Nonfiction4Life

SUMMARY

Blogger and author KJ Dell’Antonia knows “How to Be a Happier Parent.” With four children under her own roof, she was compelled to discover keys to “Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute.” By surveying 1000 parents, Dell'Antonia tracked down common behaviors and attitudes among happier parents. She also found common pain points parents face. So, her self-help book contains her own story "of finding a place of joy and satisfaction with [her] life and [her] family life." For the rest of parents, it serves as a guide for becoming happier parents while striking out on their own journey. 

KEY POINTS

• Happiness is not a goal of achievement but a goal of motion.
• Our goal should be “efficacy” = when we feel satisfied we’re doing something right but not necessarily perfectly
• Parents can be happier by changing the stories they tell.
• Notice the things we wanted and planned for.
• KJ’s “Ten Mantras for Happier Parents” include:
  • You can be happy when your children aren’t (vs. You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child).
  • You don’t have to get it right every time.
  • What you want now isn’t always what you want later.
  • Soak up the good.
• You as a parent need to be OK with disappointment so your kid sees you model control and tap into long-view perspective.
• To instill grit, kids have to experience some unhappiness while they’re young.
• Happier parents
  • keep an adult perspective
  • take time to notice the things going right
  • keep their own interests alive
  • take into account all the family (including themselves) when making decisions
• Some pain points for parents include mornings, siblings, homework, chores, and discipline.
• Be glad you have time to help/coach your kids while they’re still living with you.
• In times of crisis (if you have time): laugh, cry, breathe, think, plan, or talk to your partner before talking to an erring child. 

QUOTES FROM DELL’ANTONIA

“[Happier parents] revel in the meaning and excitement that comes from the adventure of raising a family instead of trying to measure our success.”

“We are all looking to be a little happier around the experience that we’re having right now.”

“Nobody wants to bear the burden of somebody else’s happiness.”

“The truth is that you do not want to raise a child who’s been happy for their entire childhood. You don’t want to raise a child who’s never so much as lost a balloon. That is…the worst college roommate in the history of mankind.”

“Siblings…they all want all of us!”

“Parents of younger kids describe themselves as happier when they’re a little more involved; parents of older kids describe themselves as happier when they’re a little less involved in the day-to-day responsibilities. So, that evolution of independence is important for the kid and it’s the right thing for us!”

“Soak up the good by paying attention. Even when things are going wrong, overall things are pretty good…The ordinary days are really good!”

BUY How to be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute

RECOMMENDATION
BUY How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

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• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

British journalist and marathon addict Phil Hewitt extols the multiple virtues of running in his newly published book, Outrunning the Demons: Lives Transformed Through Running. His “celebratory exploration” of running includes 34 compelling true stories from runners around the world whose reasons run the range from overcoming trauma to honoring the death of a loved one.

In each story, Hewitt champions the power of running to steady a life rife with trouble and trauma or to simply help access joy and exhilaration. Every story is proof positive that running provides power to outrun demons, transform lives, and unlock resilience needed to face life’s everyday challenges. Even more, “running can so often be the answer to everything when we find ourselves in extremis.”

• Whether heartwarming or heartbreaking, the stories in the book inspire us to believe in the transformative power of running.
• After attending a cricket championship in South Africa, Hewitt is brutally mugged walking through Cape Town and, as a result, suffers severe PTSD.
• Even when his physical wounds heal, Hewitt’s emotional and mental wounds beleaguer him until he returns to running.  
• “Outrunning the demons” can mean leaving them behind OR, more often, finding a way to live with them.
• The universal appeal of running may lie in its ability to transport us back to the present moment (like mindfulness).
• Running can feel like a sacred experience, giving yourself time and space to process.
• The National Health Service in England is increasingly recommending running as better than low-level antidepressants.
• Running can restore a sense of control, power, and reconnection.
• Camaraderie is a powerful pull for runners.
• The sport of running can be either solitary or social—or both!
• “parkruns” – (started in London and now wildly popular in England and Australia) allow people to simply show up at a park or green space to run a few miles without paying a fee
• Running can give us a safe place to grieve.
• Many healed and strengthened through running have formed nonprofit organizations to help others.
• Men tend to bottle up feelings, causing them to become subject to staggering suicide statistics.
• Rapper “Professor Green” writes a song about the terrible effects of his father committing suicide.

