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Jessica Lahey

Commentator

Jessica Lahey is a teacher, speaker, and author of The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. She writes the bi-weekly column The Parent-Teacher Conference at The New York Times and is a contributing writer at the Atlantic. You can find out more about her work at www.jessicalahey.com.

  • In 1964, a fifteen-year-old boy named Gerald Gault was arrested after he and a friend made a lewd phone call to their neighbor. Over the next few weeks,…
  • My father has cultivated some wonderful friendships in his adopted hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts, but one group of friends stands out for their…
  • When the Chocolate Shop in Hanover, New Hampshire, closed this year, we lost more than a source for our favorite treats. We lost a family landmark. Where…
  • By age 29, Albert Schweitzer had constructed a life of comfort and respectability. He’d earned a Ph.D., worked as principal of a theological seminary,…
  • On summer mornings, I slip on my tall boots and head out my back door, plastic bowl in hand, hungry for my breakfast. As I walk across the lawn toward the…
  • This morning, my younger son woke me up by shouting his usual complaint,"I HAVE NO PANTS!"My reply is always the same."Do you mean 'I have no pants' in…
  • For the past couple of Christmases, we’ve tried to orient our giving toward the acquisition of experiences over things. Either we go away somewhere…
  • In his book Homesick and Happy: How Time Away From Parents Can Help a Child Grow, child psychologist Michael Thompson describes a question he poses at his…
  • A couple of years ago, I faced a teacher milestone. One of my students died, someone I'd visited and emailed and laughed with in the weeks and days before…
  • We are at that point in the winter where our best-laid plans of last fall have become untidy. Orderly rows of seasoned wood, have become jumbled chaos,…