After finishing this book in June of 2024, I wrote,

 

"The truths in this book go much deeper than the title might suggest. I run into "The Three Great Untruths," as the authors put it, in everyday conversations with my friends and clients, whether American or otherwise. A page-turner for me."

 

My clippings below collapse a 352-page book into sixteen pages, measured by using 12-point type in Microsoft Word.

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See all my book recommendations.  

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Here are the selections I made:

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Introduction: The Search for Wisdom

 

The Untruth of Fragility : What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker . The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning : Always trust your feelings . The Untruth of Us Versus Them : Life is a battle between good people and evil people .

 

The fault lies with adults and with institutional practices , hence our subtitle : “ How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure . ” That is exactly what this book is about . We will show how well - intentioned overprotection — from peanut bans in elementary schools through speech codes on college campuses — may end up doing more harm than good .

 

That means seeking out challenges ( rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “ feels unsafe ” ) , freeing yourself from cognitive distortions ( rather than always trusting your initial feelings ) , and taking a generous view of other people , and looking for nuance ( rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us - versus - them morality ) .

Part I: Three Bad Ideas

 

The Untruth of Fragility : What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker

 

But it turns out that the harm was severe . 3 It was later discovered that peanut allergies were surging precisely because parents and teachers had started protecting children from exposure to peanuts back in the 1990s .

 

The LEAP ( Learning Early About Peanut Allergy ) study was based on the hypothesis that “ regular eating of peanut - containing products , when started during infancy , will elicit a protective immune response instead of an allergic immune reaction . ”

 

The results were stunning . Among the children who had been “ protected ” from peanuts , 17 % had developed a peanut allergy . In the group that had been deliberately exposed to peanut products , only 3 % had developed an allergy .

 

This is the underlying rationale for what is called the hygiene hypothesis , 9 the leading explanation for why allergy rates generally go up as countries get wealthier and cleaner — another example of a problem of progress .

 

But teaching kids that failures , insults , and painful experiences will do lasting damage is harmful in and of itself . Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate .

 

Many of the important systems in our economic and political life are like our immune systems : they require stressors and challenges in order to learn , adapt , and grow . Systems that are antifragile become rigid , weak , and inefficient when nothing challenges them or pushes them to respond vigorously . He notes that muscles , bones , and children are antifragile :

 

This is the tragedy of modernity : as with neurotically overprotective parents , those trying to help are often hurting us the most [ emphasis added ] . 11

 

Taleb opens the book with a poetic image that should speak to all parents . He notes that wind extinguishes a candle but energizes a fire . He advises us not to be like candles and not to turn our children into candles : “ You want to be the fire and wish for the wind . ”

 

There’s an old saying : “ Prepare the child for the road , not the road for the child . ”

 

As with trauma , a key change for most of the concepts Haslam examined was the shift to a subjective standard . 22 It was not for anyone else to decide what counted as trauma , bullying , or abuse ; if it felt like that to you , trust your feelings . If a person reported that an event was traumatic ( or bullying or abusive ) , his or her subjective assessment was increasingly taken as sufficient evidence .

 

When children are raised in a culture of safetyism , which teaches them to stay “ emotionally safe ” while protecting them from every imaginable danger , it may set up a feedback loop : kids become more fragile and less resilient , which signals to adults that they need more protection , which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient . The end result may be similar to what happened when we tried to keep kids safe from exposure to peanuts : a widespread backfiring effect in which the “ cure ” turns out to be a primary cause of the disease .

 

Rather , we are proposing that today’s college students were raised by parents and teachers who had children’s best interests at heart but who often did not give them the freedom to develop their antifragility .

 

Safetyism is the cult of safety — an obsession with eliminating threats ( both real and imagined ) to the point at which people become unwilling to make reasonable trade - offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns .

 

The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning : Always Trust Your Feelings

 

“ Always trust your feelings , ” said Misoponos , and that dictum may sound wise and familiar . You’ve heard versions of it from a variety of sappy novels and pop psychology gurus .

