Healthy Risk-Taking

How can I get my child to take more healthy risks? This question from the back row of a very packed auditorium was answered with a warm and thought-provoking question in return from our guest speaker Jessica Lahey, When was the last time your child saw you fail? This was 2016, and we had selected Jessica Lahey’s New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, as our community summer reading book for Nashoba Brooks School. It was the perfect fit for our theme for the year, Reframing Failure. Years later, the question, the book, and the theme all continue to resonate. At Nashoba Brooks, we regularly reflect on the fact that the best learning rarely happens in a smooth and linear trajectory. There will be bumps. And often, the best learning happens as students confront challenges, engage in productive struggle, and try new approaches in their learning processes. Whether learning a new skill, reaching for next-level goals, or engaging in an interactive process, we can—and should—model failure as part of the joy of learning. How might you model healthy risk-taking, and yes, even failure for the young people in your life?