Risky Business?

Jul 092012
 
Child 1

Child 1 (Photo credit: Tony Trần)

How do parents define a sane and healthy level of risk when raising children?  Too much caution can create an unnecessary level of fear.  Not enough can lead to injury.

Whether in the car, at home, on the beach or at the playground, parents are faced with lots of opportunities to make decisions about what’s safe.  How do we teach our kids to make good, safe decisions without scaring the daylights out of either us or them in the process?

Where’s the balance?  It might be back at the playground, the first time you took your little one to try  out the seesaw.

Your child had no idea what this piece of equipment was, what it could do or what would come next… Lifted and carefully placed on the high end of the apparatus, we held her there, mid-air, for a few seconds to feel the thrill (and maybe a little bit of fear) that goes along with being two feet tall and ‘flying’ five or six feet in the air.

She was able to manage this remarkable feat because you –her parent and protector — stood  between her and the ground.

Then, it was over.  She has had her introduction.  It was fun.  We didn’t move right into “see-sawing” ~ we quit while we were ahead.

Of course, if your children are older, you can “fast forward” to age six or seven.  That same small child now rides that seesaw like a surfboard, running from one end to the other and delighting in the loud CRASH that happens some time after she crosses the center of the board.

What has changed?

Balance and coordination are better.    She has more experience with gravity along with a pretty good idea of what she can get the piece of equipment to do.

We teach risk management to our kids like we teach anything else — in small doses and matched to their age, skill-level and interests.  What was ‘risk’ for a toddler is ‘baby stuff’ for a third grader.

Seesaw

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How do parents define success and what DO kids need to succeed?  Get your electronic copy of What Kids Need to Succeed: Four Foundations of Adult Achievement  for only $1.00 by clicking this link and entering the coupon code NA64P.   Take your place in this important conversation.

SOS: Share Our Successes

Feb 232012
 
Tying Shoes

Image by nlnnet via Flickr

When What Kids Need to Succeed was first published, I was not prepared for the question I was most often asked:  How do you define success?

I was surprised for two reasons.  First, people generally sounded very defensive when they asked. (I still don’t get it.)  Second, I don’t think it had ever occurred to me to try to define success for another adult:  I’ve always considered  that a very personal decision. It’s a big part of what the book is about.

I do believe that “success” is a bit of a moving target … and that we can give our kids building blocks they’ll be able to use at many different times in their lives.  One way to do this is by using the  “Think-Aloud” technique that friend and literacy advocate Esther Jantzen wrote about a while back.  (You can go back and read that post here.)

Why couldn’t we try that technique to help kids recognize the many ways they are successful each day?  What if we help our kids to ‘Share Our Successes’ about things that we see in our homes, on the news or at the grocery store?  It’s an ‘activity’ that can be added to your busy day, simply by stopping with your child to check in and share about the world around you.

It begins with ‘noticing.’  What successes do you see around you? Do you have family members who have learned to read or write their names?  Tie their shoes?  Ride a bike?  Gotten a new job?  Accomplished a new habit for several days in a row?  Achieved a new level of health?  What about new businesses that open, playgrounds cleaned or spider webs built?

Sound silly?  Maybe.  But  lots of kids need help to apply an abstract concept across lots of situations before it starts to make sense to them.  So, get creative when defining “success.”

Helping our kids learn to talk about ideas is a great way to connect and to learn.  When focusing on successes and accomplishments around us, here are some questions you might try:

  •  I wonder who came up with that idea?
  • How did they do that?
  • What did they need to learn?
  • Do you think it was easy?
  • Do you think they had to solve any problems along the way?

Take your time. Listen carefully. Encourage your child’s observations… without being pushy. While you may not come up with  the definitive definition of “success” you’ll show your child the value of looking for “what worked.”  It’s a great building block for mastering creative visualization!

Time to Stop Caring?

Jan 242012
 
English: France in 2000 year (XXI century). Fu...

Image via Wikipedia

One of the things I love about my work is the opportunity to collaborate with some wonderful people.  In a phone call last week one of them commented on some significant changes she had noticed in my work.   “The gloves are off” is how she described the change.  “How did you do that?”

The short answer?  I stopped caring.  While parents, kids and families matter more now than ever, I quit bothering myself about  things that other people tell me I should care about.  Instead of obsessing about “traffic” and “reach” and “influence”  and “metrics,” I’m back to being me: sharing good content as often as I can, trusting that it will reach someone who will benefit from it… when they need to connect with it.

It’s not that I don’t need or want feedback.  I like to learn… but it was getting in the way.

So how did I learn to stop caring? The way I learn best:  the hard way.

I worried and fretted. I checked and measured… and drove myself half insane.  Then, as it sometimes does, life added some stresses of its own.  For the privacy of those involved I will say only that some people I care deeply about faced some very difficult circumstances.  To make matters worse, there was nothing I could do to help.

What’s that got to do with parenting?  Or the Four Foundations?  Quite a lot, actually.

Tough times can make us bitter or make us better.   If we pay attention, illness, injury and error can reconnect us to what matters most.  It’s similar to what happens when we realize we can’t smooth all the bumps in the road our kids will travel: we decide to teach them to navigate the bumps.  And with that learning comes a level of fearlessness that frees us to give our best efforts and “let go” of the results.

When we share this attitude with our kids they often become too busy “taking care of business” to hear the warnings from the people who want to tell them they’re doomed to fail!

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