to you from time to time."

 

~ Jennifer Detwiler, Saxon Scope reporter