The Washington Post: Parents Shouldn’t Do Everything for Their Kids

Some parents not only raise one outstanding child but seem to have all their kids excel. How do they do it? A New York Times journalist has written a book on this topic.

One key insight is that parents shouldn’t handle every task for their children. When kids encounter difficulties, excessive parental intervention reduces their motivation. If adults finish a puzzle for a child, the child will exert less effort in subsequent challenges or games. Instead, parents should emphasize "resourcefulness and self-reliance."

Lawrence Paulus, an art TV producer from a modest background, often took his children to the Metropolitan Opera. When they couldn’t afford tickets, they sat outside the theater and listened to live broadcasts on the radio, absorbing the charged atmosphere. They also queued for free Shakespeare in the Park performances and played music at home. One daughter became a world-renowned theater director; another is the principal harpist in Mexico’s top orchestra; his son co-founded a news channel.

László Polgár raised three of the most successful female chess players in history. A neuroscientist argues that the Polgár legend stems from a combination of talent and training: the girls had innate long-term memory and superior processing speed akin to top chess players, and their father pushed them to "devote their entire childhoods to chess," further stimulating and reinforcing relevant neural pathways.

The New York Times notes that perhaps the book’s most intriguing story isn’t about humans but a mouse experiment. Forty genetically identical adolescent female mice were placed in an enclosure filled with enticing toys. For three months, their every move was recorded. Some became bold explorers, while others turned into homebodies. The stark personality differences appeared linked to early experiential variations—which amplified over time. A behavioral geneticist concluded: "The differences arise not from genes or environment alone, but from path-dependent responses to initially random or chance events."

The author offers commonsense advice: let children enrich themselves, engage with society, and read to them. "These alone don’t guarantee success—every outcome is ultimately a product of unpredictability and luck. After all, it’s the interaction between genes and environment that shapes human individuality."