“It’s so easy as a parent to project your own hopes and ambitions on your child, even when you think you’re not. Getting beyond that to see your kid as a person independent of you is the goal.”
Atlantic Monthly literary editor Ann Hulbert joins the show to talk about her new book, Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies (Knopf). We get into the history of child prodigies and what we can learn from the rest of their lives, how the prodigy experience can be a version of normal childhood writ large, and how to deal with the “race to nowhere” aspects of our high achievement culture. We also talk about Ann’s career as a literary editor (from The New Republic to Slate to The Atlantic), the advantages of living outside the New York publishing ecosystem, the challenges of assigning books for review, the perils of monomania, her father’s belief that children are “guests in the house”, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy Off the Charts!
“Pursuing something without the expectation of being really good at it was one of the pleasures of my childhood.”
