0:12 [Music] in terms of parenting um you know well respect is really important to me too um having um and showing the kids respect for their not only their uniqueness but that they are um just whole and they are fine how they are um what that looks like for our family too is you know we set boundaries and we still do those but we also have basic

0:44 trust in our kids that they can problem solve and they can figure things out um they've got the autonomy to to do that i find myself being a recovering perfectionist so to speak and and sometimes uh in parenting your life i find myself gravitating to wanting to do things the right way or follow a step-by-step process to get there which has been interesting because i have a dichotomy of the creative side in me but also you know whether it was

1:13 from my love of math and getting to the right answer or just being in a traditional school system where we've got one shot to get the a on the paper or ace the test i find myself going into uh a cycle and thoughts of oh we've got to do it just this perfect way and that can but against my values of having respect for my kids and seeing them and having basic trust that they are very capable and i'll give an

1:42 example of that um just when my oldest son was showing interest in reading and writing and writing his name you know he would start writing his you and he'd do it upside down and i'd be observing and in those moments i didn't know how to engage with him i i think i'm tend to be a person who is good at observing and stepping back and i think naturally coming into parenting i was pretty good at realizing um i wanted them to make their

2:13 own mistakes and um which again it's a dichotomy because i had a push-pull of wanting the right answer but then also knowing that um you know if i step back like he could figure stuff out but i really found myself of wait i think i should i could be stepping in a little bit more here i could be providing him a little bit more guidance and those moments kept occurring more and more as he um got

2:40 you know more uh just more development under his belt and um you know i tried experimenting with things like should i bring out some curriculum and some workbooks and i've got three pretty spirited strong-willed kids and i would find that as i brought out more stuff um that he would push back on that and again another instant where our relationship wasn't necessarily prioritized he could feel the frustration and me and uh so yeah again there were just moments where

3:11 i was noticing i was being mindful of when these things were happening but i didn't quite know how to support him and and i didn't have the basic trust in myself am i supporting him along this learning journey and then the other two as they got older well i was thinking about um our successes and there's been quite a few um i think i'm laughing because i think one of the biggest successes in takeaways is that this is easier than i thought it

3:40 would be and more fun like and i am [Laughter] again it goes back i've always had an intrinsic love of learning so i have learning being fun is not new to me but i also have a you know it's kind of kind of our society and our culture like things have to be hard for them to be good and worthwhile and so i'll use another specific example right after we joined the membership it

4:12 was a rainy day and the three kids were in the house i think so we've got a one-year-old three-year-old and five-year-old at this point and they're out they go wandering in the garage which i would normally be like ah the grunge is off laments why are they there luckily they pretty quickly found something that was safe for them they brought it inside it was a tent their kid's tent with long wooden poles and plastic connectors and the fabric and so

4:37 i took some deep breaths said okay let's see how this plays out i'm not gonna share my frustrations right now let's see how this plays out and they got it all unbundled and they just started working on putting it together and they said where's the instructions we don't have any instructions so they started putting it together and um we i had just gone through the content so i knew about the idea of scaffolding and so i tried to sit back and i sat you

5:03 know with a with a piece of paper uh jotting down what they were doing and i threw out the idea to them why don't we make an instruction manual so the next time we set it up we've got the instructions and so they started going with that in mind my oldest had the idea let's put tape on the pieces and label them a b or c because there were three sizes of poles so they had to count up

5:26 how many poles so i'm setting i'm drawing a grid as they are doing it of how many do we have in each bucket and then my three-year-old is saying oh that letter that's the for a is the first letter in my name and so she's recognizing her letters through this process they end up trying different configurations and i end up sketching the different configurations that they try and ultimately they got the frame together and there were some dicey

5:53 moments you know with like especially my one-year-old with big poles um but i think that instance i didn't even have to get off the couch i was just kind of watching you with questions um and i think again the biggest um success and surprise was that was a lot of that was my nature i was to sit back and watch um but i only added a few things that i had learned from the group it didn't have to

6:19 be this huge shift and i could see on the learning framework where we were where we were touching and so just it gave me a lot of confidence and intuition about where we were and how we were doing with our learning and again looking back on the story i'm like wow you know i haven't done much different am i doing this right yeah i guess i i mean it doesn't have to be that hard it's just a