QUOTES FROM HEWITT

“Something lifted, something just cut through the total mess in my mind…[that] I sensed the power of running.”

“Being able to come back [from a run] physically tired was bliss—absolute bliss!”

“Running to me seems to be such a terrific answer to trauma…that horrible past is like this endlessly rerunning, constantly replaying present, and running is one of the things cuts through that.”

“Since the trauma, I’ve stopped running to music. [Now,] when I run, I just want to attune to the surroundings, to just look at the trees, smell the roses, be present in the moment.”

“I love being part of a pack at the start of a race. You don’t know all these people…but in that race you are united in a really profound, spiritual, uplifting way.”

“People who’ve been to hell discover that the quickest, surest, safest way back is to run.”

“If you’re firmly in the mid-pack where I am, there is a terrific camaraderie—a great ‘looking after’ [each other.]”

“Ever since what happened to me, I’ve become terribly un-British. I don’t remotely have a stiff upper lip now. I talk about my emotions and struggle to stop talking about them!” 30:00 ish

“It’s all about awareness that it’s OK not to be OK.”

“Running is a privilege. Obviously, it’s not something that everyone can do. But if you’re fortunate enough to do it, you might just find that running is potentially a big part of the solution to whatever you’re going through.” 

BUY Outrunning the Demons: Lives Transformed through Running

RECOMMENDATION: A book for beginning runners as well as those aspiring to qualify for the Boston Marathon

BUY Galloway's Book on Running

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• Instagram
• Twitter
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Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

British journalist and marathon addict Phil Hewitt extols the multiple virtues of running in his newly published book, Outrunning the Demons: Lives Transformed Through Running. His “celebratory exploration” of running includes 34 compelling true stories from runners around the world whose reasons run the range from overcoming trauma to honoring the death of a loved one.

In each story, Hewitt champions the power of running to steady a life rife with trouble and trauma or to simply help access joy and exhilaration. Every story is proof positive that running provides power to outrun demons, transform lives, and unlock resilience needed to face life’s everyday challenges. Even more, “running can so often be the answer to everything when we find ourselves in extremis.”

• Whether heartwarming or heartbreaking, the stories in the book inspire us to believe in the transformative power of running.
• After attending a cricket championship in South Africa, Hewitt is brutally mugged walking through Cape Town and, as a result, suffers severe PTSD.
• Even when his physical wounds heal, Hewitt’s emotional and mental wounds beleaguer him until he returns to running.  
• “Outrunning the demons” can mean leaving them behind OR, more often, finding a way to live with them.
• The universal appeal of running may lie in its ability to transport us back to the present moment (like mindfulness).
• Running can feel like a sacred experience, giving yourself time and space to process.
• The National Health Service in England is increasingly recommending running as better than low-level antidepressants.
• Running can restore a sense of control, power, and reconnection.
• Camaraderie is a powerful pull for runners.
• The sport of running can be either solitary or social—or both!
• “parkruns” – (started in London and now wildly popular in England and Australia) allow people to simply show up at a park or green space to run a few miles without paying a fee
• Running can give us a safe place to grieve.
• Many healed and strengthened through running have formed nonprofit organizations to help others.
• Men tend to bottle up feelings, causing them to become subject to staggering suicide statistics.
• Rapper “Professor Green” writes a song about the terrible effects of his father committing suicide.

QUOTES FROM HEWITT

“Something lifted, something just cut through the total mess in my mind…[that] I sensed the power of running.”

“Being able to come back [from a run] physically tired was bliss—absolute bliss!”

