Austin Scholar #101: How to help your kid do impressive things. Period.
& why I don’t want to be “good for my age”
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I don’t want to be “good for my age”
How to help your kid do impressive things. Period.
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I don’t want to be “good for my age”
While I was writing my 100th newsletter (which took a very long time – those hundred insights weren’t easy), I reflected on what allowed me to have these ideas and accomplish these great things.
And it all really came down to one core value: “You don’t want to be judged as ‘good for your age’ – you want to be good. Period.”
This value has been instilled in me since I was very young, when my dad started me on DreamBOX, a learning app that allows students to move through academic content at their own pace. My age didn’t mean my abilities were hindered by my grade level – I was able to move above and beyond through courses, eventually completing eighth-grade DreamBOX by the time I finished fourth grade.
In sixth grade, my Alpha classmates and I took the entrance exam to Austin Community College, and we passed it. By sixth grade, I was already a college student, ready to take on my very first college class: accounting. Yes, tiny little sixth-grade me took a college accounting class. And I got an A on my final.
I took this message, this value, to my sophomore year of high school, when I signed up to join David Perell’s Write of Passage, an online writing class for adults. When David realized a fifteen-year-old had signed up for his class, he was – justifiably – wary. I had to prove to him that my writing and my ideas were good enough to stand with the grown-ups. And after just the first session, David sent me DMs he was receiving from other adults in the course explaining that they learned a lot from being in a breakout room with me – and that my writing was impressive. David was impressed – and I had proven to myself, yet again, that age was not a constraint. After Write of Passage, David hired me to create a similar online writing course for teenagers, because he too was now convinced of what teenagers are capable of.
And finally, the summer before my senior year of high school, my sister, our friend, and I were tasked to launch Learn and Earn in Ukraine. During our time in Europe, we did things no adult could even dream of – launched a program to help thousands of Ukrainian refugees get their educations back on track, lived on our own in a war-torn country for three weeks, and wrote and filmed a high-quality documentary about our journey. For me, the bar is not “good for my age.” I want to do impressive things, regardless of how old I am.
How to help your kid do impressive things. Period.
Now it’s your turn to help your kid do impressive things. Period. To teach them that their age doesn’t hinder their ability to do something cool.
It all starts with a mindset shift. You yourself have to believe that your kid can do something awesome. When you doubt, they can feel your apprehension and will remember your statements about how “this is really hard for your age, so don’t worry if it doesn’t work out.” You have to believe in your kid first and support all of their ambitions.
Your kid doesn’t have to start by creating an Olympic-level project. There are a ton of different, smaller projects your kid can do to start showing that they’re actually good at something, not just “good for their age.” Here are a few examples: