You Don’t Need to Optimize Your Kid

1. Kids need: Support for when they can’t handle it

1.1. Effective support for our kids means recognizing these behaviors (cry and acting out) designed to get our attention, comforting them, and then sending them back on their way.

1.2. When we try to solve our kids’ challenges for them because they are unhappy, they learn that they are not able to solve their own problems.

1.3. Our kids are born with the drives they need to develop well, we do our best for them when we let them tell us what they need.

2. Kids need: Loving interaction

2.1. Kids love nothing more than interacting with and imitating us.

2.2. The attention from adults is a vital ingredient in their cognitive growth

2.3. When we focus too much on the “right” kind of interactions to optimize kids’ development, we become preoccupied, and it shows.

2.4. But when we focus on natural, loving interactions with the child in front of us, we give our kids what they really need.

3. Kids need: An environment to explore

3.1. When kids are left to their own devices, they tend to explore everything within reach.

3.2. The joy they find in discovering and tinkering is irrepressible.

3.3. There’s a whole industry busy trying to sell us things to help our children become smarter. But none of those apps and gadgets are a substitute for letting your kid explore and making sure they do it safely.

3.4. Kids are, similarly drawn to things that can hurt them. They’re constantly trying to run in front of cars or eat soap.