According to Forbes magazine publisher and author Rich Karlgaard, our society today is obsessed with early achievement. He suggests that parents and the education system itself push students to take all of the hardest courses, earn the highest grades, achieve the best test scores and gain admission to the most prestigious universities. As an educator and parent of a high school senior with younger children moving into high school, I have witnessed and experienced this reality first-hand.

I recently published my latest book, Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement. Below is a question-and-answer session I did with Psychology Today soon after the book’s release. I’ve edited it exclusively for "Navigating Your Child's Education: Blog for Parents." I am also coming to central Ohio on Thursday, February 13, 2020 to speak to parents on this topic. Click on the picture below for more information.

Life. One minute we’re a teenager and the next minute we’re raising one. Don’t you remember being a carefree teen driving our social lives into action with the windows down and the radio up? Mom and dad helped with gas, provided our every meal and did our laundry. Some of us worked because we could, not because we had to. We worked out because we could, not because we had to (ugh). Then off to college where the great big world awaited, exposing us to different perspectives, new pedagogies, opportunities for endless mistakes, and possibly our faith sacrificed on the altar of compromise. Next, we navigated careers, marriage, sleepless nights with babies, toddlers, teens challenging our battered brains, all the while plowing full steam ahead on this journey called life. Extemporaneous challenges can await at each new turn, plowing us right off a cliff if we refuse to process life as it progresses. We’ve seen the wreckage countless times--often tempted to join debauchery’s debris--for none of us are immune.