Why Not To Be Friends With Your Kids, Not Yet.

Why Not To Be Friends With Your Kids, Not Yet.

As a youthworker, I’m in a position to see a pattern emerging over the last 15 years. It’s more prevalent now than it was when I started working with young people and their families and by my observation, it’s a bit of a Trojan horse. It’s the desire to be ‘cool’ in the eyes of their kids, the need to be cool in every part of a child’s life.  It looks and sounds great, but can be the cause of more heartache and trouble than you intend.

Advice For Right Now.
If your child is under the age of 21, don’t try and be their friend. Not yet. You have a job to do and they need you to do it. The study of adolescence would tell us that our young people are potentially still developing physically, emotionally and intellectually until they are 25 years of age. During that time of emerging identity, self-awareness and critical formation in the areas of sexuality, spirituality, vocation and passions – your children need you to take the role that can only be filled by one or two. The role of parent.

Friends vs Parents/Trusted Adults
Over their lifetimes, your kids are going to make a lot of friends. They’ll lose some, keep some for life. Probably make poor choices about a couple and they’ll make some of their best memories with friends. Friends are, the family you choose. But it’s precisely because you choose your friends (and the older you get the more time you spend choosing, or the more choosy you get), that a distinction applies. In choosing your friends, you’re never obligated to choose the ones that rub up against your rough edges but make you a better human on the way.

Friendship is often equally paired and transactional, there’s a mutual exchange of esteem and confidence boosting. Take away the esteem boosting and the value of the friendship fades. For starters, a parent’s relationship with a child should never be transactional. “You give me this, I’ll give you that.” It’s the core of dysfunction between a parent and child. Starting down this path is the opposite of building mutual respect.

Friends give bad advice from time to time.
Ultimately friends have less investment and often less meaningful context. During periods of potential instability, if you can build a foundation of reliable, secure advice with your young person – whether they take your advice or even like, won’t be able to refute the quality of the advice they are receiving. The offering of wisdom and the application of it are two very different things.

Few friendships ever fall of the sword of the greater good. In other words, your children need to have a steady and reliable person/s that will look out for their greater good during hardship and upheaval.

Friends don’t necessarily have the same values at a time when values are an important part of identity exploration. Having people in the life of a young person who can safely give permission to explore different applications of values and challenges to the status quo is vital, but those people are often not peers. Peers have equally limited experience and little alternative insight to offer into the process. Having people with similar values to process and discuss alternate possibilities with is strengthening.

Friends don’t always sharpen iron these days. In adolescent friendship, commonality is often the lynchpin of otherwise fragile emotional connections. Thus, iron sharpening iron isn’t a practice commonly found until early adulthood or when identity is more fully formed.

So what’s the role of a parent anyway?
I was visiting with a friend the other day and watched her young tween daughter lash her with drippings of adolescent behaviour – pushing boundaries to see how far she could go, sassing up the room with a mix of childlike comedy (quite enchanting) and whiny brat (less so). I watched my darling friend take a beating from her kid. It’s not intentional, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid the trap of our children influencing our self-esteem, but it’s ten-fold if we let ourselves get into the role of friend rather than parent. It’s natural to want to be liked by your kids, but it’s healthier to accept that how much they like you isn’t a good measure of how well you are parenting.

Children and especially adolescents desperately need parents who can provide companionship and wisdom along the journey, but in the unique and gifted role of Trusted Advisor.

Too often, parents want to avoid the stereotypical roles of Taskmaster, Bossy Bitch, Nagger, RuleMaker. Fair enough, they are not easy titles. But if you can push through the pain and pride-pinching accusations, there are alternate ways of looking at those roles.

Imagine being the parent who’s child never had a reason to doubt or question their advice. Who had been invited into the learning process alongside their parents? Who had positive frameworks for discussing conflict, disagreement and the establishment of their own, individual values. Most of the time, it’s not until much later stages of life that peer adults are capable of forming such competent bonds; yet these bonds and interactions are key for the development of healthy, well-adjusted and well-rounded young adults.

That’s why it’s so critical that parents accept the challenge of Not-Yet-Friends with their children and adolescents.

Friendship with your children is the privilege and honour bestowed on those who survive well, the teenage onslaught and adventure ride. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. As with a number of things, decisions that were yours as a parent of a toddler, become the decisions of the young adult themselves. Friendship with you and the nature of it will largely be their choice by the time they hit their mid-20s.

Like it or not, the level of friendship and trust they establish with you in that phase of life will be proportionately based on what they learned from the most recent phase of life and interaction with you.

Pursue parenting then, because it’s in parenting that you become a trusted advisor. It’s in your investment and commitment to them, you can demonstrate wisdom, perseverance, forgiveness and grace. It’s in your interactions and conversations that transcend a mere exchange of esteem building moments that you invest in the concrete foundation of the Parent-Child-Friends relationship.

