Today I did a Twitter thread on Parenting Tips-
Trying to write down points here for my friends who are not on Twitter and a little more elaboration.
Trust is very important, if you want your kids to trust you 100% make an effort that you don't do anything to breach that. Remember they trusted you 100% when they were little from there it can only go down :) -
This is the most important lesson, in my opinion, we learned the hard way. Be very careful when you are making promises to yourself of kids. Do not overcommit and underdeliver always under-commit and overdeliver. Kids are smart and they can quickly figure out a pattern in your behavior.
Little kids are very good at mimicking, which means they will mimick all your good habits and bad ones too!
This was one of the best pieces of advice we got we initially got from our pediatrician when we talked about our kid being a fussy eater. He asked us (rather calmly) “what type of eater are you? Do you cook what you like or what you should eat?”
That’s it! He didn’t have to go on and we understood what needed to be done. This is true for all other *good* habits you want to inculcate in your kids.
Continuing above point - If you want your kids to read a lot of books, ask yourself if you are reading a lot? If you want them to eat healthily, are you? If you want them to exercise are you? Start doing these things together and help them become independent.
We have seen how our kid observers how we plan the day, what are the daily chores, focused working hours, exercise, eating schedule, do we finish everything in our plate, etc. This matters!
Make sure they do mundane little chores without fail and consistently. The best thing kids can learn growing up is being consistent, showing up every day. Be it as small as making your bed, cleaning dishes, sorting garbage (wet/dry), or anything.
Showing up every day and doing your assigned chores, tasks are very important disciplines. Mothers are typically very good and consistent at it :D (again my personal observation) I had to try hard and get better at it. I have made a promise to myself to keep improving every day.
Involve them in every important decision-making at home, listen to their ideas and make them feel that they were part of this decision. Decisions like moving cities, countries, changing jobs, investments, liquidations, etc.
As a family we discuss a lot when making important decisions about various different things, be it planning your next car, planning a vacation, bookkeeping, health insurance, etc. Make sure you have inclusive discussions and include your kids in these. Initially, they may not understand anything but ask them if they have, and try to explain why you are having these discussions. e.g. While buying a new car we had given our requirement and shortlist to our son and he volunteered to do online research for tech-specs of the car and created a small comparison presentation for us. He felt that he contributed to the choice we finally narrowed down to for our next car
Teach them how to self-learn, self-correct their homework and how to be honest about it. Very underrated but very important! I would highly recommend this course - https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn-youth
This course helped our son understand different techniques and he felt confident in his regular studies and learning in general. Show confidence that they can do it but maintaining a daily log of what is being done is very important.
Prepare them to have uncomfortable discussions with you. Are they comfortable discussing anything and everything with you? How to enable this? By doing the same with them. Don't send them to another room when you are having uncomfortable discussions.
We had many occasions when we observed that our son was feeling uncomfortable discussing something. Be brave, take the first step, enable them to have that discussion with a free mind. Vice versa - when you are having these discussions make sure you use words wisely so that you can involve them in these discussions, avoid shushing them or sending them away. e.g. yesterday we saw that our son wanted to know more about Pride Month and what are these LGBTQ communities. This is a big taboo in Indian Families (at least a few years back) and we specifically talked about the topic in front of him and had a very healthy discussion about it. He went ahead and did include this theme in one of his homework assignments. We felt pretty good about it -
Meditate together as a family and discuss how you felt - I can assure you that this will be the most beautiful experience you can have. We don't do it regularly but we should.
This is by far the best thing you can do as a family, try it on a weekend and discuss afterward how you felt about it. Initially, it might feel boring or distracting but slowly you will get into a good rhythm, and believe me this will have really long-lasting benefits.
Thank me later for this.
Be responsible and respectable on social media (in general in public). Kids take pride in your reputation and secretly stalking you on social media until they feel disconnected or irrelevant or disappointed.
This is a very important topic. Today in the era of socially overactive folks, trolls, memes be very careful how you represent yourself publically. Sooner than later kids are going to land upon a similar platform and find you, maybe mimic you as well. If you are being harsh to others (doesn’t matter politically, jokingly, or with any other intention) kids will think that it is okay to be like that in public. Of course, expressing your opinion and taking a stand can be done with careful choice of words and actions as well. Learn that and teach that to kids.
Explain the importance of "The Pomodoro Technique" and how to do more and have fun with time management!
What is Pomodoro? It means “Focused Work Sessions”
This is a popular time management method that asks you to alternate pomodoros — focused work sessions — with frequent short breaks to promote sustained concentration and stave off mental fatigue. There are tools that help you to do pomodoros but I would suggest starting with a simple wristwatch and a log.
Teach them to fail and make sure they know it's okay to fail! The value of genuine effort is way greater than the outcome.
We all need to practice this a lot. We cannot be casual about failures but also cannot be furious about them. Make sure we enable kids to learn from every failure, do failure analysis, log it, and move on to planning for the next thing.
Talk to them about money
Kids need to understand how money is being earned and how much is being spent for what. Start talking to them early about saving for the future, side hustles, working multiple jobs, overtime, internships, taxes, investments, returns. Simplify things for them. Involve them in creating a monthly expense sheet for your family.
These are some of the things we have been practicing and learned in our journey as a parent of a teenage boy now. Believe me, they grow up faster than you think :)
Let me know your thoughts and opinions about this brain dump.
Share this with other parents in your network if you think this will be useful for them -
Cheers,
Vishwesh
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