Meet Keith McCurdy: Special Parent Session Speaker
We are delighted to introduce you to one of our new ThinkWell speakers for 2023, Keith McCurdy. Keith comes to us highly recommended by students and parents alike as a truly phenomenal speaker. He will give two talks to students midweek as well as a special parent session on Wednesday night entitled “Raising Sturdy Kids.”
Who Is Keith McCurdy?
Keith McCurdy
Based in Roanoke, VA, Keith is a family and parenting educator and consultant, a nationally recognized speaker, founder and president of Live Sturdy, and president and CEO of Total Life Counseling. He has worked with more than 15,000 (you read that right!) families and individuals for over 30 years in the field of mental health. A licensed professional counselor and therapist known for grounding his advice and ideas in (capital T) Truth, he gives parents tools and perspective to help their kids grow into sturdy, mature adults.
To give you a firsthand glimpse into Keith’s heart for the next generation and for families, read more below.
From Keith:
As we have gone further down the road of embracing the “therapeutic” approach to parenting, we have lost both our ability to parent well and our ability to raise children who can handle the normal rigors of life.
When parents, knowingly or unknowingly, minimize natural disappointments for their children, or intervene to rescue them from difficulty or relational conflict, they win a short-term victory at the cost of a much larger long-term goal.
In the moment, easy feels great. But struggle is inherently uncomfortable and often upsetting to children. The reality is that struggle is also required in order for children to grow into “sturdy adults”—adults who can face life’s challenges with maturity, resilience, and perseverance. If we want our children to be able to do hard things, we must allow them to struggle.
The irony is that despite all the effort we spend trying to make our children happy, what we are actually accomplishing is ensuring they are fragile and will never be able to experience true joy.
When people are fragile, they shy away from difficulty and challenge in order to protect themselves. But this means they miss out on the richest experiences life has to offer. Fragile people can’t handle the rigors of relationships and life, so they can’t experience true joy.
The cycle perpetuates itself through generations. Adults who did not learn to struggle well themselves will raise children who do not know how to struggle well. The impacts of this progression are felt not only by individuals and families, but by society at large. Children who learn to struggle well throughout their school-age years will grow up to be the natural leaders of the next generation.
The eventual outcome of embracing the “therapeutic” paradigm is a student body and parent community that is naturally averse to being challenged, working hard, and struggling to truly contemplate that which it True, Beautiful, and Good.
All three [of my ThinkWell] sessions will focus on how we can both live sturdier lives informed by Truth and, as parents, raise sturdier children who ultimately are prepared to live well in the midst of a broken world.
Keith’s ThinkWell Talks
Wednesday afternoon, June 28 - 2 student sessions
“What Shapes Our Perceptions?”
“Do I Want to Be the Statistic of My Generation?”
Wednesday evening, June 28 - special session for parents (open to the public as well, as space allows): “Raising Sturdy Kids”
More on Keith and His Ministry
Check out the Live Sturdy website here.
