Position the players. With a completed team roster, identify when and where your child will see these critical people. Teachers and school personnel typically fall within a specified seven-hour time block on a regular Monday-through-Friday schedule. However, the after-school hours are equally important, so be sure you include on the support team whoever will supervise your child beyond the conclusion of the school day. Now you’ve created an accurate picture of your child’s life and the role that each adult will play this year.
Connect. The beginning of a school year marks the start of many new relationships. During the first few weeks of school, take a few minutes to communicate with each person on your roster. Send a written note or email, or share a quick conversation in person. The message to convey is short and sincere: “Hi, I just wanted you to know how excited I am to have you in my child’s life this year.” This quick introduction sends a powerful message to everyone on your team about the importance of their role for your family. Connecting with each team member puts the players into action. When presented with an opportunity to become part of a support team, most people are ready and willing to offer their assistance in any way possible.
Check in. Make an ongoing effort to maintain those team relationships over time. You can’t just send an email in the opening weeks of the school year and then fail to connect in the following months. And don’t wait until a problem arises to initiate a conversation. Every two to three weeks, check in with each of the people on your roster. Begin with an open-ended question; this allows the conversation about your child to evolve naturally. If instead you use a leading question—like “How was her behavior today?” or “Were there any problems?”—you’re narrowing the focus to a potentially negative set of comments that may create greater distance between you and the key adults in your child’s life, and you may lose the opportunity to share positive comments or questions.
Sustaining the team takes ongoing communication in the form of acknowledgments and praise. A short voicemail that expresses your heartfelt thanks for a coach’s extra time and commitment to your child’s progress does wonders for solidifying a relationship.
Celebrate. Reaching milestones and achieving goals are cause for celebration. Place a quick call to your child’s teacher after the conclusion of a class play or project. Express your acknowledgment and appreciation—two characteristics of supportive teams. The more often team members celebrate together, the stronger the relationship grows.
Remember, for a relationship to grow, it requires both parties to give. The time you spend acknowledging and praising the people on your team is an investment that grows over time. Acknowledge the simple things that people do for your child. No deed is too small or insignificant. As a former teacher, I well remember how I relished receiving notes from parents (and kids) in which they expressed their joy in being part of the classroom. Teachers in particular love to receive these simple kudos. Although they show up and give it their all without intending to receive a reward, they truly appreciate the sentiments of parents who take the time to notice their efforts. The same can be said for any of the members on your team. Look for ways to stay connected with the people who are closest to your child and family. These folks are the ones who will come through for you if you need a shoulder to lean on.
Meaningful participation
Most adolescents, if asked, wouldn’t admit their desire to actively engage in family activities, but when they do take part in the planning, the result is usually positive. Decisions about family vacations or weekly dinner plans give your child real opportunities to contribute to the ongoing growth of your family. Be on the lookout for regular, substantive issues that warrant your child’s contribution; this will help to fulfill his need for meaningful participation.
Too often, we parents let an overwhelming feeling of responsibility for creating the ideal childhood get in the way of simply enjoying our time together with our kids, in the moment. If your parenting mind can’t let go of its need to control, plan, and closely scrutinize every detail, you’ll leave no room for the serendipity that a young adolescent mind might bring to the table. Parents who like this role of organizer and master planner have particular trouble relinquishing the position. Assuming a new role requires a steady diet of shared decision making. By bringing your family together at regular intervals through a strategy called the weekly check-in, you can ease the transition in your parenting role as well as relieve some of the stress that comes from assuming sole responsibility for all matters that affect your family.
“It meant a lot to me when my parents asked for my ideas about where we should go on our next family vacation. I felt like they were treating me like someone who mattered.”
—Jake, seventh grader, Las Vegas, NV
COACHING TIP
Asking for your child’s ideas and opinions is a powerful way to acknowledge her growing sense of independence and significance.
