Ready or Not Quotes

“Those who see errors as opportunities to learn and try again are the people who will most quickly find new solutions. (This is how our children become resilient.) Those who freeze and panic when they make mistakes will find it much harder to adapt.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Parents who have more than one child are very aware that, while we certainly have an impact on our child's development, it has as much to do with them as with us. "I can't believe how different my kids are" should inform us that child development is an uneven process only partly tied to parenting (and no one knows exactly how much that "partly" is).”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Learning in an interactive setting as opposed to a passive one is conducive to the mix of soft and academic skills we're looking to develop in our kids.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Three psychosocial achievements - a sense of self, the belief that we can have an impact on our circumstances, and the ability to regulate our emotions - allow us to handle challenges, setbacks, and disappointments. These attributes are the scaffolding upon which intimacy, meaning, and mental health are built. Ultimately, autonomy - being capable of both healthy separation and healthy connection - signals the successful completion of adolescent tasks. In almost all cultures, adolescence begins with a bold psychological move away from parents and ends with a mature return to the family relationship and an expanded repertoire of friendships and intimate relationships.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“if our children are to thrive in a world that is rapidly evolving and full of uncertainty, they need less structure and more play.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Foundational skills are attitudes and beliefs that drive the way we approach the world. These traits will be as crucial to our children’s success as academic and technical skills. They are curiosity, creativity, flexibility, educated risk-taking, collaboration, perseverance, and self-regulation.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Without a solid ethical grounding, children risk growing into adults who, however outwardly accomplished, lack emotional depth, have impaired social and family relationships, and are vulnerable to depression and despair. But the danger goes further and broader: in the many interviews I conducted, the recurring theme was ethical accountability. Issues that are critical today will be urgent tomorrow. Who will regulate AI? Who will have access to the extraordinary medical breakthroughs that are surely coming? How will technological research be controlled? What reasoning will shape our decisions about energy production and fossil fuels? How do we prevent democracy from deteriorating under authoritarian encroachment? “Winner takes all” isn’t a moral philosophy that can successfully carry us through this century. Our children need to understand how to make complex decisions with moral implications and ramifications. More than any other area of concern I have after researching this book, I’ve concluded that it is exactly in this area of moral reasoning that the stakes are so high and our attention so lacking”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World – A Psychologist's Guide to Raising Resilient Kids

“we must be certain that our children can face these challenges armed with a well-developed moral compass.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“...research points to a particularly female aspect of human interaction called "emotional labor"...They found that the women "expressed optimism, calmness, and empathy even when these were not the emotions they were feeling" - a repressive facade familiar to many a mom. This is emotional labor and it is debilitating...And it contributes to an enduring stress gap between men and women, as observed by Kristin Wong...emotional labor is not circumstantial. It's an enduring responsibility based on the socialized gender role of women.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Kids who learn early in life that they're capable of mastering activities that at first feel a little stressful grow up better able to handle stress of all kinds.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Too many of the teenagers I encounter in my practice and across the country are late in developing what it will take to function as an adult and create adult relationships: agency, independence, intimacy, fortitude, and self-reliance. Often it's because their community (not just parents but also peers, teachers, and extended family) is focused exclusively on the high-school paper chase and fails to encourage these qualities. I try desperately to convince these teens and their parents that delaying the emotional work of adolescence is dangerous.

"We're discovering that the brain during adolescence is very malleable, very plastic," Steinberg says. "It has a heightened capacity to change in response to experience. That cuts both ways: On the one hand it means that the brain is especially susceptible to toxic experiences that can harm it, but it also means that the brain is susceptible to positive influences that can promote growth. That's an opportunity we're squandering.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“Adolescence is an inside job. In the 1990s, Suniya S. Luthar, Ph.D., studied adolescents and found that ninth-graders with an internal locus of control - those who felt they had some command over the forces shaping their lives - handled stress better than kids with an external orientation - those who felt others had control over forces shaping their lives...Locus of control is not an all-or-nothing concept. None of us are entirely reliant on one or the other...But more and more often, the teenagers I observe aren't even partially internally motivated. They persistently turn outward toward coaches, teachers, and parents...A startlingly large number of these teens are behaving like younger children. They're stuck performing the chief psychosocial tasks of childhood - being good and doing things right to please adults - instead of taking on the developmental work of separation and independence that is appropriate for their age. When faced with teenage-sized problems, they often have nothing more than the skills of a child.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“...many of my young patients are genuinely incapable of managing their own lives. Their parents have taken the reins...They have reached the conclusion that not only are they poorly equipped to deal with life, there's nothing they can do about it. They have no options or sense of agency. The term for that is learned helplessness: the belief that nothing you do can impact your environment. Accumulated disability is "I don't have the skills to do this." Learned helplessness is "It doesn't matter what I do. I'm powerless." These two conditions are intertwined - the teenagers' accumulated disabilities give credence to their belief that they don't have the skills or courage to change their situation.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

“We should be encouraging our children to push themselves, to develop their talents and passions, but we should also be aware that the bromide “You can do anything” is wishful thinking.”
― Madeline Levine, Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World