You already know that listening to podcasts is my thing. Recently, I listened to an episode of Goop. Are you familiar with Goop? It’s the company run by Gweneth Paltrow. It’s in the news now for something pretty interesting. It started as a blog where she shared her take on health and wellness. It’s grown from there to having live events and a podcast among other things. I listened to the podcast at first out of curiosity. I found a couple of episodes that I liked. A fairly recent one I listened had author, Esther Wojcicki on who had written a book about raising successful kids.
Her expertise is based on her children all being high achievers with successful high profile careers. I was skeptical because I don’t attribute my success at raising my kids to how successful they are in that way. I’m more concerned with who they end up being as people. Still, I was open to gaining new insight.
TRICK
First up, let’s try putting this new acronym into practice: TRICK. It stands for Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration and Kindness. It’s kind of her outline for raising successful kids. Along the lines of trust, one thing she said I know hits close to home for many of us. Don’t make less screen time an issue. She says let them control their time. Based on my two kids, I don’t know. My daughter is actually pretty good at moving on to other things most times. Still, if she gets in a kids YouTube groove, it’s hard to pull her away. My son will stay on some type of electronics all day if you let him.
One lovely point she made was, don’t create things for them to do all the time let them be creative and entertaining themselves. I used to be that way. I felt like I always needed to have something for them to do or be doing something with them. Then, I learned that letting them do their own thing was far more rewarding. The things they come up with are fascinating and I would have missed out had I kept trying to find stuff for them to do.
Another thing that she enforced on the Goop podcast was find ways to empower her children to be independent thinkers. I like this. I try to give my kids the space to make decisions, think things through and work out their issues without me. It’s a beautiful thing to watch them process and come to their own solution.
Is the world that safe?
While I could nod my head in agreement with some of what she said, there was one suggestion where I started to flat out disagree. She was talking about the world is really much safer than we think it is and as a result we shouldn’t fear letting our kids out of our sight. She used the example of a friend in New York. The friend was fearful of letting their kids walk to a bakery around the block. She encouraged her to let them go. They were about 8 and younger. Her rationale was that she’d been to New York and didn’t see any predators during the day.
She also shared a story of dropping her granddaughters off at Target to get their school supplies. They were 8 and 9 years old. She told them to call her when they were done. Her daughter, on the other hand, was horrified when she found out that her mom had left her kids at Target.
I’m probably over protective. I’ll certainly cop to that. In my defense, we all know there are shady people everywhere and they find any opportunity to take advantage of kids. I have one chance to get it right with my kids, so I’m not big on taking chances with their safety. If something happens, there are no second chances. So, I can’t speak to small kids going to the bakery around the block in NYC because I don’t live there. She says it gives the kids some control of their lives encourage responsibility. Aren’t there other ways though?
My reality
I get nervous whenever my son walks the two blocks to the park from our house. Our neighborhood is safe and I know a handful of our neighbors. Still, I also know that we don’t live around many people who look like us. Tamir Rice was a little boy playing at a park too and he’s not here anymore. And there’s the thing. I don’t feel like I can take liberties with my kids that are completely rational to other people and it’s all based on what we look like and the way we are perceived because of it.
The world she was describing sounded like one where freedom was assured and safety needn’t be a question. I don’t know that world. I never have. I’m pissed that my kids won’t either.
