The Parenting FastCast

https://youtu.be/CyElHdaqkjo

 Yesterday we gave a review of the Ted Talk listed in our shown notes. How to raise successful kids -- without over-parenting | Julie Lythcott-Haims

We talked yesterday about the checklist childhood.  You have to have kids that are athletic, community service, high SAT, piano playing, code breaking, social geniuises.

Phew. Exhausting just to write.

 But today we get into her statement to “Widen your definition of success”.

    Not all success stories end with doctor or lawyer.

It’s at this point she gets into my favorite spot. Of course it’s my favorite topic because I preach it all the time.

She labels it  “Self efficacy” The idea that one's actions lead to ones outcomes. 

Or defined another way, “an individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals.”

And newsflash – they don’t get to achieve their goals with the bulldozer parent writing the script for their lives. As Julie says, “They have to do all the things for themselves. The hoping and coping.”

So we need to back off and let go right? No. That’s not what she’s saying. And this is my favorite part because we’ve talked about the 4 parenting types, and I don’t condone the free range childhood-the total letting go. We do condone the authoritative type. That type which teaches lessons through reason and consequence.

 

Julie goes on to say that our job as parents is to create a foundation. Again not a total checklist of goals completed. She wants us to build the ‘wellness to be successful.’ … that’s powerful man. Our job as parents is to create “well” children. Mentally stable and capable to succeed later in life.

She says, “Childhood is a foundation – and the best foundations are of love and chores.”

                Yup, chores she mentions specifically, you’ll have to watch the study to learn about the Harvard grant study, but chores are a betterment to the whole. And that’s a good lesson.

Your kids are not bonsai trees - they are wildflowers. Your job is to nourish them whatever genus and species they are.

https://youtu.be/CyElHdaqkjo

 There’s a TED talk out on the youtubes. I’ll include a link to it … on my youtube account. My youtube account and our website house our show notes, so wherever you consume content, please bring us along.

Well the title of this TED talk – pretty straightforward: How to raise successful kids -- without over-parenting | Julie Lythcott-Haims. I felt a connection right away when she said, she never intended to set out to be a parenting expert. Yea, that was me too. A most unlikely person to be giving parenting advice. Not because we know too little, but likely because the more you start to know about any one subject, the more you see all endless possibilities within it. And that can be daunting for me. The second thing she said that I understood: “The checklisted childhood”. You know, that list that we all believe is out there, maybe tucked away in a college admission counselor’s desk, which, if you can complete every item on that list, with distinction, then we can get our kid into that very fine university.

  But we also have that question in the back of our heads, “What’s it all for?”

   Success to you and I isn’t necessarily Duke, or Cornell. In fact, a lot of people I know would kick themselves in the ass had they become the type of person who is solely defined by their college.

In her speech, Julie says; maybe we're afraid they won't have a future we can brag about.

And that sounds so 2019. To be a good parent you have to have things to brag about … but not brag too much.

I’m a little 50/50 on this one: I mean, if parenting is the most important job we'll ever have then why the hell shouldn't I do everything in my power to succeed at it?

                And I will continue to try. And I will tell you all to try.

                But I think hoping for a degree of perfection. (One that we weren't asked to do either), is too much.

You know one thing I bet none of us have ever told our children?  "You've done enough"

And you wonder why the millennials lead in anxiety diagnoses.

Julie says, “If you have the courage to look at it. We're saying "You can't handle this without me".”

That’s a damaging thing to tell a child, and tomorrow we’ll be back here for part 2 of this response to help you understand How to raise successful kids -- without over-parenting.

We’ll see you tomorrow.

Viewer discretion advised. Today’s counsel comes from Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty is the man. And when I say “the man” I really mean he’s the man at making us feel like we don’t know shit. Yea, we want to live our lives in the right way. We want to find happiness deep inside of us that’s strong enough to battle, and beat, the demons. We want to look to people who have it figured out and are willing to give us the advice for free.

That’s Jay Shetty.

But you can say some pretty clichéd things on the internet and you’ll get a pretty big following.

 So I need your help to figure out if what he says is true, false, or somewhere in the middle.

   

He says,

                ▪ Your worth is not defined by your kids bank balance. Your parenting is not validated by their test scores. Your success is not based on the car they drive.

                                ▪ What matters is the relationship with them.

                                ▪ If money power and fame didn't exist would you be happy with who your children are?

                                ▪ We're covering our insecurities with their success.

 

Remember what I needed help with? Is it true, false, or in the middle? If you’re a listener of this channel, I think you’re smart enough to get the right answer. In the middle. Life is not black or white. It’s grey.

And while our relationship matters the most with our kids - that friendship relationship is one that you have to keep at arms length. Are we covering our insecurities with our children’s successes? Maybe, but we all cover our insecurities with something. It’s better than booze, and it’ll make a lasting impact on the human race should we raise a successful nurse, receptionist, or banker. Remember nurses, receptionsists, and bankers turn out to be parents too. 

 But there are some good lessons – And one that we’ll get into tomorrow as well – let’s not limit our kids to the very narrow subset of careers that enable ultra high bank balances, or provide fancy cars.

Let’s love them for who they are and build a nice foundation for whatever success looks like for them.

This week we started in to the 5 factors of personality. Do you remember part 4 from yesterday? Correct. Agreeableness. That being compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

Agreeableness is a goal. Everyone must get along in the real world. Except for one of my current customers, he’s trying to suck out every last ounce from our business, all for his gain, and that makes me hate my job. Working with people who are all in it for themselves – don’t get the most out of people.

 But part 5 is about Neuroticism.

  A scary word honestly. That balance between (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident).

It should be clear by now that I am to help you raise secure children. We talk about developing confidence. We try to give examples how you push your children to do things on their own. We talk about how ‘kids are what they think you think they are’.

It all goes back to doing it for themselves. And at times learning from their mistakes.

Neuroticism: The tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability

Family life and the way someone was raised will also affect these traits. Twin studies and other research have shown that about half of the variation between individuals results from their genetics and half from their environments.

So conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism are the 5 factors of your child.

Learn them, test them, push your kids to do more and be there for support. But love whoever they are and make sure you tell them that.

This week we started in to the 5 factors of personality. Do you remember part 3 from yesterday? Correct. Extraversion. That ability to gain energy from a loud crazy surrounding, or Introversion, that ability to recharge your batteries from some alone time.

 Today we talk about agreeableness. That’s the 4th personality trait that we come up with.

   In researching these five factors, I found that there have been all kinds of theories about personalities over the years. Some crazy, some obvious. But someone spent a life’s work and came up with 4,000 different traits that define who we are. I feel bad for this person. A life’s work only to have the world devolve into a place where people form opinions over clickbait headlines, while tripping into mall water features because they were texting.

Anyway, Agreeableness is being between: (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/detached).

So this is a clear winner right? Friendly wins. All day. Every day.

Probably wrong. High agreeableness can be seen as naive or submissive.

And some of the great leaders or maybe bosses you’ve had have challenged you instead of agreeing with you.

My belief is life is a balance of these two. The challenge of raising girls who stand up for themselves, but also work well in teams (a requirement of the real world right?). That’s a challenge that’s always existed, but I think it’s made more tough today.

First, I think schools are actually great places for figuring this out. You don’t realize it but sending your kid to school is probably enough. Providing near constant social interaction is the game, and school is that.

I believe our job as parents is to talk with them when they get home about what they went through. To ask them if that group project was fun, or worrisome. To give encouragement that they can do it, but when they get home, they can hang in their room for 20 minutes to unwind.

If that’s what they need.

This week we started in to the 5 factors of personality. Do you remember part 2 from yesterday? Correct. Conscientiousness. That efficient & organized attitude vs that easy going and careless attitude.

I concede on this one that raising highly conscientious kids is likely the proper goal here, but we all fall in the middle of that scale somewhere.

 But today we talk about extraversion.

  And when my now 6 year old was 2-3 years old, and being our little prince, and being the only one at the times, AND being around two more introverted than extraverted people – I found it completely understandable that he was very slow to open up or get comfortable in new surroundings with new people.

And I thought he would be like that well into middle school. But, credit to my wife, we got him out there and did a variety of activities. When we took him to open gym time in the winter, we said, go have fun, and left it at that. Sure we’d comfort him in the beginning, but the goal was always to get him, maybe even require him, to break free.

And last year on the first day of school, and with some preparation, he walked into his classroom and sat down and opened a book and didn’t look back. He’s still a ‘reflective’ personality. He’s still a bit aloof, and reserved, but we know that know. We, as parents, know that we can push him to be bigger than his feelings, and he has the confidence to believe that in himself.

 

Those are the wins you should be shooting for. It’s easy to shoot for best math student, best baseball player, or most funny/popular. It’s the getting them to be introverted or be extraverted, but be that on their own. Those are the wins we should be shooting for

https://www.verywellmind.com/the-big-five-personality-dimensions-2795422

 Yesterday we started in to the 5 factors of personality. Do you remember part 1? Correct. Openness.

Do you remember which facet of openness (more or less) you should drive your kid to become?

Correct – there is no right answer. While we want to mold minds, we also need to understand and love who they are. Start with that, and use these to guide you on the parenting path.

   It is important to note that each of the five personality factors represents a range between two extremes. For example, extraversion represents a continuum between extreme extraversion and extreme introversion. In the real world, most people lie somewhere in between the two polar ends of each dimension.

 So what’s number 2?

   Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless).

To all the highly organized, always on time to their well prepared schedules – this will be a hard sell to raise an easy going, “Type B”.

 This is the tendency to be organized and dependable, show self-discipline, act dutifully, aim for achievement, and prefer planned rather than spontaneous behavior. High conscientiousness is often perceived as being stubborn and focused. Low conscientiousness is associated with flexibility and spontaneity, but can also appear as sloppiness and lack of reliability.