 

We opened this chapter with a quotation from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus , but we could just as easily have quoted Buddha ( “ Our life is the creation of our mind ” ) 2 or Shakespeare ( “ There is nothing either good or bad , but thinking makes it so ” ) 3 or Milton ( “ The mind is its own place , and in itself can make a heaven of hell , a hell of heaven ” ) . 4

 

Lady Philosophy’s ultimate lesson : “ Nothing is miserable unless you think it so ; and on the other hand , nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it . ”

 

EMOTIONAL REASONING : Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality . “ I feel depressed ; therefore , my marriage is not working out . ” CATASTROPHIZING : Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely . “ It would be terrible if I failed . ” OVERGENERALIZING : Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident . “ This generally happens to me . I seem to fail at a lot of things . ”

 

DICHOTOMOUS THINKING ( also known variously as “ black - and - white thinking , ” “ all - or - nothing thinking , ” and “ binary thinking ” ) : Viewing events or people in all - or - nothing terms . “ I get rejected by everyone , ” or “ It was a complete waste of time . ”

 

MIND READING : Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts . “ He thinks I’m a loser . ” LABELING : Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others ( often in the service of dichotomous thinking ) . “ I’m undesirable , ” or “ He’s a rotten person . ”

 

NEGATIVE FILTERING : You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives . “ Look at all of the people who don’t like me . ” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES : Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial , so that you can maintain a negative judgment . “ That’s what wives are supposed to do — so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me , ” or “ Those successes were easy , so they don’t matter . ”

 

BLAMING : Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings ; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself . “ She’s to blame for the way I feel now , ” or “ My parents caused all my problems . ”

 

Microaggressions : The Triumph of Impact Over Intent A prime example of how some professors ( and some administrators ) encourage mental habits similar to the cognitive distortions is their promotion of the concept of “ microaggressions , ” popularized in a 2007 article13 by Derald Wing Sue , a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College . Sue and several colleagues defined microaggressions as “ brief and commonplace daily verbal , behavioral , or environmental indignities , whether intentional or unintentional , that communicate hostile , derogatory , or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color . ” ( The term was first applied to people of color but is now applied much more broadly . )

 

Unfortunately , when Sue included “ unintentional ” slights , and when he defined the slights entirely in terms of the listener’s interpretation , he encouraged people to make such misperceptions

 

He encouraged them to engage in emotional reasoning — to start with their feelings and then justify those feelings by drawing the conclusion that someone has committed an act of aggression against them .

 

But it is not a good idea to start by assuming the worst about people and reading their actions as uncharitably as possible . This is the distortion known as mind reading ; if done habitually and negatively , it is likely to lead to despair , anxiety , and a network of damaged relationships .

 

Disinvitations and the Ideological Vetting of Speakers

 

In 2017 , 58 % of college students said it is “ important to be part of a campus community where I am not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas . ” 34 This statement was endorsed by 63 % of very liberal students , but it’s a view that is not confined to the left ; almost half of very conservative students ( 45 % ) endorsed that statement , too .

 

Among the most universal psychological insights in the world’s wisdom traditions is that what really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves but the way in which we think about them , as Epictetus put it . CBT is a method anyone can learn for identifying common cognitive distortions and then changing their habitual patterns of thinking . CBT helps the rider ( controlled processing ) to train the elephant ( automatic processing ) , resulting in better critical thinking and mental health . Emotional reasoning is among the most common of all cognitive distortions ; most people would be happier and more effective if they did less of it .

