A renowned educator, she created an app to help parents with an approach that can be summed up in just five words. It is clear that she has proven herself, since her daughters have all studied in major universities and hold prestigious positions.
This is the goal of all parents: to see their children succeed in all aspects of life, especially professionally. If there is more than one path to achieve this, we have all already wondered what these families do where the children all hold prestigious positions: they are doctors, lawyers, managers, academics… It is not enough to be born into a privileged social environment (although that can help, of course): it also involves the way in which they were educated.
Esther Wojcicki, a renowned journalist and teacher at the famous Palo Alto High School in California, seems to have found an effective parenting approach: mother of three daughters, all of whom rose through the ranks to reach the top. They studied at Harvard, Yale and Stanford, three of the most prestigious American universities in the world. One became CEO of YouTube, the other co-founded the biotechnology company 23andMe, and the last is now a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. And according to their mother, this family success lies in an education method that can be summed up in just five words.
“Above all, I wanted my three daughters to develop critical thinking skills. I taught them to trust themselves and never fear failure. When they were little, I taught them to ‘fail fast and correct themselves’. Later, I summed up my vision of parenting with the acronym TRICK.”explains Esther Wojcicki to Business Insider. This approach means trust, respect, independence, collaboration and benevolence (Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, Kindness in English), which according to them are the keys to a “successful parenting”.
For the teacher, placing trust in a child “to accomplish a task, even one as simple as making a dessert”strengthens their autonomy and their own faith in their abilities. An essential quality, which recurs in each of the five principles it recommends: “Respect is mutual. Listen carefully to what the child has to say. Of course, as a parent, you will not always do what he wants, but at least discuss it with him before making a decision. Collaboration is much more effective than dictating the law to children. By collaborating with them, we promote their autonomy and show our trust in them. I have seen for myself that when students create the rules of the classroom, they are much more inclined to respect them”underlines Esther Wojcicki.
In short, it is by granting independence to your children “from a very young age” that we will make them autonomous adults who are not afraid to fail in order to succeed. And this does not happen through lax education, but above all through small, seemingly insignificant, everyday tasks: “My daughters started preparing their own breakfast when they were little. There was always a bit of a mess on the floor, but they loved helping themselves, (…) and they became resourceful.”