“Running to me seems to be such a terrific answer to trauma…that horrible past is like this endlessly rerunning, constantly replaying present, and running is one of the things cuts through that.”

“Since the trauma, I’ve stopped running to music. [Now,] when I run, I just want to attune to the surroundings, to just look at the trees, smell the roses, be present in the moment.”

“I love being part of a pack at the start of a race. You don’t know all these people…but in that race you are united in a really profound, spiritual, uplifting way.”

“People who’ve been to hell discover that the quickest, surest, safest way back is to run.”

“If you’re firmly in the mid-pack where I am, there is a terrific camaraderie—a great ‘looking after’ [each other.]”

“Ever since what happened to me, I’ve become terribly un-British. I don’t remotely have a stiff upper lip now. I talk about my emotions and struggle to stop talking about them!” 30:00 ish

“It’s all about awareness that it’s OK not to be OK.”

“Running is a privilege. Obviously, it’s not something that everyone can do. But if you’re fortunate enough to do it, you might just find that running is potentially a big part of the solution to whatever you’re going through.” 

BUY Outrunning the Demons: Lives Transformed through Running

RECOMMENDATION: A book for beginning runners as well as those aspiring to qualify for the Boston Marathon

BUY Galloway's Book on Running

Connect with us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

From an early age, Dr. Dave Walker, author of God in the ICU, believed two things: that God loved him and that he wanted to be a doctor. But even as a successful anesthesiologist, when personal tragedy struck not once but three times, Walker became disillusioned with God. Gone was his trust in a personal, intimate God. However, when he returned to his childhood practice of praying, Walker could not deny the miracles that unfolded. God in the ICU: The Inspirational Biography of a Praying Doctor reveals the open faith of a man who relies on both science and spirituality to help heal his patients and to become a believer again.

KEY POINTS

• When personal tragedy strikes, Walker’s strong belief in God morphs into cold anger and leads him into a period of spiritual loneliness, and life begins to consist of only random joy and pain.
• Although he recommends his patients pray for comfort, he doesn’t personally believe God will hear them.
• A powerful atmosphere of love in church creates a turning point; disillusionment and resentment begin to melt into acceptance and belief.
• South Africans are more willing to talking about spiritual things than those in the U.S., so offering to pray in the ICU is comfortable.
• In the ICU, sick people tend to be desperate for people to pray for them.
• Touching patients when praying for them confirms research that laying hands on a person can enhance healing.
• Walker learns to pray for patients regardless of the outcome.
• In the United Arab Emirates, where Muslims highly respect “holy Christians,” Walker prays with and for Christians and Muslims alike.

QUOTES FROM WALKER

“From early on, I really wanted to help people, and I guess I thought that medicine was the best way I could do that.”  

“The surgeon gets all the glamour…but actually, it’s the anesthetist that actually keeps the patient alive…[and] who looks after the care of the whole patient.”

"When fighting for your life, you need more than medicine." 

“The patients in the ICU--and their relatives as well—needed more than I could give them.”

“We always expect God to be dramatic in His healing, but sometimes miracles happen slowly, and sometimes God wants us to be intensely involved in the working of His miracles.”

“There’s nothing like prayer to change you as you connect with God.”

“If you want to get a tan, sit under the sun; if you want to get a spiritual tan, sit under the Son.”

“The more we pray, the more we see God coming through, and the more we see God coming through, the more we’re able to trust Him and to live a life of trust.”

"Nothing can shield us from the unpredictable experiences of a fallen world. How we respond, however, especially to God, will determine how it affects us."

BUY God in the ICU: The Inspiring Biography of .a Praying Doctor

RECOMMENDATION

BUY Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor

Connect with us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

From an early age, Dr. Dave Walker, author of God in the ICU, believed two things: that God loved him and that he wanted to be a doctor. But even as a successful anesthesiologist, when personal tragedy struck not once but three times, Walker became disillusioned with God. Gone was his trust in a personal, intimate God. However, when he returned to his childhood practice of praying, Walker could not deny the miracles that unfolded. God in the ICU: The Inspirational Biography of a Praying Doctor reveals the open faith of a man who relies on both science and spirituality to help heal his patients and to become a believer again.

