Strictly-Stress: November 2010

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Business of Parenting - Part 3

So now, we go farther with laying out the project. We are still just at the beginning stages, but it’s time to get just a little more detailed.

The question to ask, at this point, is "What exactly does empowered and well- balanced look like as far as children are concerned?"

Does it mean your future adult is polite and respectful? What about self-sufficient and independent? Or does it mean the child is all of these plus a whole bunch of other personality traits and characteristics.

I think, it’s relatively easy to raise a child to have a small handful of positive traits, but not quite so easy to pull off a fully, well-rounded future adult. A child who is polite, respectful and obedient is raised one way, but a child who is polite, respectful and obedient, as well as self-sufficient, independent and empowered, must be raised in quite a different way.

People who say my children are well-behaved, often think I must be very strict and that is how I get my children to behave in this way. However, this is not the case. My children do not behave in this way because they are scared of me. Rather, my children choose to behave this way, because they are empowered and they realize that it’s the best way to get what they want out of life. My children do not see the point in acting in ways that will sabotage their life goals. Of course, they have their bad days, but don't we all; however, overall, they have been given tools that allow them to be empowered most of the time.

If you want real empowerment for your children too, then you have to break out the really big "child development" guns, and the best resource I have ever found to make this happen is Dr. Peter Bensen and the Search Institute. Dr. Peter Benson has a list, a seemingly simple list, of 40 items that he calls Developmental Assets and this list forms the foundation of my parenting technique.

Given that my specialty is stress management, I choose to call Dr. Bensen's developmental assets by another name. I choose to call the 40 items on the list stress management assets and problem-solving tools.

You can see Dr. Bensen’s site by going to

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Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Business of Parenting - Part 2

So, now it’s time to decide how far you’re going to go with the design or redesign of your future adults. You don’t have to make all the decisions right away, but you do have to start to get a handle on what you would like to see happen. So far, you have decided that something needs to happen with regards to planning or modifying the behavior component or the attitude component of your child and you’ve decided that this project is important enough that you are going to get fully behind it and commit as many resources as you have available to you.

Of course, if there are two project managers on this project -- two parents, that is -- by now, you have also secured the commitment of the other project manager. I can’t think of very many projects out there, that were finished easily or on budget, if there were two owners and both didn’t want to see the project completed successfully.

For example, if you are designing a new computer software program and one project manager organizes getting a whole bunch of programming completed and then the other comes along and deletes all the files, just think how far you would NOT get fast.

Parenting is like that. Both project managers have to be fully on board at all times and working as a high-functioning team. Like any major project, the stakes are too high to allow destructive actions from one or more team members.

Even if you are operating solo, unless the other project manager is deceased, both project managers have to decide jointly to get behind the project to produce a well-balanced, well-behaved adult. The behavior and attitude components in unfinished adults tend to be highly sensitive and once damaged, they are not easily repaired and can malfunction repeatedly for years to come. It is by far the best idea to do everything possible to avoid damage in the first place. If you have one project manager constantly sabotaging the other’s efforts, this project will fall flat on its face fast.

In business, we call this industrial espionage and in parenting, it’s called psychological warfare. Just ask any unfinished adult (child) how he or she feels about living in a war zone between two project managers who have decided not to work together as a team.

If you are currently, a project manager and you have been using these types of tactics, then knock it off immediately. Become organized now and join the project team in a constructive manner or I can assure you that you will more than fail your 20 year performance review.

Eventually, the unfinished adult becomes the owner of the project and when that happens, they tend to be far less forgiving than when they were still in process.

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Business of Parenting - Part 1

Sometimes good stress management is just a matter of changing how you think about life. As a businessperson and trained project manager, I often think of life in terms of projects that have a beginning and an end. For that reason, I am going to use project management and business language to explain the stress involved with parenting.

People often say to me, your kids are so well-behaved - how did you ever get such good kids. Well, believe me, when I say, it’s no happy accident that I have well-behaved kids. I put in a lot of time and effort to making this a reality and I use an approach called empowerment. This means that I go out of my way to teach my kids how to think for themselves and make good decisions; I set boundaries and offer love and support and all that good stuff, but the three biggest things I do to produce such well-behaved kids is that I control what crosses their lips, I control what they see and hear in the media and I control their schedule. None of this is rocket science, but it is also not for the weak-hearted. As I said before, my parenting accomplishments are no accident. It may sound strange, but I have carefully planned how I will raise my children and you can too.

The first step to solving any problem is to decide how serious you are about fixing the problem. If you aren’t going to get serious, then don’t even bother getting started. Parenting is not like a New Year's Resolution. You can't just forget about it once you are bored or at the first sign of trouble.

If you are going to be a parent, then it’s going to take hard work and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Don’t try to fool yourself or anyone else into believing that you will be successful if you're always too tired or too busy or too anything else. In the business world, any business that wants to solve a big problem, like building a bridge or filming a movie or designing a new computer program has to get behind that project with all of the company’s resources. Parenting is no different. If you truly want to turn your kids into well-behaved, empowered and healthy and well-balanced, then you have to get behind the project and commit all the resources you have available. It will require change and often it’s big change. Are you prepared to make these big changes or are you just planning to PLAY at fixing the problem? If you aren’t planning to fix the problem for real, then you will probably do more harm than good.

Over the years, I have witnessed parent after parent whine about their kids’ behavior. They blame it on the system and they blame it on this label or that label, but the truth is that kids haven’t changed much in the last 100 years, except that maybe they have access to way more information. What has changed is what we feed them that messes up their body chemistry, what we let them see and hear, which messes up their mental health and what we let them do which messes up their future.

I am not talking about going back to the days of Little House on the Prairie, but I am talking about big changes.

So, to sum up, the first step in solving any wellness challenge is to get serious. I call it developing a Wellness Charter. You have to commit to solving the problem or you have to charter the project. To charter something means to give it the go ahead. There is no project in history that has been completed successfully without the company first fully chartering the project. Solving your parenting wellness challenge will be no exception to the rule.