Tag Archives: parenting

Parenting 2019

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2019-03-15 08.09.40Ten years in, fatherhood still feels new to me.

At my current rate, I am going to settle into my role by the time they start to leave!

Recently, I took advice from a father, that’s been at it for close to twenty years.

On the subject of family governance, he is the most believable person I know. So, I was listening carefully when he shared ideas about what he wished he knew.

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No judged sports

No phones, alone, in the bedroom

Read: iGen by Twenge and Coddling of the American Mind

Optimize your family’s life for the family, do not create a series of “micro lives” for the individuals => schools, activities, geography, holiday time => make it work together.

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I know a lot of readers have kids even younger than mine (6, 7 and 10).

Somewhere between six and twelve, your family rules are going to get set — one way or another.

There’s a lot of pain involved (for everyone) if you wait until high school to change direction.

Choose wisely and be the brand.

Managing Towards 1,000-Day Outcomes

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2019-02-23 09.55.59I can get a lot done, while achieving nothing meaningful, by solving problems all day.

Am I managing towards desired outcomes, or focusing on my problems?

2019-02-23 14.54.54

My favorite thing is doing stuff in nature and I want to have a successful marriage.

So, I try to be open to the experience of sharing things in nature, with my wife.

One catch…

  • 1,000 days ago, my wife couldn’t ski
  • 500 days ago, she was better but we were not sharing the vibe (more like enduring it)
  • So, we both did what it takes so that we could share skiing together, and enjoy it

1,000 days of focus was enough for the two of us to capture the bulk of the benefit (but it did take 1,000 days!).

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The big picture points:

#1 – We managed to strengthen our marriage by doing something neither of us was good at three years ago.

#2 – If your younger self was achievement-oriented then working towards mastery in middle age is extremely satisfying.

This is a game we can play, together, for the rest of our lives.

2019-02-24 09.18.11

1,000 days ago, this guy was Level Zero at the ski school. We kept signing him up for lessons and he didn’t get one tick on his skill list!

He showed NO signs of aptitude, for a year, but he enjoyed the process.

Now he’s skiing the entire mountain and loving it. His price was a whole lot less than mine. It took him ~100 days on snow and a million vertical feet.

If you don’t the work then you’ll never know if you could have achieved the result.

Be wary of letting “problems” get in the way of gradually moving towards desired outcomes.

40s Post Mortem

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2019-02-05 07.30.58There were a lot of good habits in my first firm. One was holding a meeting to review all our dud deals. We tried to get value from our mistakes. Often, it would take many, many repetitions of the same mistake for the lesson to sink in.

So, if I could give you one thing to achieve by the time you are 50… it would be to write down how you get in your own way.

  1. a willingness to rely on competence, rather than kindness
  2. an enjoyment of getting too tired to care
  3. a tendency to not react, or completely over react

Do you know your list?

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Invert your errors and consider… what makes your life better?

  1. Get up really, really early
  2. Daily Exercise – low standard deviation, no zeros, frequency not load
  3. Roll a simple, visible, written schedule

Better, not easy!

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The best decision I made in the last ten years was to stop competing when my oldest turned two.

Take (some of) the energy you spend on competing and focus on being a better person at home.

Why only some?

  1. Because physical energy declines over time
  2. Because older, under-scheduled people think better
  3. Because being “busy” is a trigger for ALL the ways I get in my own way!

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Also because I recommend you don’t give too much to your baby.

I have a hunch that many of the downstream issues in families start with a young parent not defining personal boundaries and getting completely tapped out.

=> infidelity, addiction, anger, abandonment… all forms of release

The best thing you can do for your entire family system is set clear boundaries and remember that it is OK to say no.

Childcare benefits the marriage.

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Before I had real babies in my house, my “baby” was school, work or athletics.

Giving one’s self completely is a great way to live when you are young and single. Once you’re married with kids, there are a lot of unintended consequences of being single-minded.

Leaders keep their houses in order.