 

The term “ microaggressions ” refers to a way of thinking about brief and commonplace indignities and slights communicated to people of color ( and others ) . Small acts of aggression are real , so the term could be useful , but because the definition includes accidental and unintentional offenses , the word “ aggression ” is misleading . Using the lens of microaggressions may amplify the pain experienced and the conflict that ensues . ( On the other hand , there is nothing “ micro ” about intentional acts of aggression and bigotry . ) By encouraging students to interpret the actions of others in the least generous way possible , schools that teach students about microaggressions may be encouraging students to engage in emotional reasoning and other distortions while setting themselves up for higher levels of distrust and conflict . Karith Foster offers an example of using empathy to reappraise actions that could be interpreted as microaggressions . When she interpreted those actions as innocent ( albeit insensitive ) misunderstandings , it led to a better outcome for everyone . The number of efforts to “ disinvite ” speakers from giving talks on campus has increased in the last few years ; such efforts are often justified by the claim that the speaker in question will cause harm to students . But discomfort is not danger . Students , professors , and administrators should understand the concept of antifragility and keep in mind Hanna Holborn Gray’s principle : “ Education should not be intended to make people comfortable ; it is meant to make them think . ”

 

The Untruth of Us Versus Them : Life Is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People

 

The bottom line is that the human mind is prepared for tribalism . Human evolution is not just the story of individuals competing with other individuals within each group ; it’s also the story of groups competing with other groups — sometimes violently .

 

A basic principle of moral psychology is that “ morality binds and blinds , ” 31 which is a useful trick for a group gearing up for a battle between “ us ” and “ them . ”

 

When a community succeeds in turning down everyone’s tribal circuits , there is more room for individuals to construct lives of their own choosing ; there is more freedom for a creative mixing of people and ideas .

 

More generally , what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “ privilege ” and the other is “ oppression ” ? Since “ privilege ” is defined as the “ power to dominate ” and to cause “ oppression , ” these axes are inherently moral dimensions . The people on top are bad , and the people below the line are good . This sort of teaching seems likely to encode the Untruth of Us Versus Them directly into students ’ cognitive schemas : Life is a battle between good people and evil people . Furthermore , there is no escaping the conclusion as to who the evil people are . The main axes of oppression usually point to one intersectional address : straight white males .

 

Life in a call - out culture requires constant vigilance , fear , and self - censorship .

 

Here is how a student at Smith College describes her induction into its call - out culture in the fall of 2014 : During my first days at Smith , I witnessed countless conversations that consisted of one person telling the other that their opinion was wrong . The word “ offensive ” was almost always included in the reasoning . Within a few short weeks , members of my freshman class had quickly assimilated to this new way of non - thinking . They could soon detect a politically incorrect view and call the person out on their “ mistake . ” I began to voice my opinion less often to avoid being berated and judged by a community that claims to represent the free expression of ideas . I learned , along with every other student , to walk on eggshells for fear that I may say something “ offensive . ” That is the social norm here .

 

In this comment , we can begin to see the way that social media amplifies the cruelty and “ virtue signaling ” that are recurrent features of call - out culture . ( Virtue signaling refers to the things people say and do to advertise that they are virtuous . This helps them stay within the good graces of their team . ) Mobs can rob good people of their conscience , particularly when participants wear masks ( in a real mob ) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar ( in an online mob ) . Anonymity fosters deindividuation — the loss of an individual sense of self — which lessens self - restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob . 73

 

In Sum The human mind evolved for living in tribes that engaged in frequent ( and often violent ) conflict ; our modern - day minds readily divide the world into “ us ” and “ them , ” even on trivial or arbitrary criteria , as Henri Tajfel’s psychological experiments demonstrated . Identity politics takes many forms . Some forms , such as that practiced by Martin Luther King , Jr . , and Pauli Murray , can be called common - humanity identity politics , because its practitioners humanize their opponents and appeal to their humanity while also applying political pressure in other ways . Common - enemy identity politics , on the other hand , tries to unite a coalition using the psychology embedded in the Bedouin proverb “ I against my brothers . I and my brothers against my cousins . I and my brothers and my cousins against the world . ” It is used on the far right as well as the far left .

