Let Grow

The Let Grow Experience provides opportunities to succeed—and fail a bit—allowing the chance to identify strengths, build self-confidence, and cultivate a growth mindset not only for students but also for their parents. Varying emotions will come up, each one a learning opportunity. Experience is a great way to figure out interests and find a passion.

The strength of a person’s social awareness is demonstrated through their words and actions, especially in spontaneous situations. Let Grow experiences can be powerful opportunities to develop their social awareness capacity through their participation in activities that expose them to all kinds of diversity and that help others.

Trying something new on your own can be stressful. Let Grow experiences require goal-setting and self motivation and can put children in new situations that create opportunities for impulse control and stress-management.

The Let Grow Experience fosters the development of relationship skills in an environment closer to the real world, in the out-of-school contexts of kids’ independence projects. Kids communicate, cooperate and negotiate with constantly shifting groups of multiple ages, creating their own rules and handling conflicts. Projects that involve public places often require impromptu communication with strangers. What’s better for relationships than building them in real life?

Let Grow experiences are to be done without adult help, which means that children have the opportunity to analyze situations, identify and solve problems, and evaluate consequences for themselves in real life, not just hypothetical situations.

"This Simple Fix Could Help Kids with Anxiety" by Dr. Camilo Ortiz and Lenore Skenazy in The New York Times (2023)

"To Help Kids Find Their Passion, Give Them Free Time" by Lenore Skenazy in Reason Magazine (2020).

"Lost Learning: The Age of Bubble-Wrapped Kids" by Lenore Skenazy for the American Association of School Administrators (2019)

"No Child Left Alone: Moral Judgments about Parents Affect Estimates of Risk to Children" by Ashley J. Thomas, P. Kyle Stanford, Barbara W. Sarnecka in Collabra (2016)