Aggression isn’t Violence

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If it turns out you brought home an Alpha Babe then you’ll know for sure by your child’s second birthday.

With our first kid, the challenge we faced was our cluelessness lived in a black box. We were unaware of how our lack of skill was making our lives FAR more difficult.

More than worrying about toilet training, speech development, when the little fella is walking… the #1 mission is early socialization.

If socialization fails then then life is going to remain very challenging for decades, rather than years.

Our approach was a minimum of three years at a well-established preschool, with wise, veteran lead teachers (Alaya).

We protected our marriage by carving our time for ourselves — hire patient, firm, college aged women.

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Dominance
If you score low in assertiveness then don’t panic!
Be cautious of falling into a fantasy of fixing the aggressive nature of your little one. We were a lot more successful with teaching how to channel their drive in a socially acceptable manner.

If you score high in assertiveness then resist the urge to attack your kid!
You won’t like the person that comes out the other side (you or your child).

Don’t tolerate other kids taking proxy-revenge on a challenging kid.

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Five Commands my kids learned very early…

1 – Baby on the ground (hand flat, palm moves toward ground)

2 – Easy, Tiger, Easy Tiger (palms facing out, gentle pushing motion)

3 – Breathe with me (exaggerated breath, shoulders rise and fall slowly with a smile x3)

4 – No hit (index finger points up)

5 – Slow it down, Slow it down (same as Easy, Tiger)

Of course, I needed to be working on these in all areas of my own life as well!

I still use these commands today… “but Dad, he’s not a baby anymore…”

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I’ve had ZERO success at changing the nature of my kids.

I have had a lot of success at:

A – keeping my exposure below the point where I start to dislike them

B – using the buttons they push to improve myself

C – improving my marriage and home life

School’s Out For Summer

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…and preschool’s done for_ever!

It was the toughest phase of my adult life – deeply satisfied at the end!

Some thoughts…

Teachers make a HUGE difference!

I learned so much about little kids, myself and relationships from applying their advice across my entire life.

I have a lot of empathy for the couples that don’t make it through the preschool years. If it hadn’t been for one woman, in particular, we would have struggled. She was our guide for SEVEN years!

Don’t expect family life to be easy. Again and again, I simplified my life to increase my emotional capacity.

Racing, hard training, consulting projects, even sad movies… anything that would tap me… went by the wayside.

Strangely, for how awful I told you it was, I have pleasant memories. A great lesson for the rest of my life.

If I don’t act on my negative experiences then they flow away.

The other day my eldest asked me why I don’t yell at people. Already, she knows some yellers – sometimes she’s one of the them.

I said, “Sometimes I want to yell but I use my mind-strength to avoid yelling.”

Truth be told, I do raise my voice and I’ve been known to growl.

But I’m improving and you’ll struggle to get much of a rise out of me with personal angst.

In addition to lots of love, constant forgiveness is another gift from my kids.

Marriage Material

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I blew up my first marriage in a year.

If you asked me about it then, not only would I have blamed my ex-spouse, I would have blamed the entire concept of marriage.

Roll forward a couple decades (!) and here’s a lesson that I’m seeking to pass along to my kids.

Sibling bickering is exhausting, painful and universal.

Rather than focusing on “fixing” my kids – who seem healthy, loving and normal – I use conflict as an opportunity to teach.

I wait for the energy to go out of the situation.

Hey, I want to teach you a Jedi mind trick.

When you are upset…

Watch your mind.

 

It is going to fix on something outside…

…Bella’s voice

…Axel’s question

…Lexi’s tone

…my face

 

Your mind is going to trick you into thinking that the problem is out there.

Not helpful.

Because you can’t do anything “out there.”

 

What you can do is pause and ask, “What do I want?”

And you’re going to find something to helpful to do.

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Simple, not easy.

Supporting Public Education

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In my community, many families opt out of the public school system. Public schools are better with all our kids attending. We’d love to have you opt back and join us.

Three kids imply $100,000 per annum, pre tax, in the private system. Three million dollars of future value when my wife reaches retirement age.

