Professional Learning for Busy Educators

For much of the past half-century, children, adolescents and young adults in the U.S. have been saying they feel as though their lives are increasingly out of their control. At the same time, rates of anxiety and depression have risen steadily.

What's the fix? Feeling in control of your own destiny. Let's call it "agency."

"Agency may be the one most important factor in human happiness and well-being."

So write William Stixrud and Ned Johnson in their new book, The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives. Feeling out of control can cause debilitating stress and destroy self-motivation.

Building agency begins with parents, because it has to be cultivated and nurtured in childhood, write Stixrud and Johnson. But many parents find that difficult, since giving kids more control requires parents to give up some of their own.

How do children learn; and how can their environment help or hurt that process? The answer to both may lie in the first years of our lives. Casey Lew-Williams is on the faculty at Princeton University and co-Director of the Princeton Baby Lab. He talks to us about the best ways to support children’s growth, the impact of poverty on early learning, and why the most sophisticated educational toys are often less effective than simply playing, talking, singing, and cuddling.