Leadership
emstrength3
This idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I'm wondering what you all think of it. I've been thinking about leadership and how it relates to being an unschooling parent.
The background to this is that I naturally tend to state things in a very direct way.
"Today we're going to the store and then the park."
"Get your shoes on, let's go."
"Let's do a little clean up and then we'll watch a movie or read some books and go to bed."
None of that is set in stone, it doesn't have to be that way, and I'm fine with the kids having a different idea and then I try to work with it. That's just the way I tend to say things.
With my oldest child, I've had to learn how to phrase things in a less direct way, because she responds better. If I say, "We're doing X," she bristles, but if I say "I think X would be a good idea," she doesn't. It comes more naturally now than it used to, but it still requires me to think before I speak (a good thing, of course!)
So more like:
"I need to go to the store today, and I'm guessing you'd like to go to the park."
With my middle child, she just goes along with whatever most of the time no matter how I phrase it, and if she does want to do something else, she just states it.
A friend recently said to me, "I'm surprised at how easily you say no."
I try to say yes often and a lot of the yes's are just built into our lifestyle. But I guess I don't hem and haw and try to be saccharine sweet when I do say no. If it's not a safety thing, I'll try to work with them to find a solution if they don't like the answer, but I'm just confident when I say it and they often just accept it because I give a reason with it.
So what does this have to do with leadership?
I've started thinking of all of this as leadership skills. I don't mean leadership in the sense of management or institutional leadership. I mean it in the sense of being the type of person people want to follow.
I'm juxtaposing it to the type of parent who asks everything. "Do you want to go to the park today? Do you want to wear shoes? Do you want to go to bed? Is it ok if mommy takes a shower? Can I make dinner now?"
Of course, I do ask them questions as well, and I love their input, I just don't leave it to them to plan our days or make every decision.
So, I'm trying to work out how these thoughts about leadership relate to partnership and the fact that my kids won't (and don't now, but even more so as they get older) always want to follow me and that's a good thing.
Thoughts?
Emily
Ezabella 6
Liliana 4
Zaria 1
The background to this is that I naturally tend to state things in a very direct way.
"Today we're going to the store and then the park."
"Get your shoes on, let's go."
"Let's do a little clean up and then we'll watch a movie or read some books and go to bed."
None of that is set in stone, it doesn't have to be that way, and I'm fine with the kids having a different idea and then I try to work with it. That's just the way I tend to say things.
With my oldest child, I've had to learn how to phrase things in a less direct way, because she responds better. If I say, "We're doing X," she bristles, but if I say "I think X would be a good idea," she doesn't. It comes more naturally now than it used to, but it still requires me to think before I speak (a good thing, of course!)
So more like:
"I need to go to the store today, and I'm guessing you'd like to go to the park."
With my middle child, she just goes along with whatever most of the time no matter how I phrase it, and if she does want to do something else, she just states it.
A friend recently said to me, "I'm surprised at how easily you say no."
I try to say yes often and a lot of the yes's are just built into our lifestyle. But I guess I don't hem and haw and try to be saccharine sweet when I do say no. If it's not a safety thing, I'll try to work with them to find a solution if they don't like the answer, but I'm just confident when I say it and they often just accept it because I give a reason with it.
So what does this have to do with leadership?
I've started thinking of all of this as leadership skills. I don't mean leadership in the sense of management or institutional leadership. I mean it in the sense of being the type of person people want to follow.
I'm juxtaposing it to the type of parent who asks everything. "Do you want to go to the park today? Do you want to wear shoes? Do you want to go to bed? Is it ok if mommy takes a shower? Can I make dinner now?"
Of course, I do ask them questions as well, and I love their input, I just don't leave it to them to plan our days or make every decision.
So, I'm trying to work out how these thoughts about leadership relate to partnership and the fact that my kids won't (and don't now, but even more so as they get older) always want to follow me and that's a good thing.
Thoughts?
Emily
Ezabella 6
Liliana 4
Zaria 1
Joyce Fetteroll
On Jul 29, 2012, at 2:58 AM, emstrength3 wrote:
A leader leads a team to get a task accomplished. Leader implies getting the team from point A to point B. But your individual family members aren't all working on the same task. They each have their individual goals and you're managing time and resources to allow each person to reach their goals.
Of course being an unschooling parent is more than that but it's part of the job description :-)
Joyce
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> I've started thinking of all of this as leadership skills. I don't mean leadershipIt sounds more like being a coordinator. You're managing the logistics of what your family wants to do. For some in your family what they want is someone else to do the deciding of what to do ;-)
> in the sense of management or institutional leadership. I mean it in the sense
> of being the type of person people want to follow.
A leader leads a team to get a task accomplished. Leader implies getting the team from point A to point B. But your individual family members aren't all working on the same task. They each have their individual goals and you're managing time and resources to allow each person to reach their goals.
Of course being an unschooling parent is more than that but it's part of the job description :-)
Joyce
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Pam Sorooshian
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:35 AM, Joyce Fetteroll <jfetteroll@...>wrote:
parent. True.
However, in the poster's description of how she tells everybody what they
are going to do, there wasn't any mention of her taking each person's
individual interests into account unless they raised objections to her
announced plans. So - it came across more as bossiness than as being the
coordinator who helps everybody do what they would like to do.