 

Intersectionality is a popular intellectual framework on campuses today ; certain versions of it teach students to see multiple axes of privilege and oppression that intersect . While there are merits to the theory , the way it is interpreted and practiced on campus can sometimes amplify tribal thinking and encourage students to endorse the Untruth of Us Versus Them : Life is a battle between good people and evil people . Common - enemy identity politics , when combined with microaggression theory , produces a call - out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in a public shaming . This can engender a sense of “ walking on eggshells , ” and it teaches students habits of self - censorship . Call - out cultures are detrimental to students ’ education and bad for their mental health . Call - out cultures and us - versus - them thinking are incompatible with the educational and research missions of universities , which require free inquiry , dissent , evidence - based argument , and intellectual honesty .

Part II: Bad Ideas in Action

 

Intimidation and Violence When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents , we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences , and seek to justify violence against them . NELSON MANDELA1

 

Almost one in five students surveyed in a 2017 Brookings Institution study agreed that using violence to prevent a speaker from speaking was sometimes “ acceptable . ”

 

Why It Is Such a Bad Idea to Tell Students That Words Are Violence

 

But there is a much larger group — roughly 20 % to 30 % , according to the two surveys we described earlier — that is willing to support other students who use violence , drawing on the sorts of justifications offered by the Berkeley students . The most common justification is that hate speech is violence , and some students believe it is therefore legitimate to use violence to shut down hate speech . Setting aside the questions of moral and constitutional legitimacy , what are the psychological consequences of thinking this way ?

 

But students make a serious mistake when they interpret words — even words spoken with hatred — as violence .

 

But if you keep the distinction between speech and violence clear in your mind , then many more options are available to you .

 

The progressive activist Van Jones ( who was President Barack Obama’s green jobs advisor ) endorsed this view in February of 2017 in a conversation at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Politics .

 

He rejected the Untruth of Fragility and turned safetyism on its head : I don’t want you to be safe ideologically . I don’t want you to be safe emotionally . I want you to be strong . That’s different . I’m not going to pave the jungle for you . Put on some boots , and learn how to deal with adversity . I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym ; that’s the whole point of the gym . This is the gym .

 

Jones understands antifragility . Jones wants progressive college students to see themselves not as fragile candles but as fires , welcoming the wind by seeking out ideologically different speakers and ideas .

 

Witch Hunts Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God , but never without belief in a devil . ERIC HOFFER , The True Believer1

 

In 1978 , the sociologist Albert Bergesen wrote an essay titled “ A Durkheimian Theory of ‘ Witch - Hunts ’ With the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 1969 as an Example . ” 7 Bergesen used Durkheim to illuminate the madness that erupted in Beijing in May 1966 , when Mao Zedong began warning about the rising threat of infiltration by pro - capitalist enemies . Zealous college students responded by forming the Red Guards to find and punish enemies of the revolution . Universities across the country were shut down for several years .

 

Bergesen notes that there are three features common to most political witch hunts : they arise very quickly , they involve charges of crimes against the collective , and the offenses that lead to charges are often trivial or fabricated . Here’s how Bergesen puts it :

 

Solidarity engenders trust , teamwork , and mutual aid . But it can also foster groupthink , orthodoxy , and a paralyzing fear of challenging the collective . Solidarity can interfere with a group’s efforts to find the truth , and the search for truth can interfere with a group’s solidarity . The Greek historian Thucydides saw this principle in action over two thousand years ago . Writing about a time of wars and revolutions in the fifth century BCE , he noted that “ the ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action . ”

Part III: How Did We Get Here?

