This is the third book in Emily’s series of parenting books dedicated to ages 5-12. The book is focused on how to run your family like a business and apply structure to the decision-making process for your kids. The end goal is to develop a strategy around your parenting philosophy that you will deliberately and proactively use to navigate the day-to-day tasks/questions that come up in life so that you’ll be happier and life will run smoother.
Compared to her prior books, there aren’t many reliable studies and data to help answer newer parenting issues and thus, a framework for thinking through these challenges is important to make a well informed (not correct!) decision.
The key structure is based on the Four F’s:
Frame the Question: “Think about the question you are asking. This is often the hardest step. It may seem easy, but in many cases, our starting-point question is too vague to really be answerable. ‘What kind of school is right?’ isn’t a question you can answer well. Much better is ‘Should we send our child to school A or school B?’”
Fact-Find: “Gather the evidence, data, and details you need. This may involve learning more about the logistics and thinking through how you could make this work (or not). Or it may involve data on benefits and risks of each option (risk of concussions in a sport for instance). This step (the longest one) is a chance to get all the factors together, clearly, in one place.”
Final Decision: “Once you have the evidence, have a meeting, and use that meeting to make a decision. This may seem obvious, but people often fail to have this single decision meeting and instead revisit the question again and again with different information. Let the decision take a lot of headspace in a single moment, decide, and move on.”
Follow-Up: “This is the least obvious, but may be the most important step in the process. You need to have a concrete plan for reviewing the decision. Once you’ve made a choice and implemented it, schedule a time in the future to discuss how it went. Hopefully you made the right choice, but if you didn’t, better to rethink it sooner than late.”
PART I: THE FAMILY TOOLBOX: CREATING THE BIG PICTURE
- Develop a family mission statement
- What your family will prioritize, what your day looks like, and the basic logistics of the family.
- The Process: Outline the values and priorities and then get more granular with the day-to-day schedule, establishing family principles and responsibilities. Here are the worksheets from Emily
- Step 1 – Values and Priorities
- Mission Statement: One Sentence – what is your main goal for the family?
- Three goals for your children
- Thee priorities for you (work, personal, health, seeing friends)
- Three activities you see as must do on (most) weekdays (eat meals with kids) and weekends (spiritual, seeing grandparents)
- Step 2 – The Details
- Schedule – draft up what a Tuesday looks like in your family
- Principles – create the shared values into a shared rules so that anyone can implement (Bedtime by 8pm) –
- Similar to Tim Ferriss’ stance on “What’s the one decision that removes 100 decisions”
- Responsibilities – allows everyone (kids included) the ability to do these activities on their own (no micromanaging!) – e.g. putting their lunch in their bag, packing their clothes for practice, etc.
- Step 1 – Values and Priorities
PART II: BIG DATA/STUDIES (ANSWERING SPECIFIC TOPICS)
SCHOOL ENTRY AGE (when to send your kid to kindergarten)
- Benefits to entering school early: Fewer childcare expenses at young ages; children graduate high school or college and enter the workforce sooner.
- Benefits to redshirting (the practice of delaying kindergarten entry for a year so that they enter at an older age, presumably more able to handle the structure of school): Lower ADHD diagnoses, better test scores.
- Benefits are larger in locations where more people are redshirting; it seems problematic (on average) to be the youngest in a class.
SLEEP
- Sleep matters – kids 4-13 need about 9 to 11 hours of sleep.
- Kids need more sleep than you might think, even as they age through middle school, and not getting enough can affect their school performance, among other things.
- Different kids need different amounts of sleep, but if your kid is sleepy during the day or sleeping in a lot on the weekend, this is a clue that they are not getting enough. Try an earlier bedtime.
- Should take 15-20 minutes to go to fall asleep.
NUTRITION
- There is evidence that tastes are formed when kids are young, so if you do want them to eat something, exposing them to that food at an early age is a good idea.
- Repeated exposure (6+ times) to foods can increase kids’ taste for them, especially if you combine disliked foods (e.g., veggies) with liked foods (e.g., dip, cream cheese, peanut butter).
