Quotes by Julie Lythcott-Haims

What is shaping the way we dream? Yes we dream of our selves, of what we will become, but its the environment that tells us what is possible. I dont think our dreams are limitless; they are bounded by the society we live in and its conception of what is respectable and good.

But we should open our eyes to the many ways in which hypervigilance keeps them penned in from the more liberated life they deserve to live and that in turn would prepare them for adulthood.

When you intervene on behalf of your child, your child becomes the victim. Youre expressing the message Youre incapable, youre not sturdy enough to resolve this yourself, you need me to come in and take care of this for you. You are, in essence, disempowering your child.

Resilience is built from real hardship and cannot be bought or manufactured.

We’re depriving our kids of the chance to do the work of life for themselves.

Young adults come to resent the people who did the thinking for them.

A sense of purpose is essential for achieving happiness and satisfaction in life.

There is something thats a great deal more important than parental approval: learning to do without it. Thats what it means to become an adult.

The best predictor of success is a sense of resiliency, grit, capacity to fail and get up. If youre prevented from feeling discomfort of failure, you have no sense of how to handle those things at all.

Sometimes you have to do things you dont want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and thats what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.

Happiness and self-confidence can be the by-products of other things, but they cannot really be goals unto themselves.

Were [as parents] striving for an unattainable, inauthentic shell, and ignoring the real nut, the gooey inside: love, laughter, and fulfillment from simple things.