 

Twenge suggests that 1994 is the last birth year for Millennials , and 1995 is the first birth year for iGen . One possible reason for the discontinuity in self - reported traits and attitudes between Millennials and iGen is that in 2006 , when iGen’s oldest were turning eleven , Facebook changed its membership requirement . No longer did you have to prove enrollment in a college ; now any thirteen - year - old — or any younger child willing to claim to be thirteen — could join . But Facebook and other social media platforms didn’t really draw many middle school students until after the iPhone was introduced ( in 2007 ) and was widely adopted over the next few years . It’s best , then , to think about the entire period from 2007 to roughly 2012 as a brief span in which the social life of the average American teen changed substantially

 

Some of the trends are quite positive : members of iGen drink less and smoke less ; they are safer drivers and are waiting longer to have sex . But other trends are less positive , and some are quite distressing . The subtitle of the book summarizes her findings : Why Today’s Super - Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious , More Tolerant , Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us .

 

As Twenge puts it , “ 18 - year - olds now act like 15 - year - olds used to , and 13 - year - olds like 10 - year - olds . Teens are physically safer than ever , yet they are more mentally vulnerable . ”

 

Percent of adolescents aged 12 – 17 who had at least one major depressive episode in the past year . Rates have been rising since 2011 , especially for girls . ( Source : Data from National Survey on Drug Use and Health . )

 

There is , tragically , strong evidence that the rising prevalence of teen depression illustrated in Figure 7.1 is not just a result of changes in diagnostic criteria : the teen suicide rate has been increasing in tandem with the increase in depression . Figure 7.2 shows the annual rate of suicide for each 100,000 teens ( ages fifteen to nineteen ) in the U.S . population .

 

In her book , she presents graphs showing that digital media use and mental health problems are correlated : they rose together in recent years .

 

When kids use screens for two hours of their leisure time per day or less , there is no elevated risk of depression . 21 But above two hours per day , the risks grow larger with each additional hour of screen time .

 

Why Is It Mostly Girls Who Suffer ?

 

“ Girls use social media more often , giving them additional opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them . ”

 

From 2010 to 2015 , the percentage of teen boys who said they often felt left out increased from 21 to 27 . For girls , the percentage jumped from 27 to 40.30

 

Girls , in contrast , are more “ relationally ” aggressive ; they try to hurt their rivals ’ relationships , reputations , and social status — for example , by using social media to make sure other girls know who is intentionally being left out .

 

Plus , if boys ’ aggression is generally delivered in person , then the targets of boys ’ aggression can escape from it when they go home . On social media , girls can never escape .

 

The first members of iGen started arriving on college campuses in September 2013 ; by May 2017 , when the eldest members began graduating , the student body at U.S . colleges was almost entirely iGen ( at least in selective four - year residential colleges ) . These are precisely the years in which the new culture of safetyism seemed to emerge from out of nowhere .

 

That number increased from 2.7 to 6.1 for male college students between 2012 and 2016 ( that’s an increase of 126 % ) . For female college students , it rose even more : from 5.8 to 14.5 ( an increase of 150 % ) . Regardless of whether all these students would meet rigorous diagnostic criteria , it is clear that iGen college students think about themselves very differently than did Millennials . The change is greatest for women : One out of every seven women at U.S . universities now thinks of herself as having a psychological disorder , up from just one in eighteen women in the last years of the Millennials .

 

Clearly universities were not causing a national mental health crisis ; they were responding to one , and this may explain why the practices and beliefs of safetyism spread so quickly after 2013 . But safetyism does not help students who suffer from anxiety and depression . In fact , as we argue throughout this book , safetyism is likely to make things even worse for students who already struggle with mood disorders .

 

She called it Free - Range Kids . Since then , Free - Range Kids has grown into a full - fledged movement , including a book of the same name , the reality TV show World’s Worst Mom , and a nonprofit called Let Grow ( see LetGrow.org

 

The vast majority of those who are abducted are taken by a biological parent who does not have custody ; the number abducted by a stranger is a tiny fraction of 1 % of children reported missing — roughly one hundred children per year in a nation with more than 70 million minors .