For a whole lot less, consider…

Volunteer in the district — I started by helping in the classroom but realized my skill set was most useful at the district level. Monica rotates between our kids’ classrooms on a weekly basis. If you want better treatment then give.

Hire public school teachers to tutor – the single best investment you can make for your kid – you will be amazed at the benefit one session per week brings to your child.

Join education.com // it’s a no-brainer and gives you access to worksheets you can do with your kids.

Smarter application of family finances:

  • childcare to support your marriage and the young adults that work for you
  • after school activities because fit kids have greater capacity to learn
  • swap money for time and use the time to make yourself a better person
  • live walking distance to a great public school, kill your kids’ commute and be a hub of goodness in your community

I often catch myself fixating on external problems that distract me from taking action on what I control.

Choose wisely where you invest time, money and emotion.

Better Sleep

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I started waking up earlier, kept my mouth shut and watched a cascade of positive effects roll through my house.

I got the idea after calling myself out about my self-prescribed sleep “aids” and from Jocko’s book.

The hook in Jocko’s book was his observation that 4:55am is more than ten minutes better than 5:05am.

I began to wake up in the “4s” in February. After two weeks my body adjusted and I don’t need an alarm to do it.

Monica asked me “why” => “All I was doing was scrolling social media for 90 minutes after the kids went to sleep.”

I was wasting a key advantage => I need less sleep than my kids.

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The game is “do whatever before 5am then one useful task.”

As the family wakes up… it’s on and I’m drawn back to the family (sometimes from the middle of a workout).

Jocko’s point –predawn is the only time we truly own.

Other tips…

If you want to go to sleep then wake up – same time every_single_day – with travel, I stay on my home time zone.

I always have a cushion of sleep available by going to sleep at the same time as my kids and waking up at the same time as usual.

 

Getting To Know My Boy

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As my kids age out of preschool, it’s proven easier to build a relationship with each of them.

Each of my kids has different capacities for emotional, social and physical intensity.

I’ve made a few unforced errors when I forget this reality.

Our kids’ training is similar but he’s taken a shine to the following:

  1. Indoor Climbing
  2. Swimming
  3. Soccer
  4. Family PT (push ups, chin ups, burpees, sit ups, dips)
  5. Hiking Uphill
  6. Skiing Bumps

I happen to like #4, #5 and #6 so we do those together, a lot.

I get a lot of satisfaction from developing competency, then mastery, of physical pursuits.

He’s the same way, and gets to demonstrate his developing physical power to his dad.

When we’re out in the field, parents ask “how’d you get him to do that?”

In the moment, I’m simply a “proud papa”.

On reflection, I think the following are the core of what works…

  1. Be the brand
  2. Share an active life in nature
  3. Meet the kids at their level

Time and attention are precious to all of us.

…and the kids will get my attention one way, or another!

The 30-Day Test

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The first principle is you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

— Richard Feynman

If you self-medicate with drugs or alcohol then you’re going to have a story wrapped around your usage.

My story is beer helps me fall asleep. It’s easy, and wonderful, to knock myself out with a couple of beers. Across 2017, I noticed a habit forming.

As two beers became four, I remembered Doc Evans’ video about alcohol and health. I also sensed that my reason for drinking was weak.

So I decided to make changes, for 30 days:

  • wake up 30 minutes earlier (5:30am is my new normal)
  • ditch the beer
  • pay attention

Similarly my earplug usage was up to 100+ hours per week and a sense of panic would arise when I found myself without plugs. I’d been using plugs for years and they helped, greatly, with not lashing out in the face of my kids’ whining.

How’d it work out?

I lost 8 pounds.

The earplug adjustment happened so quickly I forgot I needed them.

I haven’t forgotten about beer.

We often have habits that hold us back and forever seems daunting.

30-days was:

…long enough to expose my faulty thinking

and

…short enough to get me to start.

One final sleep tip, I lie beside my son for 15 minutes when he goes to bed.

No agenda.

Just breathe.

Our favorite part of the day