KEY POINTS

• When personal tragedy strikes, Walker’s strong belief in God morphs into cold anger and leads him into a period of spiritual loneliness, and life begins to consist of only random joy and pain.
• Although he recommends his patients pray for comfort, he doesn’t personally believe God will hear them.
• A powerful atmosphere of love in church creates a turning point; disillusionment and resentment begin to melt into acceptance and belief.
• South Africans are more willing to talking about spiritual things than those in the U.S., so offering to pray in the ICU is comfortable.
• In the ICU, sick people tend to be desperate for people to pray for them.
• Touching patients when praying for them confirms research that laying hands on a person can enhance healing.
• Walker learns to pray for patients regardless of the outcome.
• In the United Arab Emirates, where Muslims highly respect “holy Christians,” Walker prays with and for Christians and Muslims alike.

QUOTES FROM WALKER

“From early on, I really wanted to help people, and I guess I thought that medicine was the best way I could do that.”  

“The surgeon gets all the glamour…but actually, it’s the anesthetist that actually keeps the patient alive…[and] who looks after the care of the whole patient.”

"When fighting for your life, you need more than medicine." 

“The patients in the ICU--and their relatives as well—needed more than I could give them.”

“We always expect God to be dramatic in His healing, but sometimes miracles happen slowly, and sometimes God wants us to be intensely involved in the working of His miracles.”

“There’s nothing like prayer to change you as you connect with God.”

“If you want to get a tan, sit under the sun; if you want to get a spiritual tan, sit under the Son.”

“The more we pray, the more we see God coming through, and the more we see God coming through, the more we’re able to trust Him and to live a life of trust.”

"Nothing can shield us from the unpredictable experiences of a fallen world. How we respond, however, especially to God, will determine how it affects us."

BUY God in the ICU: The Inspiring Biography of .a Praying Doctor

RECOMMENDATION

BUY Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor

Connect with us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight, Vanessa Potter’s memoir, captures her journey from light to dark and back again. Within 72 hours, Potter moves from keeping up the high-paced lifestyle of a freelance TV producer and mother of two small children to being blind and paralyzed in a hospital bed. Having suddenly contracted NMO (an extremely rare neurological disorder that affects the optic and spinal nerves), Potter becomes both deeply curious and fiercely determined to get better. So, enlisting a team of neuroscientists, she provides real-time data to help solve the mystery illness.

KEY POINTS

• Sensory loss – the official term for what Potter experienced – completely disorients Potter to the point she didn’t know if she was up or down or where she was. She couldn’t feel where she was! The very information we live our lives by shuts down.
• Meditation is a reflex. Her visual sanctuary is a beautiful beach, which, by seeing in her mind, keeps her visual system alive.
• Our brain does the business of seeing.
• Creating audio recordings then later blogging her story in real time become therapeutic.
• Potter’s narration turns into critical scientific data.
• Deep curiosity propels her to seek medical answers.
• “Patient H69” becomes her pseudonym for her writing and blog.
• She “piggybacks” the vision of everyone who walked in the room to “see,” and her knowledge filled in the gaps.
• Her children’s touch is “medicine in a bottle” for Potter. Children naturally lavish touch and have an intuition about what to do when they walk in the room.
• Before being released from the hospital, Potter has to pass the “tea test” to make sure she has sufficient coping strategies at home.
• Humor is a resource—buying her time and helping her relax.
• Potter’s experience corroborates years of visual science—the inside of vision.
• Collaborates with Cambridge University scientists on EEG project to help others see how their mindful brainwaves convert into music and art.

QUOTES FROM POTTER

“I remember one time asking my husband, ‘This might sound like a crazy question, but am I still here?’”