Family meetings don’t work
Does the term family meeting bring back fond memories from your childhood? No? Many of my experiences as both a child and now as an adult talking with children have confirmed that family meetings follow a typical pattern: parents speak, children listen. Reflecting on my own childhood experiences, I remember my parents focusing on their expectations of responsibility and respect. As their accusations and my defenses escalated, most meetings took on an adversarial tone. Not exactly a picture-perfect moment of quality family time together. You can provide a different experience by reframing the family meeting as a “weekly check-in.” Different from the traditional family meeting, the weekly check-in focuses on positive comments, goal setting, and acknowledgment of effort and achievement. The notion behind the check-in is simply to bring everyone together as the name implies—to check in. Rather than waiting for problems to arise that would dictate a call to action, you hold check-ins regularly; this helps stave off potential trouble before it reaches a critical reactionary state.
Finding the time to schedule a weekly check-in is probably the greatest obstacle to overcome. Look for a time, preferably on a Sunday or Monday before you get too far into the week, when your entire family can share twenty to thirty minutes of uninterrupted time.
Steps to productive check-ins
Begin with appreciations. Set the tone for a positive discussion by giving everyone the opportunity to share an appreciation with someone else in the family. “Thank you for taking me to the movies” or “I appreciate your helping with dinner” are examples of simple yet powerful appreciations.
Acknowledge effort. Next, turn your family’s focus to acknowledging effort and its connection to achievement. It’s easy for a child to say, “I’m so busy with homework, studying, and after-school activities. You don’t understand, Mom.” When parents share examples from their lives that highlight their own efforts, kids begin to realize that effort and perseverance are issues that all family members struggle with. By sharing authentic experiences, you create a team mentality in your adolescent’s developing mind. Your child won’t be so quick to complain about the homework load when she realizes that you too are struggling to muster the effort to deal with life’s daily challenges. Give everyone at the table a few minutes to talk about the effort they have given throughout the week; this restores team camaraderie and naturally leads into the goal-setting portion of your check-in.
Plan for the future. Goal setting keeps people moving forward. Goals need not be long, drawn-out lifelong pursuits. In fact, short-term goals function better when it comes to the weekly check-in. Creating a goal that can be achieved during a seven-day period confines effort and focus to a workable time frame for everyone. Goals can focus on personal pursuits, like a commitment to exercising three times during the coming week, or academic achievements, for which the goal might be to study every evening in preparation for the big test on Friday. In either case, the stated goal should focus on the effort required to achieve the goal and not merely the product you aim to achieve. Getting straight A�
�s on the quarterly report card is not achievable within a seven-day period; making an outstanding effort in preparation for the weekly math test is both achievable and directly connected to the effort a child chooses to expend.
Check the calendar. Small enough to fit on a desk, yet large enough to display a month of activities at a glance, a desktop calendar should be standard equipment for any adolescent making the transition to middle school. Keep the calendar in a location that’s equally accessible for all family members, and begin to note events or commitments that will occur in the coming week. Charting the week’s events gives everyone a snapshot of the family’s activity load for the coming week as well as an anticipatory look at any potential conflicts. Now you all can troubleshoot time conflicts and double bookings as a family activity rather than something Mom and Dad have to solve. An evening commitment at work could easily conflict with a late-afternoon baseball practice. This conflict presents a good opportunity for your child to step in and offer a possible solution. Look for these exercises in conflict resolution as times of growth for your family. As a parent you have the chance to step aside and share responsibility with your child, who wants to contribute. These win-win situations don’t come along too often, so take advantage of the ones that do come your way by hearing and acknowledging your child’s voice.
“Although high school has its own challenges, Max and I have a relationship now that allows us to face those challenges together. We still have arguments, but now we work together to make choices that affect his future. We have a mutual respect for each other that has grown out of finding time to talk about what he wants to achieve and how I can best support him.”
—Melanie, high school parent, Thousand Oaks, CA
Schedule the next check-in. Before everyone heads out to start the week, take a final moment to plot a date during the following week when you will come back together for your next check-in. In twenty-five minutes your family will have had the opportunity to appreciate each other, focus on acknowledging effort, plan for the future, and problem-solve your way to a more connected school year.
Picture, plan, and promote time together
Family dinners with everyone gathered around plates of homemade food are heartwarming to think about, but these Norman Rockwell renditions of the American family are far from what most of us experience on a daily basis. For many families, including ours, mealtimes may not be the ideal times to bring everyone together. