Parenting

“Parenting” may not be the best word, since contributing your genes is pretty much the easiest and least interesting role I have to play as a parent to my two kids. And as the neologism alloparenting appreciates, a lot of the most important work of raising children is done by the other people in their lives. It takes a village and all that.

What I most want to teach my kids

• mindfulness, in order to understand how our minds work, and how to keep them from getting in the way of our happiness.
• nonviolent communication, in order to understand what we need and how to kindly and effectively meet our own and others’ needs
• ethics, in order to understand our responsibilities to each other
• systems thinking, in order to understand and effectively change the world for the better

We’re not meant to do this alone

This Twitter thread argues that the Western expectation that parents of newborns go it alone (and get back to work as soon as possible, if they even have paid parental leave, which only 19% do) may be a form of Manufactured time scarcity with the purpose of making parents ever more dependent on goods and services to stimulate the economy. Is it reasonable that having a child, a service necessary to perpetuate our species, is the largest expense for the average family? ($233,610 in 2015, the most recent report I could find, when the average home price was $176,000 by comparison)

Instructing Children

Show your children who you are

From Austin Kleon:

Your kids… They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are. (Jim Henson)

Avoid over-praising

As detailed in the book Punished by Rewards, research shows that extrinsic motivators like praise, money, and other and rewards produce at best only temporary behavior change, and in the long run can actually undermine a person’s interest in doing something. I wonder if this is related to hedonic adaptation, the way that increases or decreases in our emotional well-being tend to become the new normal as we return to a baseline level of happiness.

Avoid vague praise like “Good job”

Responding to a child’s actions with your own bland judgment is unhelpful is at least two ways. Unless the child asked for your opinion, interjecting it teaches them that your approval is the most important result of their accomplishment, when it shouldn’t be. And if the child does want your opinion, vague praise teaches them nothing about how to do it next time. Instead, try some of these alternatives instead:

• “Tell me about this!” to let the child share what they appreciate about what they’ve done, rather than centering your own opinion.
• “How did you do it [so well]?” so the child can reflect on what to do next time.
• “Thank you! I appreciate…” if the child has given you their work, to foreground how the child made you feel, rather than your judgment of what they did.
• “Hmm… I wonder what you’ll come up with next.” to emphasize that it’s their journey to discover what they like and how they like to do it.
• “What did you learn from this?” to help them learn from experience.

“be careful” isn’t helpful

“be careful” isn’t specific enough to be helpful and instills empty anxiety

https://www.backwoodsmama.com/2018/02/stop-telling-kids-be-careful-and-what-to-say-instead.html

Help your child foster awareness by saying:

• Notice how… these rocks are slippery, that branch is strong.
• Do you see… the poison ivy, your friends nearby?
• Try moving… your feet carefully, quickly, strongly.
• Try using your… hands, feet, arms, legs.
• Can you hear… the rushing water, the singing birds, the wind?
• Do you feel… stable on that rock, the heat from the fire?
• Are you feeling… scares, excited, tired, safe?

Help your child problem solve by saying:

• What’s your plan… if you climb that boulder, cross that log?
• What can you use… to get across, for your adventure?
• Where will you… put that rock, climb that tree, dig that hole?
• How will you… get down, go up, get across?
• Who will… be with you, go with you, help you if?

This applies to management as well. “Be careful with long-running migrations” neither tells people what perils to look out for nor how to get around them. As a manager and parent, I’m trying to remove “be careful” from my vocabulary.

This relates to giving good feedback, too.

The Way We Speak to our Children Becomes Their Inner Voice

When helping kids navigate their tumultuous emotions, achievements, and mistakes, talk to them the way you want them to talk to themselves the rest of their lives, because that will be the result.

• Name emotions. It can be hard in the middle of a meltdown, but asking questions like “Are you feeling mad/sad because…?” can help kids recognize their own emotions, an important step toward greater self-awareness.

Quotes

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Metaphors

• What Kind Of Parent Are You: Carpenter Or Gardener?
• “Most parents conceive of themselves as teachers when they would be much better off thinking of themselves as librarians who provide their children with the time, space, materials, and resources to grow into whatever they want to become.” — Austin Kleon