If the point is that some people go overboard in asking kids to decide too
many things, probably so, although I think it is relatively rare and that
most parents pretty much run their little kids' lives without much regard
to the children's interests and desires. Anyway, because some people go
overboard in one direction isn't a good justification for going overboard
in another direction.
Focusing more on how to include the kids in making the plans, to some
degree and an increasing degree as they get older, seems better than
justifying being bossy (even a kind boss who will listen to objections).
The fact that the oldest child "bristles" at the way her mom tells her what
to do indicates that she feels her mom is too bossy. Then it sounded like
mom was rephrasing but in such a way as to get the child to still go along
with what she (mom) had planned, rather than to actually include the
child's input in making plans in the first place.
-pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> But your individual family members aren't all working on the same task.Managing time and resources is a pretty large part of being an unschooling
> They each have their individual goals and you're managing time and
> resources to allow each person to reach their goals.>>
parent. True.
However, in the poster's description of how she tells everybody what they
are going to do, there wasn't any mention of her taking each person's
individual interests into account unless they raised objections to her
announced plans. So - it came across more as bossiness than as being the
coordinator who helps everybody do what they would like to do.
If the point is that some people go overboard in asking kids to decide too
many things, probably so, although I think it is relatively rare and that
most parents pretty much run their little kids' lives without much regard
to the children's interests and desires. Anyway, because some people go
overboard in one direction isn't a good justification for going overboard
in another direction.
Focusing more on how to include the kids in making the plans, to some
degree and an increasing degree as they get older, seems better than
justifying being bossy (even a kind boss who will listen to objections).
The fact that the oldest child "bristles" at the way her mom tells her what
to do indicates that she feels her mom is too bossy. Then it sounded like
mom was rephrasing but in such a way as to get the child to still go along
with what she (mom) had planned, rather than to actually include the
child's input in making plans in the first place.
-pam
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Sandra Dodd
-=-The background to this is that I naturally tend to state things in a very direct way.
"Today we're going to the store and then the park."
"Get your shoes on, let's go."
"Let's do a little clean up and then we'll watch a movie or read some books and go to bed." -=-
Is that the way you speak to houseguests?
Is that the way you announce your plans to friend visiting for the day?
A good gauge for judging how to speak to a child is to think of how you would speak to an adult in similar circumstances.
-=-A friend recently said to me, "I'm surprised at how easily you say no."
...So what does this have to do with leadership? -=-
Being organized and decisive is good.
Feeling that your children need to be led isn't as good.
-=- I'm trying to work out how these thoughts about leadership relate to partnership and the fact that my kids won't (and don't now, but even more so as they get older) always want to follow me and that's a good thing. -=-
If you can let go of the leadership idea and go more with the partnership, you can feel like the partner with the greater ability and experience and knowledge without declaring yourself (or acting like) "the leader."
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
"Today we're going to the store and then the park."
"Get your shoes on, let's go."
"Let's do a little clean up and then we'll watch a movie or read some books and go to bed." -=-
Is that the way you speak to houseguests?
Is that the way you announce your plans to friend visiting for the day?
A good gauge for judging how to speak to a child is to think of how you would speak to an adult in similar circumstances.
-=-A friend recently said to me, "I'm surprised at how easily you say no."
...So what does this have to do with leadership? -=-
Being organized and decisive is good.
Feeling that your children need to be led isn't as good.
-=- I'm trying to work out how these thoughts about leadership relate to partnership and the fact that my kids won't (and don't now, but even more so as they get older) always want to follow me and that's a good thing. -=-
If you can let go of the leadership idea and go more with the partnership, you can feel like the partner with the greater ability and experience and knowledge without declaring yourself (or acting like) "the leader."
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
emstrength3
========
Often, it's more like I have an idea of what they like already and have taken that into account when I state what we're going to do. In my example about going to the store and then the park, I know she wants to go to the park because she asked to the day before. So I am taking her desires into consideration. She still doesn't like the way I naturally tend to phrase things, so I've learned to express things in a way she is more receptive to.
I also state things in a "I'd like to do X, you'd like to do Y, how can we work this out?" kind of way. That's something I've had to learn how to do though. It doesn't come as naturally.
The way I do things actually works well in my home. The kids are happy and I'm flexible to changing things if they aren't. I was just thinking about it philosophically.
Emily
> However, in the poster's description of how she tells everybody what they========
> are going to do, there wasn't any mention of her taking each person's
> individual interests into account unless they raised objections to her
> announced plans. So - it came across more as bossiness than as being the
> coordinator who helps everybody do what they would like to do.
Often, it's more like I have an idea of what they like already and have taken that into account when I state what we're going to do. In my example about going to the store and then the park, I know she wants to go to the park because she asked to the day before. So I am taking her desires into consideration. She still doesn't like the way I naturally tend to phrase things, so I've learned to express things in a way she is more receptive to.
I also state things in a "I'd like to do X, you'd like to do Y, how can we work this out?" kind of way. That's something I've had to learn how to do though. It doesn't come as naturally.
The way I do things actually works well in my home. The kids are happy and I'm flexible to changing things if they aren't. I was just thinking about it philosophically.
Emily