As youthworkers, encourage parents to parent and not to try to be friends with their young people ahead of time. There’s a season and you shouldn’t rush it.

There are a few myths that need to be put to bed.

‘If I’m cool and can handle anything, then my child will tell me everything and I can be a better parent.’ Nope. You will never be cool enough that your child will tell you everything and why is your esteem wrapped up in it. It’s only building trust and a communicative culture with your child that opens the doors to communication.

‘It’s better to let some things slide and not say what I think, than to lose relationship with my kid.’ Strictly playing devil’s advocate here, but how will demonstrating holding back true honest feedback in your relationship with your teenager possibly help them learn how to be honest and true to themselves? If you want to teach your kids to deal with conflict well, you might as well start with the conflict you have with them.

‘I don’t really like the influence of that friend, but it’s not really my place to say.’ See above. There are limited opportunities to teach and demonstrate how hard but how important it is to offer truthful and graceful feedback to the ones we love. Talk honestly.

‘If I do what my parents did, I’ll turn out just like them and my child will have the scars I have.’No parents are perfect. It doesn’t matter if your kids are angels, scalliwags, 12 months old or 17 year old pop stars. There are no perfect kids, there are no perfect parents. Each child will carry both good and bad experiences from childhood, but learning constructive and positive communication will ensure that both build strength, resilience and character. Your children are not on a repeat cycle, unless you don’t engage in the process. They’re not perfect, neither are you, no one is. Therefore, there is freedom and grace to make mistakes.

In closing, my conversation with my friend was to encourage her to stand her ground. Friends don’t always speak in the nicest manner to each other, especially not when they are entering the teenaged years. I reminded her, implored her to take the higher ground and remember that she is the parent, she does have more experience, more wisdom and more intelligence than her tween daughter. That may not always be the case, but for right now, it is absolutely true. Therefore, there are many things in the day to day that require reframing. The simple recollection that there is a window where adults and children are not all equal. Equal rights, yes, equal concern yes. But equal footing – not.

Parents, enjoy the privilege you have to parent and don’t forgo it too quickly for the sake of friendship. It might sound and feel cooler momentarily, but it cannot deliver the same rewards as being the most trusted and faithful advisor of a young person.

 

Risking It All.

Risking It All.

There are three stumbling blocks that prevent me hitting the publish button or sometimes even picking up the pen, metaphorical or otherwise.

They are three questions.

Can I do this well enough and will it be good enough?

Can I make it and let it go out into the world?

Can I show this much of myself to the world, will anybody care?

These are questions designed to help me avoid risk. Which is stupid, because if I want to be in the business of ‘making’, then I want to be in the business of risking myself in vulnerable ways. I know that it’s stupid, so I thought I’d share my strategy for avoiding the trap.

There will always have to be bad writers, for they answer to the taste of the immature, undeveloped age-group; these have their requirements as well as do the mature. —-Nietzche

I hate the idea of not being good at what I do. Regardless of what I’m doing. My pride does cartwheels in the tension of doing something new without knowing whether it will be good. Logically, I understand that in order to be good, I must risk being other-than-good; but every time I open the page to write or try a new recipe, the process begins again.

Why is it sometimes hard to write? Because the risk is so great that it won’t be any good. That it will be too honest, too vulnerable. That people won’t engage or respond or understand me. So the questions run through my mind and my desire to avoid risk stops me in my tracks.

The better way to answer these questions is in editing, refining, fine tuning and optimizing. In my business, it’s called the process of iteration. We make something, we learn, we craft, we make it better. We make it again.

Will it be good enough? becomes How can it be better?

The other questions are not about the creation but about the creator. Ouch. Even in talking about vulnerability I have to be vulnerable.

I  find myself wondering how those flawed and tuneless auditions for TV singing competitions make it to air – with all that bravado and self-confidence. It appears that there is no pride or ego to filter the risky and non-risky behaviours.

I’m learning that if I want to be truly vulnerable (and I do, because it seems to matter and connect more with people), I have to de-tune my ego too. I have to put away my pride and concern.

The easiest way I have learned to do this is by facing the consequences of risking something big. Really, in being more vulnerable than I want to be, I’ve learned that it is really not so bad. There’s not a single moment that I truly regret. A few painful bumps, for sure, but that’s to be expected as the rough edges are smoothed away.

It might sound a little mad, but truly – in being a little braver, in saying a little more, in choosing not to edit away the thought, the moment, the possibility.. I’ve learned that it’s rarely as bad as I thought. Mostly, I’m afraid of feeling hurt, feeling bad or feeling ashamed or embarrassed when my ego starts talking.

These ego-driven, risk-averse questions stop me from starting. Starting is the step that produces raw product that can be shaped, redrawn, remade, improved until it’s ready for the world. I can only be a writer, a maker, a speaker or a creator if I begin.