 

I’ve met parents who won’t let their seventeen - year - old take the subway . And I said to them , “ What’s your long - term strategy for her ? ” . . . I see it all around me . I see kids afraid to be alone on the sidewalk . They don’t like walking places alone . They don’t like biking places alone . And it’s probably because they’ve been basically made to feel that they can be abducted at any moment . 27

 

Before the rise of paranoid parenting , eleven - year - olds could earn money and learn responsibility by babysitting for neighbors , as Jon and his sisters did in the 1970s . Now , according to some police departments and local busybodies , eleven - year - olds need babysitters themselves .

 

Paranoid parenting is a powerful way to teach kids all three of the Great Untruths . We convince children that the world is full of danger ; evil lurks in the shadows , on the streets , and in public parks and restrooms . Kids raised in this way are emotionally prepared to embrace the Untruth of Us Versus Them : Life is a battle between good people and evil people — a worldview that makes them fear and suspect strangers . We teach children to monitor themselves for the degree to which they “ feel unsafe ” and then talk about how unsafe they feel . They may come to believe that feeling “ unsafe ” ( the feeling of being uncomfortable or anxious ) is a reliable sign that they are unsafe ( the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning : Always trust your feelings ) . Finally , feeling these emotions is unpleasant ; therefore , children may conclude , the feelings are dangerous in and of themselves — stress will harm them if it doesn’t kill them ( the Untruth of Fragility : What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker ) .

 

Experience is so essential for wiring a large brain that the “ first draft ” of the brain includes a strong motivation to practice behaviors that will give the brain the right kind of feedback to optimize itself for success in the environment that happens to surround it . That’s why young mammals are so keen to play , despite the risks .

 

Research has shown that anxious children may elicit overprotective behavior from others , such as parents and caretakers , and that this reinforces the child’s perception of threat and decreases their perception of controlling the danger . Overprotection might thus result in exaggerated levels of anxiety . Overprotection through governmental control of playgrounds and exaggerated fear of playground accidents might thus result in an increase of anxiety in society . We might need to provide more stimulating environments for children , rather than hamper their development [ emphasis added ] .

 

In this chapter , we investigate why the most beneficial forms of play have declined sharply since the 1970s , and we ask what effects this change in childhood might have on teens and college students . The decline of unsupervised free play — including ample opportunities to take small risks — is our fourth explanatory thread .

 

Piano lessons and soccer practice are not free play , but goofing around on a piano or organizing a pickup soccer game are .

 

The college admissions process nowadays makes it harder for high school students to enjoy school and pursue intrinsic fulfillment . The process “ warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy ” and “ jeopardizes their mental health , ” 41 says Frank Bruni , a New York Times columnist and author of Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be : An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania .

 

The Bureaucracy of Safetyism The sovereign power [ or soft despot ] extends its arms over the entire society ; it covers the surface of society with a network of small , complicated , minute , and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize , it hinders , it represses , it enervates , it extinguishes , it stupefies , and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals , of which the government is the shepherd . ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE , Democracy in America1

 

They noted that the emerging morality of victimhood culture was radically different from dignity culture . They defined a victimhood culture as having three distinct attributes : First , “ individuals and groups display high sensitivity to slight ” ; second , they “ have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to third parties ” ; and third , they “ seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance . ” 65

Part IV: Wising Up

 

Prepare the Child for the Road , Not the Road for the Child

 

Assume that your kids are more capable this month than they were last month . Each month , ask them what tasks or challenges they think they can do on their own — such as walking to a store a few blocks away , making their own breakfast , or starting a dog - walking business . Resist the urge to jump in and help them when they’re struggling to do things and seem to be doing them the wrong way . Trial and error is a slower but usually better teacher than direct instruction .

 

Let your kids take more small risks , and let them learn from getting some bumps and bruises .

 

Learn about Lenore Skenazy’s Free - Range Kids movement , and incorporate her lessons into your family’s life .

 

Visit LetGrow.org , the website for an organization that Skenazy cofounded with Jon , Peter Gray , and investor / philanthropist Daniel Shuchman . 6 The site will keep you up to date on research , news , and ideas for giving your kids a childhood that will lead to resilience .