   I think it’s fair to try and raise conscientious kids. Kids who show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement is a pretty universal goal. And we here try to help with that with our daily lessons. But understand your kid too. They may just feel a little more spontaneity than you and I do, and that can be allowed too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

 Many contemporary personality psychologists believe that there are five basic dimensions of personality, often referred to as the "Big 5" personality traits. They are extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. We’ll get into these over the next week. But first we have to talk about the “Why”.

So to understand your kid – but really to understand any human – These are 5 things that start to define them. Where the “Them” is personality.

First, I’m blown away by the concept that the sum of these 5 parts is what makes all of us unique and individual. 8 billion people on the planet and they’re all different.

Second. We often think of the 8 billion other people as being different than us. Take a Mongolian, speaking a different language, growing up in a rural farm, never having heard of the ‘Grand Canyon’ and you think it’s impossible to find something in common. False. There is a Mongolian with these 5 similar personality traits as you. That’s crazy.

And third – like any good engineer I think I can build things and people. And to build my son up I think it’s important to try and guide – not create a personality – but understand my kid’s personality and help him based on what he is.

 So what is part number one?

  The first factor is “Openness to Experience”. (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious).

Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience.

And I have to jump right in here and say there is no right answer. Your kid may be curious or he may be cautious.

Great for them. Tell them that’s what you love about them. Say, “I love that you request we brush our teeth each night.”

Now you think the right answer is that openness to experience is that the more open you are, the better you are. It’s not true. In this 3 minutes we can’t dive deep enough to explain the differences, so you’ll have to trust this snippet here:

  “those with low openness seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance and are characterized as pragmatic and data-driven.”

   What does a pragmatic, data driven, perseverance person look like? It may look like Zuckerberg. I don’t know Zuck, but that programmer’s mind he has is data driven. And he’s persevered through a lot – that’s called grit.

  So don’t try to mold your kid. Give him or her opportunities and see how they react. See how open they are to experience.

  We’ll be back tomorrow with Part 2 of the 5 factors of personality.

We made it through the whole winter. But now my 6 year old comes up with a cold. And he may have had a bug over the winter, I just don’t keep a logbook of every sniffle. But a small summer cold isn’t much to complain about, until it’s your 6 year old and he picks at his nose all the time.  So I find myself saying things like, “that’s gross”, or being very short, “Go wipe your nose”. But essentially, I’m complaining.

 So I as I was running through my podcast notes, I came across this phrase.

   Request, don’t complain.

And we all have things that get our goat. We do need to correct unacceptable behaviors as parents. But first – let’s go back to an old lesson and define what’s unacceptable. Is Swinging the legs at the dinner table unacceptable? It may not be. You may want control over your kids limbs … but their his limbs. If they’re kicking you. Yes. If they are damaging the table. Yes. If he’s just a fidgeter. We need to back off.

 

In fact - side story here.

                Kids need rules and limits in their lives. They need the structure. They need to learn how to delay their own gratification, especially in this instant-gratification, right-now world we live in. Do, however, choose your battles wisely, too many rules can cause rebellion.

 

But on the unacceptable things; in essence what we really want is for something to change.

And the most natural way is to yell. Or demand.

But the most effective way is to ask.

“In the future, if you use a Kleenex, I would really appreciate it if you put them in the trash. Thanks."

And when it happens. Say thanks.

And when it doesn’t happen. Well, things can’t happen until it gets done. “Sorry, I can’t play with you with all of these Kleenex’s not in the trash”.

It’s hard. I admit. But it’s the best approach, if you can hack it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/helicopter-parents-economy.html

 Based off of a New York Times article, this article includes the obligatory clickbait headline. And that’s the problem with today’s information – people judge the book by it’s cover. They justify their thoughts by a headline.

So more than just having The Parenting Fastcast get you the details, the guts of the article, we hope to be your trusted source. But that means we have to dive deeper.

 So what’s this article really say?

   Well it turns out that at its most basic it says that parents who spend time with their kids help their kids succeed. Parents who are active in parenting raise more successful kids.  And if that’s the wide definition of helicopter parenting that they want to use then I’m all for it. Increasing hands-on caregiving – that’s a good thing.

That’ll get you about 50% of the way there. So for all you mothers and fathers out there killing yourself over parenting – it’s a good start. For the uninvolved fathers out there – we need to work on it.

And the other points of the article are that there are more successful parents than others. And the drill sergeant parent we talked about in the VERY beginning of Season 5 isn’t it. It’s the “authoritative” parent that is the winner. It’s them that set their kids up for success, and a lifetime of increased salary, and happier lives.

Remember authoritative parents “use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them.”

 

So keep on listening here and we’ll keep on giving advice on ways to talk with your kids. Reason with them even if they don’t seem to reason on their own, and hopefully, just hopefully. We’ll change the next generation for the better.