“Meditation was my lifeline because this was one of the most active things I could do—given I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feed myself—so the meditation was a very, very powerful resource to have inside my mind.”

“I was so determined that we were going to see this through and that I was not going to be coming home [from hospital] until I was better.”

“The U.K. has the most amazing NHS (medical system), but you have to fight for it.”

“Physical closeness was not only a way of being physically close [to visitors] but also communicating with them…a soft warm hand holding my hand says a thousand words.”

“We think we’re often helpless…[but] even in the worst situations, you have a choice…which leads to opportunity…I’ve learned to carve opportunity in the darkest place because then the rewards are so much more.”

Don’t miss “Part 2: Diary of the Science” to learn how Potter now applies what she’s learned!

BUY Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight (Bloomsbury Sigma)

RECOMMENDATION

World Book Day, celebrated in the U.K. on the first Thursday in March. A nonprofit whose aim is to give every child and young person a book of their own. Find out how you can contribute to the cause as an author, illustrator, teacher, parent, or mentor.

For weekly updates, join our email list!

Follow us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Check out our Website!

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight, Vanessa Potter’s memoir, captures her journey from light to dark and back again. Within 72 hours, Potter moves from keeping up the high-paced lifestyle of a freelance TV producer and mother of two small children to being blind and paralyzed in a hospital bed. Having suddenly contracted NMO (an extremely rare neurological disorder that affects the optic and spinal nerves), Potter becomes both deeply curious and fiercely determined to get better. So, enlisting a team of neuroscientists, she provides real-time data to help solve the mystery illness.

KEY POINTS

• Sensory loss – the official term for what Potter experienced – completely disorients Potter to the point she didn’t know if she was up or down or where she was. She couldn’t feel where she was! The very information we live our lives by shuts down.
• Meditation is a reflex. Her visual sanctuary is a beautiful beach, which, by seeing in her mind, keeps her visual system alive.
• Our brain does the business of seeing.
• Creating audio recordings then later blogging her story in real time become therapeutic.
• Potter’s narration turns into critical scientific data.
• Deep curiosity propels her to seek medical answers.
• “Patient H69” becomes her pseudonym for her writing and blog.
• She “piggybacks” the vision of everyone who walked in the room to “see,” and her knowledge filled in the gaps.
• Her children’s touch is “medicine in a bottle” for Potter. Children naturally lavish touch and have an intuition about what to do when they walk in the room.
• Before being released from the hospital, Potter has to pass the “tea test” to make sure she has sufficient coping strategies at home.
• Humor is a resource—buying her time and helping her relax.
• Potter’s experience corroborates years of visual science—the inside of vision.
• Collaborates with Cambridge University scientists on EEG project to help others see how their mindful brainwaves convert into music and art.

QUOTES FROM POTTER

“I remember one time asking my husband, ‘This might sound like a crazy question, but am I still here?’”

“Meditation was my lifeline because this was one of the most active things I could do—given I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feed myself—so the meditation was a very, very powerful resource to have inside my mind.”

“I was so determined that we were going to see this through and that I was not going to be coming home [from hospital] until I was better.”

“The U.K. has the most amazing NHS (medical system), but you have to fight for it.”

“Physical closeness was not only a way of being physically close [to visitors] but also communicating with them…a soft warm hand holding my hand says a thousand words.”

“We think we’re often helpless…[but] even in the worst situations, you have a choice…which leads to opportunity…I’ve learned to carve opportunity in the darkest place because then the rewards are so much more.”

Don’t miss “Part 2: Diary of the Science” to learn how Potter now applies what she’s learned!

BUY Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight (Bloomsbury Sigma)

RECOMMENDATION

World Book Day, celebrated in the U.K. on the first Thursday in March. A nonprofit whose aim is to give every child and young person a book of their own. Find out how you can contribute to the cause as an author, illustrator, teacher, parent, or mentor.

For weekly updates, join our email list!

