Why Children Need to Experience Failure: A Conversation with Author Jessica Lahey on the Girls that Create Podcast

Do you catch yourself hovering over your children to ensure their success? Are you worried you’re not giving them enough room to fail and learn from their mistakes? In this episode of the Girls that Create podcast on Word of Mom Radio, host Erin Prather Stafford welcomes back author Jessica Lahey for a chat about why children need to experience failure and frustration as a part of their development, and the role parents have in these learning experiences.

Lahey is the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Gift of Failure.

Listen to the full interview with Jessica Lahey on Word of Mom Radio.

During the show, she emphasizes that children must face and manage their failures. Lahey advises parents to shift their focus from their children’s immediate success to their long-term capabilities, AKA prioritizing long-term autonomy over short-term perfection. The key to effective parenting is not to prevent kids from failing but to use their failures as learning opportunities.

You can also listen to Lahay’s first appearance on the Girls That Create podcast, where she and Erin discuss her book The Addiction Inoculation and the importance of understanding substance abuse and prevention.

About Jessica Lahey

For over 20 years, Lahey has taught every grade from sixth to twelfth in both public and private schools, spent five years teaching in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents in Vermont, and serves as a prevention and recovery coach at Sana, a medical detox and recovery center in Stowe, Vermont. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed and the co-host of the #AmWriting podcast.

Learn more about Lahey and her work at jessicalahey.com.

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