“I know nothing but my own daughter.”
Let your kids know how important they are to you.
Guerilla Tip: Tell your kids that they are the most important thing in your life, but not the only thing in your life.
That statement is no insult. It conveys you love them more than anything else, and you also have other interests. You love them, but do not rely on them for life’s fulfillment. You do not depend on them to keep you going. That is your job—to be dependable. They can depend on you.
You may experience the empty nest syndrome when they leave later, but you will get past it because, as you told them, you have other interests.
- Demonstrate trust
At 17, Shevy was going to an all-girls New Year’s party at a house with a hot tub. Her friend’s worried father asked me how much I knew about the family the girls were going to. Remember, 17, not seven. Granted that his daughter was the very youngest of the group, I told him, “I know nothing about the family. I know my daughter. I trust her.” Boy, that felt good.
- Demonstrate respect for self-determination
When Alex was back on a college break, we were reading after we finished dinner. Probably past midnight, he told me he was no longer living according to the orthodox ways he was brought up. I said I appreciated that he felt he could tell me.
I did not tell Alex I was disappointed—I had no intention of raining on his parade. Nor did I say I was disappointed in him, proud that he trusted me was more like it. For some reason, he thought I would go ballistic. Although I was sorry about his news, I was happy he felt he could tell me when he was ready.
Guerilla Tip: When kids are old enough to run their lives, they are old enough to run it their own way.
- Starting, Continuing, and Stopping
Teach your kids that in most activities there are common stages when people trip themselves up. The Buddha said, “There are only two mistakes you can make along the road to truth: not going all the way and not starting.”
Guerilla Tip: Help your kids identify and compensate for a pattern of getting stuck starting, continuing, or stopping activities.
Below is a list of signs of getting trapped in one stage. Try them on for size for yourself first, then for your kids:
Starting—You cannot break the spine of a book to read the first page.
- You often delay assigned work that is hard to do because you feel overwhelmed.
- You cannot allow yourself a reasonable amount of time to fix something at home.
- You usually leave things for the last minute.
Guerilla Tip: Watch when procrastination blocks beginning a project.Giving seminars in procrastination is something I always imagined. It could even help the Type A personality lighten up, but I always feared the anticipated rescheduling.
Guerilla Tip: When starting is your kid’s issue on tackling a daunting project—Start right now, work on it for exactly 15 minutes, then stop. Do not press on, but get some sleep. You’ll feel better because you’ve achieved something and you have already started.
Continuing—You cannot practice enough to improve at a musical instrument you chose to learn.
- You cannot concentrate on a task to get through a solid amount of work.
- You rarely maintain momentum to stick with a problem and solve it.
Stopping—You cannot finish packing for a trip.
- Your priorities frequently change, interests shift, frustrations arise or interruptions call. As a result, you get much less done than steadiness would accomplish.
Guerilla Tip: Watch when distractibility blocks staying with a project.
- You cannot say the job is ever finished and move on, as something always needs to be added.
- You usually drag out the final step.
- You never feel the job is good enough to leave it.
Guerilla Tip: Watch when perfectionism blocks ending a project.
Don’t get stuck at your passions or your obligations. Not at the start, go, or finish point. Buddha says you have to start somewhere and go somewhere. Do it, and don’t get stuck in the process.
Guerilla Tip: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the perfectly good.
Please do not follow this idea because Buddha advises it. It is the idea that is universal and is exactly what Buddha was originally trying to convey.
Guerilla Tip: Listen to the wise, but discover the timeless truths for yourself.
- Starting, Continuing, and Stopping—more
In public presentations, there is a related little rule for the minimum preparation you need: Write out your first sentence, your outline, and your last sentence. - Your first sentence gets you out of the gate and past the block against starting—it’s all set, just say the words you prepared.
- Your outline gives you a structure for continuing along—it’s all mapped out with the basic plan of what you will cover if you follow the skeleton you prepared.
- Your last sentences gets you back home and past the block against ending—it’s all set, just say the words you prepared as you finish your outline before you ask for questions.
- Running Early and Late
Teach your kids how to schedule themselves.
