Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Chapter 1 Notes
Book Notes Wednesday - My notes/comments on Chapter 1 of "Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential"
Hello Friend, it’s Wednesday, so we are looking at the emotional lives of Kids Who Love Math.
We started a new series last week looking at a book that’s been recommended to me by tons of parents and “gifted” teachers regarding working with kids who are advanced in one (or more) academic areas.
The book I’ll be sharing my notes on for the next couple of Wednesdays is
Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential
You can find the book to buy it or to look at the reviews here:
The Source
Kennedy-Moore, Eileen; Lowenthal, Mark S.. Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential (pp. 10-11). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
The Series so far
Notes on my notes
The notes are not a summary of the book
Notes are things that stuck out to me (in Jan/Feb 2024)
You should not skip the book because you read the notes. If you like the notes, look up the book at your favorite library or shop.
Chapter 1 Title
“Tempering Perfectionism: What Is “Good Enough”?”
My notes from Chapter 1
When children are very capable, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism. Because they can do extremely well, they come to believe that they must do everything flawlessly. Because they have done extremely well, they conclude that they must always meet or surpass the highest standards. Their self-worth depends on it.
SG: I've fallen into that trap as a child/teen/adult. It’s so much easier to see my children than myself. I now try to play the clown to temper their idea that “Dad” is always right and “Dad” never messes up. However, I also try not to give them the impression that they can’t rely on me. It’s a bit of both.
perfectionism seems like a work issue, but it’s really a relationship issue.
SG: It makes me think of the book “The Courage To Be Disliked,” which I’m not sure I fully understood. The basic premise I remember is that most of your problems are actually “relationship problems” with yourself.
Perfectionists believe that their value lies not in who they are but in what they produce. In their hearts, perfectionists believe that love has to be earned and that nothing less than 100 percent will do.
SG: This one breaks my heart. Believing that love has to be earned seems hard. I’ve spoken with licensed clinical pediatric psychologists about perfectionism, and it seemed like they found “perfectionism” a long road to getting their patients okay with themselves. Even if the patient learns to deal with it in childhood, there is no guarantee that it won’t keep flaring up in pre-teen / teen / adulthood situations.
Smart kids get a lot of praise and recognition for performing perfectly. They don’t often hear, “Wow, you did a great job of setting sensible limits and refraining from overdoing.”
SG: I rarely praise/recognize someone for setting “sensible limits.” I’ll have to add this to my pocket. I’m not sure my “sensible limits” will agree with a kid’s “sensible limits.” And is it maybe good for the kid to figure those limits out themselves?
Research consistently shows that grades and test scores are not the whole story when it comes to predicting adult accomplishment. This is probably because adult job performance has nothing to do with taking multiple-choice tests and everything to do with being able to solve problems, adjust to changing circumstances, think critically, communicate effectively, work dependably, and get along with clients, colleagues, and bosses. These are the real lessons that your child needs to learn from school and from life.
SG: Yes, but [waves hands at anything related to college/university] we do a terrible job conveying that to kids.
Resist the Temptation to Offer Pointers
It’s natural for parents to want to share their wisdom with their children. Unfortunately, children under the age of thirty usually don’t respond well to this.
SG: I’m over 30 and still have difficulty with unsolicited pointers. That said, it’s hard not to share the lesson right then and there when we’re in the moment. I find it harder to “come back to it” later when there’s less context, and the kid remembers less of it than I do. Plus I might forgot to impart my wisdom! We can’t have that, can we? ;)
What if your child specifically asks you for feedback on a performance? Resist answering. This is a no-win situation for parents.
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If you must say something, stick to encouraging comments about process
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Never offer pointers immediately after a performance or test—children are just too vulnerable at that point. Concentrate on sharing your enjoyment and interest rather than your performance standards.
SG: This reminds me of “Growth Mindset”’s rewarding process and hard work and making things not intrinsic to the person. Also, I remember hearing a few years ago that some of the research wasn’t replicating?1 This also reminds me of what I’ve heard from other parents heavily involved in sports: “Always say: ‘Ask your coach’ if your kid asks you how they did in the game.” The idea being that as a parent you want to support the love of the game and let the “hired sports professional” evaluate performance against a criteria that’s suitable for the age/development of the athlete. They have the valuable reference of having seen/coached years of all types of athletes.
Perfectionistic children tend to be black-and-white thinkers: either something is perfect or it’s worthless. Helping your child recognize partial success can ease some of the sting that comes when they fall short of perfection.
SG: This was a bit jarring as I had just finished thinking about not offering any guidance or thoughts on performance. Then I realized that it meant asking the child what they thought went well. This made me think of the book “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” (Mary Pipher, 1994) where one of the biggest keys the clinical psychologist author found was asking their client, “What’s one thing you did well today”. It’s nice when authors from different places talking about different issues rely on the same technique.
Then, if the child goes negative
Tell your child, “It’s true that recognizing and correcting mistakes are important parts of improving performance, but so is recognizing what went right. You need to acknowledge the things you did well, so that you can continue to do them.”
SG: It’s helpful to have a script to read rather than trying to recreate my own. I might not remember it at the moment it’s needed, but I am able to develop a better understanding of the author’s intent.
The authors tell a short story about a girl named Kirsten who gets a “bad” grade in school (she got a B)
In the long run, the fact that Kirsten got a B on a test when she was a kid has absolutely no significance, but her ability to cope effectively with disappointment will be relevant throughout her life.
SG: The lessons are everywhere. Though sometimes painful we’ve tried to expose our kids to activities where they will struggle and ultimately get better through hard work. As long as they don’t hate the activity too much, we try to get them to continue until they can see that they’ve gotten better at it. The ability to cope effectively with disappointment is relevant and the issues, when minor, will be forgotten.