- The way food is presented – the order, relative amounts, and the way parents react to food rejections matter a lot
- Smaller entrée portion > more opportunity for kids to eat the vegetables
- Serve the kids vegetables first and then entrée a few minutes later
- If you kid refuses the meal, have a standard backup meal ready (hummus with raw vegetables)
- There are strong correlations between family meals and good outcomes for kids (less depressed, liess likely to have eating disorders, and had more school engagement). But it is very hard to make causal statements, given other differences between families who are and are not able to prioritize eating together.
PARENTING STYLES
- Styles:
- Tiger: very strict and highly invested in kid success academically and set high expectations
- Helicopter: overprotective and very involved parents, overscheduled activities
- Chicken: Free-range, unscheduled activities, playing in nature
- Questions to ask about parenting style?
- How much scaffolding are you going to provide for your child?
- How much involvement will you have in their day to day?
- How much physical freedom will they have to come and go from your home, and at what age?
- What expectations do you have in terms of independent life skills, and when?
- More involved parenting seems to have benefits in terms of children achievement…but on the flip side, survey data seems to suggest that over-involvement may lead to anxiety later
- Considerations for implementing more responsibility for your kids from The Manager Mom Epidemic by Thomas Phelan:
- If someone is responsible for a task, they are fully responsible for planning to do it, doing it, and seeing the consequences if it’s not done.
- How much physical freedom will you allow your child (can they play outside by themselves, how far, with who)
- How much personal responsibility are they in charge of (getting dressed, waking up, laundry, shower, etc.)?
- How much academic responsibility do they have? (doing their homework, practicing an instrument, etc.)
SCHOOL
- In relatively poor-performing school districts, charter schools deliver (on average) better learning outcomes.
- Test scores tend to be better in schools with smaller class sizes and frequent and informed teacher feedback.
- When comparing schools, look for some outcome data: test scores, proficiency rates. It’s not everything you care about, but it may be helpful.
- Extra school and tutoring do seem to increase test performance, albeit at the cost of other uses of that time.
- Phonics-based reading instruction is the learning method best supported by the evidence (as opposed to reading by recognition).
- Most kids read by third grade, but their understanding of context continues to grow over time.
- Kids are more likely to enjoy reading if they read about topics they are interested in, and as a result, there is value in letting them choose their books.
- New technology:
- Computer-based tutoring is not as good as in person tutoring;
- E-books the same as regular books;
- Audiobooks can help with story comprehension.
EXTRACURRICULARS
- Youth sports seem to have some small impacts on long-term sports participation, but no evident effects on weight.
- There is no good evidence that learning to play music actually enhances brain function.
- Concussions are serious, and some sports (football, girls’ soccer) carry more significant risks for concussion than others.
- Participation in extracurricular activities does seem to deliver some socio-emotional benefits. This may be a result of an increased feeling of ‘belonging.’
SUMMER CAMP
- The evidence suggests summer camp can promote a “sense of belonging” among kids, especially kids who are more isolated in various ways.
- Summer melt is a real thing: kids lose some learning over the summer. Tutoring can help maintain (or advance) their academic skills, but at the cost of time spent doing other things.
FEELINGS
- Theory of mind (ability to understand and take into account someone else’s mental state) and emotional control are skills that can be taught.
- It is possible to help kids develop empathy, evidence-based approaches focused on explaining emotional reactions in the content of stories.
- Socioemotional curricula can help develop social skills in individuals and groups.
- Self-esteem, anxiety and depression can be impacted by peer experiences.
- A stable family life including positive relationships with friends, siblings, and parents, can buffer negative peer experiences. Kids are more resilient.
- You do not need to be popular to be happy, but it is helpful to have some friends.
SCREEN TIME
- Watching television takes time that could otherwise be spent doing other things; there is an ‘opportunity cost’ that is worth considering. BUT sometimes it’s fine to take a break.
- Kids can absorb content from TV, so it is worth monitoring and curating what they watch.
- Screens before bed affect sleep and are therefore probably a mistake. For you, too.
- On Social media: Use your best judgment – there is no substitution for thinking and paying attention to what is going on with your kid
- On phones, consider the logistics (pick up), safety (track where they are), social benefits (interact with friends), and cost. When it doubt, pick 12 years old.