Being a procrastinator and always running late, I noticed that when I am scheduling myself, it is not lateness I worry about. I worry about the horror of being too early and having unwanted time on my hands.
Recently, I was much earlier than usual for worship, but far from early. Lo and behold I was sitting there wondering what people actually do with all this extra time on their hands. We were supposed to be praying, but my mind was wandering on and on, which I could have done anywhere. Focusing on avoiding earliness, latecomers err on the side of being late.
On the other hand, when you run early, you worry about being late. Lateness could be rude, inconvenient for others, or reflects badly on you. Focusing on avoiding lateness, early birds err on the side of being early.
- A Mix of People, Things, and Ideas
Teach your kids that every job is a mix of people, things, and ideas, but either the job focuses on one, or we do.
Guerilla Tip: Help your kids identify the kind of life’s work that has the right mix of people, things, and ideas that suit them best.
When you are having problems with a job, try to switch focus. If your problem is people—boss is giving you a problem—switch your focus to things, like getting the work done more carefully or quicker.
If the problem is ideas—you are on burnout as a teacher struggling to get the ideas in the required curriculum across to an inattentive class—switch your focus to people, like simply caring about the student experience. In no way does focusing on the students mean giving up on content or letting them run the class. It means you can approach the material in other ways if you want.
- Demonstrate trust that increases over the years
Half a year later, after graduating high school and turning 18, Shevy was planning to go out with five other girls to a nearby club. With the New Jersey drinking age at 21 and $10,000 fines for serving alcohol to minors, clubs are very careful with underage customers. They set up certain nights with a special structure for younger customers who will not be served alcohol. For example, a beer from the over-21 room does not leave the room.
Shevy wanted me to give her permission but also to call one friend’s parents to help them over their objections. As my daughter pointed out, all the girls were weeks away from college and making their own decisions on just such issues. When I spoke to the other parents, they asked me, “So, you are okay with it?” I surprised them with “Not at all, but they are not 15. If they are going in a group, why stand in their way? If not now, when? How will they try their wings?”
- Listening to the Radical Parenting of a Bold Minister
In the context of Christian living in the late 19th century, a minister who wrote extensively about raising spiritual children was Ellen Gould White. Among all American non-fiction authors, male or female, E.G. White is the most translated, and like any outspoken theologian, she was not universally accepted. “The slave is not the property of any man,” she wrote. “God is his rightful master, and man has no right to take God’s workmanship into his hands and claim him as his own.”
Radical for her time, Reverend White was seen by some as prophet and by others as less than original. Like my mother, she had four boys and her share of practical experience to draw on. Her childrearing guidelines have produced excellent results witnessed in today’s hectic world. Without defending or detracting from her, if she had true wisdom about childrearing, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Enough time has passed to judge the teachings by today’s visible results, not yesterday’s speculations about who had divine inspiration.
Here, hand-picked selections are introduced for their stark simplicity.
In an 1877 letter: “The work of education and training should commence with the babyhood of the child; for then the mind is the most impressible, and the lessons given are remembered.”
Guerilla Tip: Begin life’s lessons early.
In an 1890 Pacific Health Journal: “Children should virtually be trained in a home school from the cradle to maturity...” The home is a school, and you are training your kids every day. Every parent is a teacher.
Guerilla Tip: Whether you homeschool or not, you are homeschooling every minute the kids are with you.
In an 1897 manuscript: “It is the parent’s duty to speak right words ... Thus before reason is fully developed, children may catch a right spirit from their parents.” She goes on to suggest that parents can draw on God’s love and duplicate it as they pass it down the line “to the tender flock.”
Guerilla Tip: Choose your words wisely, as they will be remembered.
In 1923 Fundamentals of Christian Education: “...the child must be taught to control himself.” Although you can guess where she often goes with this, her core idea is to teach independence through the reasoning mind. Mid-20th-century child psychologist Haim Ginott would have agreed on the same truth: Communicate with respect and give kids a chance to uncover their own emotional power. Similarly, Swami Rama wrote, “Repression is dangerous, but control is helpful.”
Guerilla Tip: If you want your kids to grow into their own as intelligent adults, take a leap of faith and deal with them as intelligent listeners. They’ll get it.
