How To Raise An Adult Talk

[Michele Lin]

Hi Moms,

Gosh... we have 4-year olds!!! 

I saw a moms' group at the park today with their itty bitty infants... those little ones are a ton of work.  

My friend told me that these little guys will soon outgrow snuggles/kisses/wanting to play with us... so I'll try to enjoy it while it lasts.

I know Saima has her hands full with three kiddos... and life just gets busy with young kiddos... so I hope everybody is finding time for themselves and if my mentioning that sends you to get your toenails painted or to get a haircut... then GREAT!  Enjoy!

Hope that eatsleeppoop-Mountain-Time-Zone(Nikoletta!) & eatsleeppoop-Austria(Are you in Austria, Birgit?) are doing great as well.  

I attended a parenting talk last week and attached my summary below.  

I know there are an infinite number of ways to raise a happy person and I'm just bumbling along and collecting data points... so please don't be offended in any way by my summary.  

I really just wanted to say hello to everybody!!

-Michele

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Hi Friends,

I attended a talk last week (Sept 2016) by the author of "How to Raise An Adult" and enjoyed it.

Below is my summary, mostly for my benefit, and hopefully, your benefit, as well.

Summary:

This talk gave me a chance to think about which parenting actions I might do that would actually be hurting my kids learning independence and life skills.

And this gave me a chance to think about my own childhood and how little my parents were involved in my school work.  Examples: they didn't pack my backpack, they didn't drive my forgotten homework to school, they didn't watch while I did my homework, they didn't even ask me what homework I had...  So instead of greeting a kid with questions about how much homework they have tonight and how much they have done already... ask them how their day went?  Anything fun? etc...  And the speaker gave some examples about how she had to let her kid deal with having forgotten to sign up for an AP test on their own and letting her kid drop a class since he was clearly struggling with the homework load of all his classes... And she mentioned that there are 2400 4-yr college institutions in the US and that success is not correlated with which school you went to.  

My two biggest takeaways:

-- Success has been correlated not to which college you attend, but instead to your WORK ETHIC & HABITS.

-- CHORES are predictors of success. So give your kids chores, starting from age 2.

Useful Websites

alumnifactor.com for a list of schools that produce successful candidates

ctcl.org or "Colleges That Change Lives"

Popular author, Malcolm Goldwell, says you should not study at an elite college, but should rather choose a college where you are sure you can be the top student in your program. (youtube link I found)

4-Steps on How to Teach a Skill

1) Do the skill FOR them

2) Do the skill WITH them

3) WATCH them do the skill

4) Let them do the skill ON THEIR OWN

Free Range Kids (maybe the talker was referring to this website I found: www.freerangekids.com )

Harvard did a longitudinal study that showed:

1) Chores are predictors of success (listed above)

2) Happiness of Life = LOVE of people (i.e. teach your kids to LOVE)

To help manage college applications:

bigfuture.com

Media Moms & Digital Dads (book)

One example of coping with technology: having a weekly NO TECHNOLOGY for 24 HOURS rule, Fri night to Sat night

Book Recommendation: Gift of Failure writen by middle school teacher (link)

And around this same time, I learned from a different source that UC Davis now costs 35k per year (for tuition, room/board, books) and private schools cost around 65k per year.  I plugged this into a financial planning calculator and it popped out that we need to be saving $900 per month per kid starting NOW to pay for college.  

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

And I hope you all are doing well!

Cheers-

Michele

[Saima B. Yusuf]

Hi Michele, Thanks for sharing! I've been thinking about having the girls do basic chores and clean up their stuff more. I've also been thinking about how I can get them to value their things, right now they act pretty entitled. If they break or lose something, the go to line is "we can go to the store and buy another one." A friend of mine mentioned she has her kids earn their toys through chores and allowance. I'm not sure at what age allowances start. Any thoughts anyone might have on this general topic would be great. Hope everyone is enjoying back to school! Saima Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

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[Michele]

Hi Saima-

How about collecting some of their toys with them to donate to kids who don't have any toys at all...? 

I also found this article that summarizes the same talk I went to:

http://www.dailycrackle.com/helicopter-parenting/

-Michele

Sent from my mobile device 

[Nikoletta Friedberg]

Hi y'all - Eat Sleep Poop in Boulder represent!  

Zachary also does the - "it's broken, so go buy another" shtick.  We also donate the majority of his toys this time of year to make room for new crap...errrr, I mean toys.  Last year, he took it really well.  Kept asking about where it was going and who was going to play with it.  I've also noticed, that when I take away his toys if he didn't clean it up, he basically forgets about it and it doesn't even bother him.  Arrgghh!  So we keep it in sigh but out of reach. 

These little monsters are so hard to figure out.

Nice to hear from you.  

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