Follow us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Check out our Website!

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure, gives parents a multitude of reasons to let go so their children can succeed. As an educator, author, and mother, Lahey sees this delicate balancing act from all angles. But with modern parents embracing overprotectiveness like never before, she recognizes the danger of cushioning falls and being overly responsive to children’s needs. Truth be told, a child not allowed to fail will never learn to solve his own problems and become an autonomous, competent, independent adult.

As a teacher, Lahey noticed a disturbing pattern among parents who constantly raced to the rescue of their children, causing them to lose their love of learning. At the same time, she was dismayed to discover some of the same detrimental effects from her own parenting when her nine-year-old son could not tie his own shoes. Find out "How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed." 

KEY POINTS

• All parents want their children to succeed, but parents themselves can become the biggest roadblock to their success by teaching them to fear failure.
• We parents have become used to getting feedback on our performance; now we look at our own kids for feedback. But kids are not our report card.
• A three-step process to help kids believe we care more about the learning: step back, focus more on the long term than on the short term, and start thinking more about the process of learning rather than the end product.
• Be willing to learn from your own mistakes by making some goals that are a little bit scary.
• Extrinsic rewards erode long-term motivation.
• Praise kids for very specific behaviors; even positive, general praise (especially labeling) can be especially damaging for low-self-esteem kids.
• Formative assessment is difficult for kids unaccustomed to hearing anything negative about themselves.
• Do not pay kids for “family contributions” (tasks around the house).
• Kids who help have a sense of control (self-efficacy).
• PPP = “Pressured Parents Phenomenon” (how parents have become each other’s worst enemy)
• Middle-school kids have nowhere near the executive brain function they need to handle all the tasks required of them.
• Children grow by doing their own college search and living by hard and fast deadlines. Keep your hands off their essays!

QUOTES FROM LAHEY

“When we are too directive…when we tell them exactly how to do things…that renders kids a lot less able to cope with their own frustration.”

“Kids who can get frustrated are a lot more likely to finish things that are frustrating, and the most powerful teaching tools we have are things like desirable difficulties.”

“They need to start being able to look to themselves as their own sort of compass for what is quality.”

“Failure is a fact of life in middle school, so embrace it!”

“Every single moment you feel an impulse to jump in and do for your kid…you’re telling him—without meaning to—'I don’t think you’re capable of handling this yourself.’”

BUY The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed

RECOMMENDATIONS

BUY Freaky Friday (2003)

BUY Freaky Friday (1976)

BUY Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

BUY The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money

BUY Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child

For weekly updates, join our email list!

Follow us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure, gives parents a multitude of reasons to let go so their children can succeed. As an educator, author, and mother, Lahey sees this delicate balancing act from all angles. But with modern parents embracing overprotectiveness like never before, she recognizes the danger of cushioning falls and being overly responsive to children’s needs. Truth be told, a child not allowed to fail will never learn to solve his own problems and become an autonomous, competent, independent adult.

As a teacher, Lahey noticed a disturbing pattern among parents who constantly raced to the rescue of their children, causing them to lose their love of learning. At the same time, she was dismayed to discover some of the same detrimental effects from her own parenting when her nine-year-old son could not tie his own shoes. Find out "How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed." 

KEY POINTS

• All parents want their children to succeed, but parents themselves can become the biggest roadblock to their success by teaching them to fear failure.
• We parents have become used to getting feedback on our performance; now we look at our own kids for feedback. But kids are not our report card.
• A three-step process to help kids believe we care more about the learning: step back, focus more on the long term than on the short term, and start thinking more about the process of learning rather than the end product.
• Be willing to learn from your own mistakes by making some goals that are a little bit scary.
• Extrinsic rewards erode long-term motivation.
• Praise kids for very specific behaviors; even positive, general praise (especially labeling) can be especially damaging for low-self-esteem kids.
• Formative assessment is difficult for kids unaccustomed to hearing anything negative about themselves.
• Do not pay kids for “family contributions” (tasks around the house).
• Kids who help have a sense of control (self-efficacy).
• PPP = “Pressured Parents Phenomenon” (how parents have become each other’s worst enemy)
• Middle-school kids have nowhere near the executive brain function they need to handle all the tasks required of them.
• Children grow by doing their own college search and living by hard and fast deadlines. Keep your hands off their essays!