Because “the will must be trained to obey the dictates of reason,” White suggests gentle logic, never treating your trainee as irrational and submissive. Otherwise, “A child may be so disciplined as to have, like the beast, no will of its own, his individuality being lost in that of his teacher. Such training is unwise.”
Guerilla Tip: If you are a controlling parent, you will generate poor decision-making in your kid.
“Children thus educated will be deficient in firmness and decision. They are not taught to act from principle; the reasoning powers are not strengthened by exercise. So far as possible, every child should be trained to self-reliance.”
Guerilla Tip: Treat each kid as an individual work of art.
“By calling into exercise the various faculties, he will learn where he is strongest, and in what he is deficient. A wise instructor will give special attention to the development of the weaker traits, that the child may form a well-balanced, harmonious character.”
Guerilla Tip: Rely on reasoning, not rote, for the tailored approach.
- Preparing for the years you are both adults
Your relationship with a kid changes with the years, and the largest part will be when you are both adults.
Guerilla Tip: Eat healthy, get a little exercise and without exaggeration you and your kids could have 40 to 60 years together as adults.
Prepare for those years. The years when you are the adult in charge of the kid are precious few.
Guerilla Tip: Set up respect for each other early, honoring differences and adjusting to emerging changes in tastes.
- Recognizing that you’ve done a good job
It’s all in the way we talk and act. The other day I called Shevy, who’s away in college. She was out with friends and asked me if it was okay to talk the next day. Next day, I thanked her for being direct, gentle, giving me a reason she really couldn’t talk then and asking me if it was all right. That’s my baby.
Guerilla Tip: Don’t expect big kids to drop what they are doing when you call. Just show them how to deal with it kindly.
- Stop giving advice
As kids grow up, you can relax about your job and reduce the amount of advice you give. Although advice is a gift—we can always say thank you and use or discard later—it can feel like instructions on how to live that are no longer appreciated.
To convey the information without sounding like you know better, just describe your experience. Your kids may draw on your wisdom or ignore it as they choose.
Guerilla Tip: Tell them, “This is what did and didn’t work for me, and you can judge for yourself.”
- My parents liked to retell a charming incident they once witnessed in a Jewish neighborhood. A woman of about 80 called after a woman of about 60, probably her daughter, “Hitzach vie di gaist in gass!” or, “Careful how you cross the street!” At the age of 80, the mother might well have been told by the daughter to be careful crossing the street instead.
Guerilla Tip: In the eyes of the parent, our kids will always need some shepherding, and we will always care about their safety, too.
- Swami Rama of Bengal, India wrote, “…love is the most ancient traveler…it goes on traveling indefinitely until the last breath of its life, through various avenues of experiences.”
- A mother of Passaic, NJ was shocked when her 19-year old reported that someone held a gun to his head in a drug deal that was going bad. Her reaction: “No wonder you have been under so much stress lately.” Notice she went only from her heart to his and not to condemning him. From what is visible on this woman, there is no way she would know anything about drug deals, what advice to offer, or what rules to set for her son on the subject. Instead, she did what she knew how to do, to offer love. If he chose to tell her about it, he chose to connect. Let others judge, but you can salute her wisdom.
Guerilla Tip: You cannot know what rules to apply to every subject, but you can always apply love.
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A man in a parenting workshop was having trouble with his boy of 19. He remembered that when his son was 11 and joined the family from foster care, the boy asked if he could drink from a baby bottle at the dinner table. At 11. For the father, the request was startling but so minor that he allowed it. Although the habit faded by itself within a few months, the man wondered if he did wrong.
Most parents would never have put up with using a baby bottle eight years past its due date. Ugly choices included labeling the boy a big baby. Guerilla choices included negotiating a compromise such as allowing a sipping cup but not a bottle, limiting the bottle to weekends or to a finite two-week period or to water alone, or asking that the bottle stays out of sight in a bedroom. The beauty of the father’s solution was to honor that the boy had maturely asked permission and to see that the request was not worth an argument. The comfort value to the boy of being able to regress may have been major compared to the father’s minor discomfort.
Guerilla Tip: Take a chance on your kid. In hindsight, you may decide you were wise to avoid conflict.
