How to Diversify Your Child’s Potential

Don't raise a college-obsessed robot

Investors are always told to “diversify” their portfolios.

Don’t put all your money in stocks — what if the market plunges? But don’t put all your money in bonds — you’ll miss the market rallies. And for goodness sake, don’t put all your money in one company.

Or, to put it an older way: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

But when it comes to our kids, many of today’s parents have been told not to diversify at all. Just make them college material.

Streamlining vs Diversifying

That has meant many childhoods concentrated on academic success and “resume-building.” Of course it’s great to learn how to write a persuasive essay (I’m doing that right now!) and some world history.

Nothing wrong with lacrosse or coding, either.

But the time and energy (and $$$) being devoted to resume-building can be draining. And the abilities kids develop beyond the classroom or extracurricular activity could end up being the most valuable of all.

Every fall I volunteer as an alumni interviewer for Yale. Over the years, I’ve interviewed over 100 students and I can say that all schoolwork and grinding extracurriculars makes for some dull boys and girls.

The Yale Hopefuls I Meet

The students I recommend are generally very excited about at least some facet of their formal education, but also about something they have discovered on their own. Often something quirky.

• One girl started a class on “Real World Skills” at her school after she found out her friend couldn’t sew a button on a coat.

• One boy started his own website business — and if a request got too technical, he outsourced it to Russian programmers.

• Another young man went to so many of his girlfriend’s younger brother’s baseball games, he eventually became the team’s coach.

Admissions officers read thousands of essays from excellent students. The officers are looking for something extra. Something that screams curiosity, or doggedness, or the ability to see and seize an opportunity.

The Skills Colleges and Businesses Need

The business world is seeking the same.

Human resources departments say “soft skills” are what today’s labor force is lacking. In a Wall Street Journal survey of nearly 900 executives, 92% said “soft skills” were equally — or more — important than technical skills. The buzz is that many young employees lack the ability to collaborate, innovate, and communicate in-real-life.

It’s time for us parents to realize that building a fort in the woods can teach kids everything they’d learn in Robotics Camp — and more. They still have to gather materials, come up with a plan, execute and test it. Often they work in teams.

But unlike Robotics campers, they are building the fort because of the fierce desire to make something in the world — something adults may not ever see or comment on or compliment. This is the “self-driven” element that psychologists are coming to recognize as crucial to emotional and real world success.

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Be sure to check out Lenore Skenazy’s nonprofit Let Grow and her much-loved book Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow.

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Non-Robot Skills

At my nonprofit organization Let Grow we call these “non-robot skills” — a skill set robots don’t share.

It is hard these days to give our kids free, unstructured and even unsupervised time. When no one is teaching kids something that has a name, like “chess,” the time can appear wasted.

Some time will be “wasted”! But some time is wasted in classes, homework, and extracurriculars, too. (Not to mention in the car rides there!)

The High Value of Wasted Time.

And ironically, that wasted time — when kids argue about what game to play, then organize the teams, then argue some more — is time “wasted” in social-emotional growth.

Play has always been how kids learn to make things happen, and engage.

There are a lot of hours in a week. Kids need some of them back to spend alone or with friends in ways that may not seem valuable, but they only seem to lack value because we haven’t trained ourselves to notice what’s really going on.

In front of my home this summer, I’ve watched a bunch of kids, maybe 6 to 15, spend HOURS learning how to get better and better at yo-yo, inventing new tricks, and showing each other how to do them. They are becoming yo-yo masters, which means masters of patience and practice.

Let’s allow kids to “diversify” beyond the skills they get in one formal setting or another.

The future (and maybe even Yale) awaits.