Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wenders. I'm Kelly Corrigan and this week I'm wondering about

the role of humility in family life, particularly parenting. Why are we so sure we know enough

at any given moment to advise? What makes us think our plan is definitely better than

theirs? How tolerant are we of uncertainty? And if we're not, is that need to label and act

overriding the needs to listen and understand? My conversation partner today is Julie

Lithkat Hames, the author of How to Raise an Adult, and your turn, she's a former dean

of students at Stanford, and the mother of two young adults who, not unlike mine, would

like her to pipe down already. Join us. We'll be right back with Kelly Corrigan Wenders.

Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wenders. My thought partner today is Julie Lithkat Hames, and

we're doing a deep dive on what it looks like and sounds like to parent with just a bit

of intellectual humility, a posture and mindset that says there are limits to my knowledge,

and I am likely wrong about some piece or part of this situation, and all of us, of course,

have biases, blind spots, and problematic assumptions. We encourage you to share this

conversation with your parenting advisors, the people in your inner circle who you turn

to to help you be better at the very tricky job of raising people. Here's my conversation

with Julie Lithkat Hames.

Okay, so we are two parents who write and think and talk and study and interview a whole

bunch of other people to try to get our heads around how to be great parents. But what

I've been feeling lately is that a lot of times, at least for me, theory crashes into reality.

Like in the high stress moment, in the high impact moment, I feel like now, wait a minute,

I can't really let them adult themselves. So I wanted to have my friend Julie back on

because, first of all, I think she's the most popular episode we ever had. So hey, Julie.

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