Podcast

As parents, we know our kids will face challenges and disappointments, but we don’t always know how to prepare them to bounce back. In this episode, Michelle Borba, author of Thrivers, joins Sam Shapiro, Head of Marin Montessori School, to discuss a handful of practical tools parents can use to increase their children’s resilience and confidence.

In this episode, Sam Shapiro, Marin Montessori’s Head of School, speaks to ⁠Varun Soni⁠, Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, about the mental health crisis on college campuses and what we might do about it.

Throughout their deeply felt conversation, they try to work backward to identify the strategies parents of young children can use to increase the likelihood that their kids will enter college healthy, confident, and whole.

We all need help committing to the long view as we parent; it’s easy to let anxiety and social comparison hijack our highest ideals and goals for our children. Enter Jessica Lahey, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. In this podcast episode, Sam Shapiro, Head of Marin Montessori School, speaks with Jessica about her top suggestions for parents for helping their kids develop robust independence, inner motivation to learn, and self-possession.

Key topics in the podcast include:

* A helpful parenting hack in the form of a question that will guide us when we’re deciding whether to step in to take over for our child

* The value of focusing on process over product, especially for anxious kids

* The difference between competence and confidence

* The counterbalance parents can provide to the more harmful messages our children receive about the source of their worth

* The value of strengths-based parenting