QUOTES FROM LAHEY

“When we are too directive…when we tell them exactly how to do things…that renders kids a lot less able to cope with their own frustration.”

“Kids who can get frustrated are a lot more likely to finish things that are frustrating, and the most powerful teaching tools we have are things like desirable difficulties.”

“They need to start being able to look to themselves as their own sort of compass for what is quality.”

“Failure is a fact of life in middle school, so embrace it!”

“Every single moment you feel an impulse to jump in and do for your kid…you’re telling him—without meaning to—'I don’t think you’re capable of handling this yourself.’”

BUY The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed

RECOMMENDATIONS

BUY Freaky Friday (2003)

BUY Freaky Friday (1976)

BUY Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

BUY The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money

BUY Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child

For weekly updates, join our email list!

Follow us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

Author Erica Wagner, a New York City native, celebrates the story of constructing the Brooklyn Bridge in her book, Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge. Nearly 150 years after being built, the Brooklyn Bridge remains a wonder. Notably, its iconic image is still displayed on tourist brochures, film posters, and even Italian chewing gum wrappers. In fact, many consider the Brooklyn Bridge one of the greatest symbols of 19th-century progress, and how it was made is a dramatic tale of vision, innovation, and endurance in the face of extraordinary odds.

Although she never knew Roebling personally, Wagner, at age sixteen, fell in love with the bridge’s engineer Washington Roebling, carrying his picture in her wallet for decades and even to this day! However, writing his biography, though a great pleasure, required her to understand not only literature but also to become steeped in engineering and history.

When David McCullough published The Great Bridge in the early 1970s, he was surprised no one had written a biography of the great Washington Roebling. Yet, at that time, even McCullough did not have access to the writings of Roebling. Those would not come to light until the early 2000s when they were discovered in the archives of Rutgers University in Trenton, New Jersey, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. So, Wagner, being a lifelong aficionado of Roebling, seized the opportunity to study his memoir, which was very intertwined with the life of his tyrannical father John A. Roebling, the bridge’s designer. Finally, out of Wagner’s intensive research emerged the biography, Chief Engineer.

• Washington Roebling was frustrated all his life by the confusion between himself and his father John Roebling, a great and famous engineer who got the contract to build the Brooklyn Bridge.
• John A. Roebling’s invention of steel wire cables made the family’s fortune and allowed him to build suspension bridges.
• Early in the project, John Roebling had an accident and died 10 days later of tetanus, leaving the mammoth construction project to his son Washington.
• When he became sick with “caisson disease,” Washington and his wife Emily became close business partners by default with Emily acting as his intermediary at the engineering site.
• The original four cables, now over 135-years-old, are still holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Washington Roebling’s great passion was not engineering but was, in fact, geology and mineralogy, and his mineral collection was donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

QUOTES FROM WAGNER

“All of his life, his father’s reputation got in the way of him, and people were always confusing him and his father to his great annoyance.”

“Washington Roebling didn’t have a choice; he was raised to be his father’s lieutenant.”

“Any structure is only as good as the maintenance devoted to it. Infrastructure has to be maintained…you don’t just pay for it once.”

BUY Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge 

RECOMMENDATIONS

• A children's nonfiction book about bridges, complete with illustrations, photos, and historical material: BUY 13 Bridges Children Should Know by Brad Finger
• Our podcast with Brad Finger discussing several children's nonfiction books he has written for Prestel Publishing

Original movies made by Thomas Edison from the train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

• https://bit.ly/2U1RYaV
• https://bit.ly/2tpMefe

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