6:44 few subtle things that we've changed just to continue with that example you know they they have an end goal in mind that they want to work towards and maybe they see it differently in different ways and they have to negotiate that they have to work together to make a plan um they have to communicate that plan to each other they have to be able to envision where they're going who what and since they don't know what the tent

7:04 looks like maybe it's going to look like this or like this or like this and we have to agree on that what's going to happen if we fail if if this this pole doesn't fit here and oh this pole now won't reach over to here what does that mean we have to regroup and try again i mean all of those skills are absolutely critical to succeeding in in life and in the workplace when they get to that point it's not going to

7:26 matter if they can recite the capitals of all 50 states or every country in the world or all of the memorization stuff but that the skills that they learn through that little thing that that you've been building on ever since then are what is going to hold them in in good stead in this kind of thing i'm laughing because as you were kind of replaying that example back um going through business school and orientation we've worked in small groups in a very

7:51 similar way you know they they get together activities we're building stuff and we've got a problem to solve and it's just it's so fun it's so funny um thinking that i had to wait until business school to get that kind of collaboration so it's uh it's funny but i again i also realized that we've seen this and i've seen where it feels really good and i can see it now with the kids you know it's funny they're just so

8:23 intermixed for me i think especially um because we're a family with lots of big emotions very spirited strong-willed three kids um that again we go through sometimes weeks where it's just big emotions and meltdowns and where we we can't get to those learning moments that we've seen um but again recognizing that learning is still happening and so i just constantly having and flowing between the different skill sets of problem solving and having

8:56 those conversations with the kids um so i i think that's where just for me it's it's like they're one and the same almost and you know like if i wanted to and sometimes i do think about this like in my learning journal and documenting like all the emotional skills that we've learned and worked on too because um you know you don't traditionally see that in the classroom but that's i mean that's happening and like you said um

9:23 about just the group work and collaboration and different things skill sets for for jobs we know that those are so critical yeah i know they just really for our family they just constantly intermix the skill set using it so again it's another safety net of of knowing i have resources to go to that's supporting them supporting our relationship when i get into something that's been a little bit more challenging for a while for us i started this off by

9:52 saying you know um with my parenting values of um you know respect for the children and and their respect and belief that they're competent basically it boils down to having a basic trust in them and so to tie it all back it's a basic have a basic trust in yourself as well um that you've got the skill set and just through doing what seemingly can appear like nothing just observing

10:22 you're taking those steps those huge steps that will pay off um later down the road and so having that basic trust would be one basic trust in yourself would be one and then another one is that this actually doesn't have to be hard and it can be fun and there's probably only just a few small things that you can do to take it to the next level it doesn't have to be this major shift to feel like

10:51 i'm doing what i need to do for my child's learning and supporting them it doesn't have to be a huge thing and i think you're absolutely right that the parents do know their children better than anybody else knows them whatever parent or caregiver is spending the most time with a child knows that child better than any teacher ever will and that means that you have knowledge about your child that nobody else is

11:21 going to have and maybe until they get into an intimate relationship later in their life and and somebody else maybe comes to know them uh potentially even better than you do but right now you know your child best and and that really means that you're uniquely equipped to give your child things that nobody else is capable of giving them you know you're saying about you knowing your your child best like so again with my almost seven year old um just it's

11:46 been so he's i think he was very similar to me so he's picked up on the doodling very much but he's a very auditory learner so like he loves podcast loves being read too and so as he's developed his math skills um he can do you know math problems in his head and he'll come and um try to explain to me he knows i like visuals so he'll draw out like numbers as he's adding up large sums and then he'll cross them out

12:13 and it's just been so fascinating to see how he works and maybe a year ago he said mommy i just see it like pages in my head for how the numbers come and that has been a theme that's carried him forward like for him he just sees the information in his head once he hears it and he does not need to write it down does not um but he at the same time then he's teaching and realizing i'm someone

12:36 that needs it visually and so it's just it's i can really see him understanding how he learns already which is going to serve him really well and i hope that with a younger two i'm able to give them that and we can figure it out together and i know we will [Music]