All of us want the best for our children. But are we going about it the right way?
In this fascinating and eye-opening book, Jessica Lahey suggests that with all our best intentions to protect our children from tripping up - rushing to school to deliver forgotten lunches or homework, or perhaps even doing that homework in order to ensure they gain top grades - we are in danger of depriving them of the most important lessons of childhood.
As Lahey has discovered, disappointments, rejections and criticism are actually opportunities in disguise. Again and again, the students from her classes who go on to be the happiest and most successful adults are not the ones for whom everything always seemed to go right; they are the ones who were allowed to suffer the consequences of their mistakes - for failure strengthens grit like nothing else.
Drawing on the latest educational and psychological research, The Gift of Failure gently guides the modern parent towards a love of the ordinary, showing the link between self-sufficiency and self-esteem. This is a book which should transform the way we look at the world, and the children growing up in it.
