How to Raise a Kid Who Can Survive Failure | Challenge Accepted

Becky Kennedy (0:00)

What if the most important thing we need to build for our kids, for them to be successful later in life, is total comfort with failure? What if confidence isn't the belief, I'm gonna be successful? It's even if I struggle, I can survive it. My guest today is one of the best examples of this I've ever met. Kellie Gerardi grew up in Jupiter, Florida, not far from the Kennedy Space Center. She was a quiet kid, a daydreamer, a lover of science fiction and space, and she wanted to go there. But there was a problem. There wasn't an obvious path for someone like her. She wasn't a military pilot. She wasn't a test pilot. She wasn't on some predetermined astronaut track.

She built her own path. And in November, 2023, Kellie flew to space as a researcher on a dedicated science mission aboard Virgin Galactic. What I want to understand with you today is something I am actively trying to figure out in my own life with my own kids.

What happened in her life to get her there? Not just become an astronaut, but what happens in someone's early experiences that allows them to say, I can figure this out. I can take the next step. I can overcome the obstacle. I know this isn't going to be easy, but I can do it anyway. I think that's what we want for our own kids. And so to have someone who had all of that happen for them through the process of struggling and failure and a ton of uncertainty, I feel like together we have to learn from her. And that's what we're going to do.

I'm Dr. Becky. This is the first of a four-part special series with Hot Wheels. I'm sitting down with risk takers, high achievers, big dreamers, and people who have been faced with impossible odds, and they keep going. Years of hard work, facing lots of big hurdles, and every one of them at some point said, Challenge Accepted. All right, let's jump in. Kellie Gerardi.

Okay, Kellie, before we talk about space, I want to talk about little Kellie. Who were you at eight years old?

Kellie Gerardi (2:16)

Oh, at eight years old? I was a very curious child. I think I was a very imaginative little girl.

I was also an only child, so I had a lot of time to myself, a lot of room to learn how to entertain myself, and just a lot of endless curiosity about the world.

Becky Kennedy (2:36)

So if you think about your parents or adults who saw you at that age, what did they see in you? Like, what was their sense?

Kellie Gerardi (2:46)

Yeah, a couple different things. I think my curiosity probably manifested in a couple different ways. I think I was the kid who always had her nose in a book. And not to say that these were always educational books. It's just I loved reading genuinely and generally. So that was probably the biggest punishment and threat in my house, was taking a book away, because there wasn't that much that would bother me besides that. Also, I think it's important to caveat, I grew up in the early 90s. So this was pre-iPhone, pre-iPad, pre-internet in my house. So if you were a curious kid and you wanted to know anything, it was like books were your gateway.

Becky Kennedy (3:23)

Yep.

Kellie Gerardi (3:24)

So I think that's so much of what my parents always tell me. They remember my mom jokes that it was always such a joy to spend time with me in the car, because I would just be in the backseat, kind of not speaking, immersed in my own world. And I'm getting a full dose of that with my eight-year-old now. She is just on the way to school, on the way back, she's got her head in diary of a wimpy kid, and she's just silent like a chauffeur. So I'm getting a little taste of what it must have been like for my mom.

Becky Kennedy (3:53)

Okay, so that's what they saw. And yeah, what was going on inside you that maybe people couldn't see?

Kellie Gerardi (3:58)

Yeah, I don't think I probably would have described myself back then as curious. I don't think I would have put that language around it.

I definitely felt like I loved to dive into obsessions. I loved to dive deep. For example, if I really loved a book series, it wasn't enough for me to just read the book. It was like I was dressing up. If it was Harry Potter, I was in a robe. I was at the Midnight Book Release, you know, at Barnes and Noble. I was fully immersed in the world. And, you know, that crossed over to science, to space. I wanted to see things in real life that I read about. I wanted to be a part of the community. I've never been a casual fan of anything my entire life. I've always wanted to be part of the fandom, part of the community, all in.