How to Raise Successful People summary

In her new role as a grandparent, the author often looks after her grandchildren while her own daughter Susan is at work. One morning, the author dropped her eight-year-old granddaughters off at a Target store, allowing them to shop on their own for an hour. Watching them skip into the shop, she felt a surge of pride in their newfound independence. However, when their mother Susan found out about the trip, she saw things very differently.

Susan was not impressed. “Anything could have happened to them!” she protested. Of course, nothing did happen, and the girls were picked up safe and sound.

When the author’s daughter Anne graduated from college, she surprised everyone by announcing that she had no intention of pursuing a professional career at all; instead, she wanted to live at home and work as a babysitter.

While many parents would have panicked at this lack of ambition, the author’s attitude was much more relaxed. This was Anne’s life, she figured, and she would find her own way in her own time. Unfortunately, during her career as a teacher, the author has seen many parents take a much stronger stance against their children’s life choices, often with detrimental outcomes.

Getting what we want can take a while. The author has seen many of her students learn this the hard way. One of them, Gady, was a talented writer and extremely helpful to the other students he worked with on the high school newspaper. Unfortunately, Gady’s classmates failed to recognize his merits, and selected someone else to act as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.

But was Gady crushed by his classmates’ snub? Far from it. He picked himself up and continued writing the best articles he could for the newspaper, all the while helping others with their pieces, too. When the time came, Gady applied to Harvard University. He didn’t have the grades the prestigious college usually required, but Harvard was so impressed by his great attitude that they offered him a place anyway. These days, Gady is the Media Editor for the Economist, one of the world’s most prestigious magazines.

Modern parenting advice often tells parents they need to set boundaries for their children, such as dictating when they must go to bed, or how much they need to eat at the dinner table. A failure to be firm, it seems, will result in the little people running the show. But does more parental control really make for better parenting?

The complex truth is that some structure is good for children, but their mental health can suffer when too much is placed on them.

When the author’s terminally ill mother moved into a hospice, her family hoped the dying woman would receive the care and support she needed. But shockingly, she was ignored and neglected by hospice staff. This was where the author’s daughter Anne stepped in. Driven by love and compassion, Anne took two weeks off work to find a better facility for her grandmother, where she would be well-treated during whatever time she had left.

This family crisis demonstrates both how kind and unkind humanity can be. At our worst, we are the indifferent hospice staff; at our best, we are Anne and her heartfelt commitment to her grandmother. Worryingly, though, evidence suggests there aren’t many Annes among the younger generation.  

Helping your child develop into a kind person has obvious advantages for the people around him. After all, who wouldn’t want to live next door to someone who’s always willing to do you a favor, or who cares about your well-being?

But what about the benefits for kind people themselves? In other words, does it benefit your child to be kind?