 

I AM A “ LET GROW ” KID ! Hi ! My name is _______________ I am not lost or neglected . I have been taught how to cross the street . I know never to go off with strangers . . . but I can talk to them . ( Including you ! ) The state allows parents to decide at what age their child can do some things independently . Mine believe it is safe , healthy and fun for me to explore my neighborhood . If you do not believe me , please call or text them at the numbers below . If you still think it is inappropriate or illegal for me to be on my own , please : Read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Remember your own childhood ! Were you under adult supervision at every moment ? Today’s crime rate is back to what it was in 1963 , so it’s safer to play outside NOW than when you were my age . Visit the website LetGrow.org . Parent’s Name _______________ Parent’s Signature _______________ Parent’s Phone _______________ Alternate Phone _______________

 

Your Worst Enemy Cannot Harm You as Much as Your Own Thoughts , Unguarded Children ( like adults ) are prone to emotional reasoning .

 

Teach children the basics of CBT . CBT stands for “ cognitive behavioral therapy , ” but in many ways it’s really just “ cognitive behavioral techniques , ” because the intellectual habits it teaches are good for everyone . Parents can teach children the basics of CBT at any age , starting with something as simple as getting in the habit of letting children watch parents talk back to their own exaggerated thoughts . A technique Greg learned involves practicing hearing his anxious and doomsaying automatic thoughts as if they are being said in funny voices , like Elmer Fudd’s or Daffy Duck’s . It may sound silly , but it can quickly turn an anxious or upsetting moment into a humorous one .

 

Parents can get an accessible overview of CBT from reading Dr . Leahy’s book The Worry Cure . Also , Freeing Your Child From Anxiety , by Tamar Chansky , 13 is recommended by the Beck Institute , 14 which is another great resource for cognitive behavioral therapy .

 

The Line Dividing Good and Evil Cuts Through the Heart of Every Human Being

 

Give people the benefit of the doubt . Use the “ principle of charity . ” This is the principle in philosophy and rhetoric of making an effort to interpret other people’s statements in their best or most reasonable form , not in the worst or most offensive way possible . Parents can model the principle of charity by using it in family discussions and arguments .

 

Practice the virtue of “ intellectual humility . ” Intellectual humility is the recognition that our reasoning is so flawed , so prone to bias , that we can rarely be certain that we are right . For kids in middle or high school , find the TED Talk titled “ On Being Wrong . ” 24

 

The school operates on a foundation of three core values that are antithetical to the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning : a culture of thinking ( ask questions , seek understanding , and practice the habits of good thinking ) , self - knowledge ( practice ongoing self - reflection and self - awareness ) , and openness and respect ( strive for a strong sense of community marked by collaboration , empowerment , and intentional openness and respect for the thinking of others ; this is also an antidote to the Untruth of Us Versus Them ) . You can learn more about cultivating the intellectual virtues and about how to incorporate them in schools at intellectualvirtues.org and in the writings of Jason Baehr , a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and one of the founders of the Intellectual Virtues Academy .

 

We agree with former Northwestern University professor Alice Dreger , who urges activist students and professors to “ Carpe datum ” ( “ Seize the data ” ) . 5 In her book Galileo’s Middle Finger , she contends that good scholarship must “ put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second . ”

 

Pauli Murray expressed the power of this principle when she wrote , “ When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me , I shall draw a larger circle to include

 

them . ”

 

And yet we are heartened and persuaded by cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker’s argument , in Enlightenment Now , that in the long run most things are getting better , quickly and globally .

 

We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point , that we have seen our best days . But so said all who came before us , and with just as much apparent reason . . . . On what principle is it that , when we see nothing but improvement behind us , we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us ? 1 Those words were written in 1830 by Thomas Babington Macaulay , a British historian and member of Parliament . Britain’s best days were certainly not behind it .