Insist on No Excuses
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When kids are convinced that mistakes are unacceptable, they often respond defensively by blaming everyone in sight for their failings. This behavior is counterproductive, and it can also come across as obnoxious.
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“Excuses don’t help. If you’re not happy with how you did, then you need to come up with some plans about how you can do better. What could you do that might help?” If your child continues to whine, remain unimpressed. Say, “You can’t change the situation; you can only change how you respond.”
SG: This feels like it would help kids be more “solution-focused” than “problem-focused.” It also made me think of a somewhat recent article by Cate Hall “How to be More Agentic,”2 in which describes how she has become more agentic (which she thinks of as something like “manifest determination to make things happen.”).
Coach Coping Efforts
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Because they haven’t had much experience “messing up,” smart kids may not know how to cope when they do badly.
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Three general coping options that you’ll want your child to consider:
1. Clarify expectations - Sometimes children fail to do well because they don’t know what’s expected/wanted…
2. Change strategy - Sometimes children need to learn a different approach to tasks…
3. Get help - Explain to your child that in the adult world, very few people work completely on their own, so knowing when to ask for help is an important life skill…
SG: Helpful to see it numbered like this (note that there are a few more sentences for each number, I just edited them out as they go into giving small examples, rather than the considerations.
The authors then recommend two books
“How to Do Homework Without Throwing Up” by Trevor Romain and Elizabeth Verdick3
“Super Study Skills” by Laurie Rozakis4
I haven’t read either, but I’ll be looking to read them soon.
Because they are used to doing well with minimal effort, bright children are often quick to conclude, “I’m no good at this” when they aren’t instantly accomplished at some task. Their impulse is to give up rather than to try harder. These children have little tolerance for the process of developing skills. Because they’ve rarely experienced it, they don’t grasp and may even actively resist the idea of step-by-step improvement.
SG: This rings true. It’s hard to know how much to push if they aren’t liking an activity. It reminds me of the quote about not quitting when you fail, but quitting when you’ve seen some success. Because then you really know that you’re quitting because you didn’t like it not because you were bad at it. However, I couldn’t find the quote so you’ll have to trust my memory (my age-group swimming coach used to say this to kids who had a particularly bad race and were bummed out and joked about quitting swimming because of it, so maybe they’re the source?).
The authors then recommend two more books
“Famous Failures: Hundreds of Hot Shots Who Got Rejected, Flunked Out, Worked Lousy Jobs, Goofed Up, or Did Time in Jail Before Achieving Phenomenal Success” by Joey Green5
“Great Failures of the Extremely Successful: Mistakes, Adversity, Failure and Other Stepping Stones to Success”, by Steve Young6
I haven’t read either, but I’ll be looking to read them soon.
Do Something Ridiculous Together
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Perfectionistic children fear making fools of themselves. You can help your child reduce this fear by doing something ridiculous together. Try learning to juggle, especially if you think you’ll be bad at it.
SG: Like I needed more incentive to clown around! This is great. The one tricky area that I’ve experienced here, however, is that because I am an adult, some things just come easier to me because I’ve had years of living in the world. So watch out that you aren’t “too good” at your first try because that’s super demoralizing to the kid when they try and fail.
Focus on “Reasonable Effort”
Never tell a perfectionistic child, “Just do your best.” Other children hear this as sensible or even reassuring advice, but perfectionists interpret it as “Do the best job you can possibly imagine, even if it kills you.” A healthier message for perfectionists is, “Make a reasonable effort.”
SG: Back to the “sensible limits” limited from before. The authors then talk about what “reasonable effort” could mean and conclude that it’s a judgement call. My approach to this (before I read the book) had been more in line with the Anne Lamott (classic) writing book, “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, which has a whole chapter dedicated to writing your first draft “badly”. In fact, the chapter’s title is “Shitty First Drafts”. So our take on it is to start doing a bad job on it and learn so that the second time is better. We also invoke Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.’s book “The Mythical Man Month”’s Chapter 11 Essay Title: “Plan to Throw One Away”. So we remind them to do a bad one that then gets thrown away in order to get past the initial fear of getting started.
Make the Effort Fit the Task
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Decide what tasks you are willing to do in a quick-and-dirty way so that you can have more time for whatever is more important to you. Share your thoughts with your child. “I have to do this. I could spend a lot of time on it, but it’s not worth that much effort. I’m just going to do the minimum, to get it done.”
SG: Being explicit about choosing how much effort to put into a task sounds like a good idea. We run into this issue with homework all the time. The worksheet asks for three sentences and the child has written 15 sentences. Or, on the opposite side, because it’s only three sentences, they must be perfect and nothing gets written. I wonder if a time limit is easier to understand for the child? Is this a 1-minute, 5-minute, or 10-minute task and what’s the time breakdown (with some initial coaching). Seems like a valuable skill to develop.
Above all, parents need to model healthy alternatives to perfectionism through their own choices and actions.
SG: Great reminder that kids are always watching and learning. After reading more parenting books than I can remember, it always seems to come down to this: modeling matters and kids will generally model your behavior.
In the next chapter, we describe ways to help bright children make and keep friends.
SG: The book is titled “Smart Parenting for Smart Kids” so we’re going to get the label for “bright children”. For me/us on this journey together, I’ll take it as ways to help “kids who love math” make and keep friends. Math, unfortunately, isn’t going to be a very popular topic at the lunch table (as opposed to video games, movies, tv shows, etc.) so I’m interested to see what the authors recommend.
That’s all for today :) For more Kids Who Love Math treats, check out our archives.
Stay Mathy!
All the best,
Sebastian Gutierrez