when kids are born, the parents metaphoricallyare the manager of their life. they organized their life, they sign them up for classes,they take them to the playground, they set up play dates, and kids love us in this role,they love us as the manager, they look up to us. if you go into a kindergarten classand kids are clinging to their parents, they’re showing them off to other friends, it’sjust a wonderful thing. then somewhere late middle school, early high school, adolescence;they unceremoniously, without consulting with us, fire us as the manager of their life.they basically say, that’s it, i’ll take over from here. when this happens, parentsdo one of two things: they either abandon their kids, i got fired, okay well i’llgo with my life, good luck, i hope things
work out, you know, first one who gets upin the morning let the cat out, if you’re the last one you make sure you lock the doorand set the alarm; or they end up fighting for control. they litigate for wrongful terminationfor next 3 years, in which case, nobody wins because you get into that battle about youwanting to stay the manager. when the reality is that when they fire you, that is what they’resupposed to do, that’s how they’re going to develop their independence. so the firstthing we really have to do when they fire us is, grieve a little bit, get over it andthen our job is to get re-hired as the consultant
which is different than a manager. it’snot the face to face paradigm, it’s actually about a half step back, side by side relationshipwith them and from the consultant role, we
can begin to think more about influence thancontrol. now you can have a healthy relationship with your teenagers as they go through adolescence.
No comments:
Post a Comment