style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">Besotted new parents often believe their baby is a genius. They feel a huge but simple responsibility: to guide and nurture this little bundle of inherited potential. Then, one day, reality dawns. Our children aren’t obedient prodigies. They are flawed individuals with argumentative minds of their own and don’t want to adopt our interests or even follow our sage advice. As the psychology professor Peter Gray reminds us in Free to Learn: “What we call ‘reproduction’ is not. It doesn’t produce another you ... Nor is the child yours. Your child is its own being who, like every child, comes into the world designed to grow, learn, and chart a life course. You are simply part of the environmental substrate that your child uses to create himself or herself. Try to be a good substrate by providing what your child needs, but don’t assume that it is your responsibility to direct your child’s development.”