Teach Your Children Well

Why Values and Coping Skills MATTER MORE Than Grades, Trophies, or "Fat Envelopes"

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.

Levine’s highly anticipated new book TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL: Parenting for Authentic Success (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers; ISBN 13: 9780061824746; $25.99/$33.99 Can.; Hardcover; on-sale: July 24, 2012)  acknowledges that 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.

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Reviews

A fantastic, on-point, desperately needed book! If you have children or care about children or care about the future of this country and the world, read this book.

Dr. Ned Hallowell, author of Delivered from Distraction

A modern guide for the perplexed! First Levine captures a culture which puts competition and social status ahead of character. Then, with a gentle, firm remarkably clear head, she tells parents precisely what to do to bring good sense and respect for children back to parenting. Teach Your Children Well is both comprehensive and wise.

Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., Author of Blessing of A Skinned Knee and Blessing of a B

This very wise book regards our debilitating identification of personal success with academic and extracurricular achievement as one of the major causes of emotional turmoil among young people today. With keen insight and telling examples, Levine offers suggestions for adopting a more balanced idea of success that requires changing deeply ingrained habits but is well worth the effort.

David Elkind, Ph.D. author of The Hurried Child and The Power of Play

Madeline Levine’s voice is a welcome antidote to the Tiger-Momming of America. But TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL is much more than a diagnosis of how we’ve gone astray. It is packed with smart and savvy advice for raising independent, productive, and well-adjusted young people. Read this book — your kids will thank you.

Daniel H. Pink, author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND

In this powerful text, psychologist Levine argues that “our version of success is a failure.” Levine reports that our nation’s ideas of success have led to children and teens who are stressed, anxious, depressed, and exhausted (as are many parents)…Though bucking the trend may be a challenge, parents who want their kids to succeed without compromising their health or losing the joy of learning will be buoyed by Levine’s support, encouragement, and guidance.

Publishers Weekly

Practical advice for raising well-rounded and successful children.

Psychologist, author and co-founder of Challenge Success, Levine (The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, 2006, etc.) draws on 30 years of counseling experience and current research to debunk contemporary thoughts on raising children. Beginning in preschool, parents and teachers push their students to obtain good grades and high SAT scores and participate in numerous extracurricular activities, with the end goal of attending a prestigious college. While these are still worthwhile endeavors, Levine offers readers hands-on solutions to “optimize conditions so that a far greater number of children can actually be successful without the accompanying high levels of distress that have become so prevalent.” Today, there is too much emphasis on driving children toward an often unrealistic and narrow definition of achievement, creating a generation of young adults at “high risk for emotional, psychological, and academic problems.” Through the use of scenarios from her own experience of raising three sons, as well as instances from her clinical practice, Levine provides examples of common situations encountered while raising children and suggests new solutions to handle these situations. The author’s approach includes unconditional love, empathy, stimulating challenges, a safe environment that encourages curiosity, and discipline when necessary. With these tools, Levine believes all children are capable of leading “satisfying, meaningful, and authentically successful lives” without the accompanying stress, panic and exhaustion commonly seen in adolescents.

A rethinking of the term “success” provides new insight on how to raise today’s youth.

Kirkus Reviews

Dr. Madeline Levine, author of the bestseller The Price of Privilege, presents her exhaustive research with clarity and passion in a compelling new book. . . .. Levine’s conclusions are wisely and boldly inconclusive. We cannot solve all our children’s problems because we have too many of our own. What we can do is show them that we’re with them all the way, holding tight, being brave together, letting go when it’s right.”

Book Page Magazine

…An excellent new book…

Forbes.com

Levine’s latest book is a cri de coeur [def.: an impassioned outcry] from a clinician on the front lines of the battle between our better natures – parents’ deep and true love and concern for their kids – and our culture’s worst competitive and materialistic influences, all of which she sees played out, day after day, in her private psychology practice in affluent Marin County, California.

New York Times Book Review

…here’s one potentially bright and shiny opportunity for optimism (at least if you take her advice) thanks to one busy and one hope’s wise clinical psychologist…her insights are fresh…look no further for your Beach Book, here it is!

PsychologyToday.com

Levine, author of ‘The Price of Privilege,’ offers practical tips for helping kids relax, cope with the very real demands of adolescence and mature into healthy adults.

San Jose Mercury

Levine’s book crosses traditional parenting book borders by assessing what parents can do to change their attitudes towards parenting, rather than what parents can make their kids do.

Beijing Kids Blog

Millennials are going to college and entering the workforce less prepared than ever. This statement is counterintuitive, given the countless number of hours America’s children are spending on homework, with tutors, preparing for and taking standardized achievement and college preparatory exams, and engaging in extracurricular activities. How is this possible?

American Psychological Association

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