Are you driving yourself crazy trying to engineer your child’s future? According to Bryan Caplan, all you’ll get for your trouble is a headache and a kid on the exact same path as before, but crankier.

Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University and author of “Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids”, believes that a “rat race” approach to parenting creates unnecessary tension between parents and kids, without offering a good return on investment. Here are the Top 5 lessons we learned from Bryan Caplan to avoid painful parenting. Be sure to stick around for #1!