Here’s the strategy to overcome the questions:
Accept that the risk does not exist.

Until you make something, there is nothing that risk can be attached to. Once something is made and re-made, it is no longer dependant on you. It may carry the reflection of the maker, but it is a separate entity. So the risk (to your ego) does not exist.

So just make something, damn it. The risk is the art itself, the risk is the proof that you are creating something unique and authentic.

Read more about Makers here.

 

 

 

Dealing in Hope. (Leadership #9)

Dealing in Hope. (Leadership #9)

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte.

By all accounts, Bonaparte was such a contradictory character that it is hard to imagine he inspired much hope or empathy with those he led. Yet, he led hundreds of thousands with a vison of triumph. His words are still true today. Whether you promise or deliver a vision of an alternative future (which eventually you must, or perish as Bonaparte’s men did); you are dealing in hope.
(more…)

The Science Of Instinct.

The Science Of Instinct.

“You just kind of run on instinct,” he said, “but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it.”

It was a late afternoon conversation with a colleague and I was informing him of progress on a current project. I mentioned that I’d put that progress in a presentation deck ‘because I’ve been told people will take me more seriously that way’. He replied immediately, “Yes, it will help. You just kind of run on instinct, but that has to be validated. People can’t just take your word for it. Other people don’t just wing it like you do.”

While I’m almost certain it wasn’t his intention, I felt belittled. It’s frequently surprising to me, how one little paragraph can leave you feeling so … misunderstood. Instinct is not about gut feelings. Or even feelings at all. We might use that language to express ourselves, but Instinct is a science. Instinct alone is not a complete solution to understanding people or what must be done. It’s a tool that gives insight, but it must be applied alongside pragmatism, strategy and with a dose of compassion if Instinct is to get you anywhere at all.

The subtext of his statement was that instinct is somehow not an equal science (artform) to rationalization. A repeat of the centuries old tension between the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, despite both originating from the foundation. The rational view is that because Instinct is harder to define and quantify, it cannot be as reliable or as trustworthy as the other sciences. Instinct is something more primal than our civilised, evolved selves. This is far from the truth, however.

Instinct is as much as a science as mathematical theory. It is the collective noun we give to layers of distinct and meticulous habit, discipline and skill. It is a finely tuned practice of reading the visible and aural signals that human beings give one another. It is listening for the minutiae and tracing countless details about people, projects, relationships, influences, priorities.

Mostly, it is about understanding and knowing how to observe and engage with people, both as individuals and more challengingly in a room of people. It is about filtering important information from really important information and disregarding the trivial.

The trouble with Instinct, is that it is a science masquerading as a mystery. People with these skills can turn up into a room with little context or history and make enormous progress in single meetings, because they are tuned in to decipher what people want and what people have to give. What appears to be pulling something out of thin air, is actually closer to extracting what was sitting there all the time. Sometimes Instinct just helps you articulate it with people, or for people.

Why is it that salespeople sometimes have that ‘pull it out of thin air’ appearance? Why someone thinks I’m ‘winging it’ in a meeting room? Because the science of instinct is rarely a visible one. It’s mapping the details of what you see and hear at a million miles an hour, against what you already know and what you understand people want. It’s about seeing the connections, visible and invisible. It’s the observation that will tell you who the powerful people in a room are. Observing how they engage and interact will teach you how to approach, gauge and influence them. In the same way no-one is born with fully-formed speech, you cannot expect to have good Instinct, if you do not practice and craft the skills required to execute it. You cannot simply ‘turn up and perform’.

Most rational sciences you can teach to people with formulas and technical examples. But how do you teach someone to see or teach them to listen? Really, how do you? I have tried to explain how I am listening and observing in a room. It gets too complicated far too fast, but I understand that I must come to understand it, if I am to explain it.

How do we explain it?
There are all sorts of words for instinct. We call it intuition (I am highly intuitive on the Myers-Briggs scale), awareness, being tuned in. The more spiritual you are, the less rational and scientific your vocabulary for instinct is likely to be. Words like prophetic and healer appear. And while some people are wired with empathy, to read and respond to emotions and circumstances around them, the truth is sometimes the most emotionally disengaged have the best instincts around. Divulged of their own emotional entanglement to a situation, they can comprehend the information in front of them most appropriately.

When we make decisions because we ‘feel it was right’, often that means we have layered in our own conscience, our fears or agendas, our hopes or our risks. Instinct is collecting clues and paying close attention to where they map together and belong.

Spiritual abusers and manipulators are often masters of Instinct, seeing exactly where vulnerabilities exist to be taken advantage of. Many false spiritual leaders have enjoyed how instinct masquerades as mystery, in order to propagate their own mythology.

