Raising a Self-Driven Child

Authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson have watched firsthand as the crises around education and children's mental health have converged in the post-pandemic years. Their book The Self-Driven Child (2019) was ahead of the curve in addressing the way these forces converge in adolescents at pivotal moments as children develop their sense of autonomy, ambition, self-discipline, and learning style.

Using material from their work with parents and children as a clinical psychologist and tutor and pulling essential principles from the science in The Self-Driven Child, their new book The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child: A Workbook (2025) guides parents to develop the practice of being a nonanxious presence in children’s lives. In this talk they will share prompts to help parents recognize and rewire their instinctual responses to stressful situations, exercises to give them the language to communicate clearly and calmly, and lists to keep anxiety responses in check and big-picture goals in…