Why Letting Kids Do More Is the Ultimate Gift
Esther Wojcicki is the author of “How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results,” which has sold over a million copies and has been translated into 31 languages.
People are understandably impressed by the fact she did indeed raise three super-successful people: Susan (former CEO of YouTube, who unfortunately passed away in 2024), Janet (a Fulbright-winning anthropologist, as well as an assistant professor of pediatrics and researcher), and Anne (co-founder of 23andMe).
But Esther’s goal was not to raise superstars. It was to raise kids who were curious, confident, and kind, even as she taught journalism and oversaw the student newspaper at Palo Alto High School for about 40 years. She inspired her students to be curious, confident, and kind, too. The school’s journalism program has grown from 20 students to 600.
When asked what she thought parents – and all adults – should do to help kids succeed, Esther boiled it down to one parenting “T.R.I.C.K.,” which stands for Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness.
I absolutely loved her book – including her backstory, about growing up in dire poverty. (Her parents were immigrants – her dad was a gravestone cutter.) And I’m starting to explore her “Parenting TRICK” app, which answers parenting questions with info culled from her book.
Here, greatly condensed, is our conversation about especially, the “T” and “I” parts of her T.R.I.C.K. philosophy.
And a little bit about the family’s pet rats.
Lenore Skenazy: In the foreword your daughters wrote to your book, they mention the time you promised Susan that if she stopped biting her nails, you’d get her a bunny. (An aside here, readers: Susan was a test subject in the very first, iconic “marshmallow test” at Stanford, and the researcher told Esther she’d never met any kid with as much self-control. So you can bet Susan stopped biting her nails.) Whereupon, you went to the pet store and came home with…three rats?
Esther Wojcicki: Rats are really smart and if you train them properly, they do lots of really good things. So we trained them to come for food. They would run around the house and then I would ring the bell and they would all run back to exactly where they had to be.
LS: They had the run of the house?
EW: They’re like small dogs.
LS: What if people came over for dinner?
EW: Oh, we’d put them away.
LS: Um…good. So let’s talk about the “T” in TRICK: Trust. It’s something we think about here a lot at Let Grow. It feels as if modern culture has been training parents not to trust their kids to do anything alone.
EW: I think the number one way we can see lack of trust is the fact that people don’t let their kids walk down the street. I live about six houses from the public school and years ago you saw the kids walking to school. Today, every single kid is driven. And not only that – they are walked down the path as though they’re going to be kidnapped.
LS: We did a study with Harris Poll and they found that half of all parents think that if you let two kids, age 10, play together at the local park, they’re likely to be abducted.
EW: Social media fans the flames of fear.
LS: Tell us about the downside of that.
EW: People need to look at who is influencing their child. Especially from birth to 5, the most important influence on children is their parents. And kids pick up the fears and habits of their parents. So what’s going on with all this fear is: Parents have it, the kids pick it up, and then the whole group has it. Parents are afraid of physical injury, they’re afraid of their kids being kidnapped, and they’re also afraid of their kids making any kind of mistake, so they try to protect them. And what that does is make them fearful of life.
LS: Mistakes should not be feared?
EW: My theory is that when you make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to learn. By overprotecting kids, we’re eliminating all those learning opportunities.
LS: Your book mentions a “learning opportunity” you gave three of your grandkids – two girls and one boy — involving Target.
EW: I was supposed to take the girls shopping and the boy needed a haircut. They were like 8 years old, maybe 9, and I said to the girls, “Well, you guys know what you want to buy,” so I just dropped them off at Target and said, ”I’ll pick you up in about an hour.” And I took the boy to one of those quick haircut places and I said, “Tell them how you want your hair cut – it’s on your head.”
LS: That’s trust!
EW: And then I came back and picked up the girls. But before I did that, I got this phone call from Susan and you’d have thought I let her daughters swim across the ocean. She was beside herself! I said, “When in the last 10 years has anyone had any problems – kidnappings – at Target?” She was hyperventilating. I said, “All right, I’ll go get them.”
LS: And?
EW: They were having the time of their lives!
LS: Then what happened?
EW: It took a while for Susan to calm down. But it got to be so special in our family that all the other kids also wanted to go to Target by themselves.
LS: I have to say, that is exactly what The Let Grow Experience does. It’s a homework assignment schools give kids that says, “Go home and do something new, with your parents’ permission, but on your own.” It usually works the same as your Target run. The kids love it, the parents — even the scared ones – end up seeing how transformative and safe it really is. Then they can let go a little more the next time. So give us some more raising-independent-kids advice.
EW: I didn’t ever think it was my duty to entertain them. Starting when they were infants or small kids, I believed in the playpen: Here’s the toys, here’s the pen, you sit down, now you play.
LS: You trusted them to come up with something to do! And I guess you trusted them to not feel bored or abandoned.
EW: You can’t have independence if you don’t trust – you have to trust the child. Trust is the key to everything. And respect! The number one thing that happens to most people is that they make a mistake and beat themselves up and need therapy and pills and alcohol. So in my book, and what I did in all my classes, was to make mistakes into an opportunity for learning. Whenever you made a mistake, you learned something. Look at Anne: she just got her company (23andMe) back, and everybody told her she would never get it back!
LS: In short: Trust yourself, trust your neighbors, trust your kids, trust their innate capabilities and curiosity, stop being so afraid of mistakes and strangers.
EW: The culture today is a culture of fear. Getting rid of that fear is not going to happen in a short period of time. But maybe we can work together.
LS: We are! Starting now!
Comments are closed for this article.