Instinct Is Fallible
Lastly, if anything solidifies instinct as a science, the sheer fallibility of it does. The finest instincts can be taken by surprise, miscalculate the signals and falter when it ought to stand firm.

So you train and develop your instincts in every setting, the same way you would to go to war. Work them, stretch them, test them. Recognize that you are a practitioner of a science and Instinct is something you should work hard for.

Then, one last thing. Respect those who have invested time and energy to fine tune their instincts. It’s not a strength that stands alone but when added to your talent pool, it can make a difference. When someone says, ‘that person has good instincts, let’s get them on the team,’ it’s because they know how to close a sale, how to progress a job, how to bring people together and how to listen well. They decipher the fantasy from the reality. You need them, even if it feels like their science is a mystery to you.

 

Do You Trust Me? I’m All-In, Whatever That Means.

Do You Trust Me? I’m All-In, Whatever That Means.

My commitment to my community was ­questioned the other day. People wondering whether or not I was ‘all-in’ were finding it tough to entrust me with some influential positions. It was diplomatically posed: if you’re not here (present) with us, how do we know if you’re really with us (committed)? The exact phrase was ‘people have the sense that if you’re not doing something here, you’re not always around’. The subtext: how much of you being here is about us, and how much is about you?

Right across society, it’s usually those who demonstrate their commitment and loyalty that earn the right to be influential. Our commitment to being present is a show of loyalty. Particularly in churches, there are lots of ways you can be involved, but you have to be ‘all-in’ in order to have influence. But what does ‘all-in’ really mean?

It’s how we test Ambition. People want to know how much you’ll give before you want or need to get something back. Most people want influence and power. In the church, that looks like positions of authority, which usually come with microphones.

Think about it. People who demonstrate how ‘all in’ they are, tend to wind up in influential positions. We’ve created a culture where you have to earn your way into those positions; for lots of reasons.

Good reasons

  • If you’re going to be endorsed or giving a position of influence, you’ve to got to be trustworthy
  • We don’t want you to influence in an unwise direction

Bad reasons

  • Those with influence don’t always like to share
  • People don’t like to be outshone or overshadowed
  • To maintain the chain of command
  • No chief wants to give influence to anyone who might not be loyal

We create systems to ensure that trustworthy people make it through the hoops and untrustworthy people fall out. The trouble is, it’s easy to abuse those systems to make sure that only people who’ve proven their loyalty sufficiently make it through. But loyal to what? You ask me if I’m all-in, but what do you want me to be all-in to?

What does ‘all-in’ really mean?
I’m all-in to the purpose of making a good change. I was raised to make a difference and I take it pretty seriously. I’m all-in to being the best I can be, in the place where I’m likely to make the most difference. And often, I don’t find those places inside the Church. For lots of reasons.

Here are 5 times I was All-In

  1. I was preparing to take teenagers to Eastercamp instead of the church prayer event.
  2. I was at the 21st of a young person who’s like family instead of church conference.
  3. I went from the Maundy Thursday service to the corner bar and talked about the meaning of Passover with friends
  4. I helped a single mum and her 4 small kids move house instead of being at church that weekend.
  5. I had a house full of teenagers watching movies and making food, instead of being at Sunday night church.

I don’t spend much time actively pursuing the pulpit. I’ll never turn it down, but I don’t intend to chase it. I’d rather have my life and actions speak of meaning and purpose. Because I love to communicate, I relish the opportunity to share my observations and conversations with others. I’ll spend my time engaging in meaningful conversation, always prepared to do my bit for the Church, but I won’t be there for the sake of being there, if my sense of purpose is beckoning me somewhere else.

Here’s the truth – there are hundreds of people in the pews every Sunday, Thursday and Friday who will give their all to the Church at the cost of places where they could be more meaningful. Church services are often club sessions for people who feel comfort from being with the like-minded to be encouraged, affirmed, you name it. It’s a good thing. But it shouldn’t be the ultimate expression of our faith.

In fact, I’d go so far to say that the goodness I want to bring to the earth, has little to do with my church affliation and much more to do with the fulfilment of my identity as a whole person. I’d hate for anyone who has known me to reduce my actions on this earth to “well, that’s what those Church folks do.” Because there are not that many church people living how I live or doing what I do.

I spend my time pursuing people. People at my dinner table, people in the important stages of their lives, people in trouble, people in the world and sometimes people in the pews.

  • The Church encouraged me to be in the world, making a difference. So I’m out there.
  • The Church taught me that it’s important to serve. I did dozens of tests to figure out my gifts. I’ve been made to serve, so working is both giving back and fulfilment of all I was taught to be.
  • Busyness is also an answer to loneliness. Being present with nothing to do highlights my loneliness in ways that don’t help me. Doing something meaningful with my presence is good for me.

I’m all-in. Are you?