Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential

Smart Parenting For Smart Kids:

Nurturing Your Child’s True Potential

San Francisco, CA— Potential is a dangerous word, say psychologists Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Mark Lowenthal, authors of Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child’s True Potential (Jossey-Bass; ISBN: 978-0-470-64005-0; March 2011). Fears about not achieving potential can create a terrible burden for children and parents who feel pressured to start early, go faster, do more…or risk falling short.

Surprisingly the greatest anxiety about achievement—in both kids and parents—often surrounds the children who have the most scholastic aptitude. Because these children are so capable, the stakes feel very high for them. The pressure to perform can eclipse and complicate their ability to figure out who they are, what matters to them, and where they fit in the world. They may even come to see their accomplishments as the measure of their worth. This leaves children terribly vulnerable: If they don’t perform perfectly, if someone else is “smarter,” or if they have to struggle to learn something, they feel inadequate or even worthless. “Even their victories can feel empty because admiration is a cold substitute for closeness,” says Kennedy-Moore.

Smart Parenting for Smart Kids is a book for parents who understand that potential is not an end-point but a capacity to grow and learn. Kennedy-Moore insists, “It makes no sense to talk about kids ‘not living up to their potential’ because the miracle of children is that we just don’t know how they will change, or who they will become. Our job as parents is to try to equip our children for their journey, rather than to dictate their path.”

A sensible and compassionate antidote to “push parenting” and the “Race to Nowhere,” Smart Parenting for Smart Kids offers parents practical strategies to help children cope with feelings, embrace learning, and build satisfying relationships. Drawing from research as well as their clinical experience, Kennedy-Moore and Lowenthal identify and address seven fundamental challenges:

• Tempering perfectionism
• Building connection
• Managing sensitivity
• Dealing with authority figures
• Handling cooperation and competition
• Developing motivation
• Finding joy

These are core issues that children struggle with and parents worry about. Each chapter features vivid anecdotes describing familiar and painful dilemmas involving children between ages 6 and 12, as well as in-depth discussion and do-able solutions. Smart Parenting for Smart Kids focuses on the essential skills children need to make the most of their abilities and become capable, confident, and caring people.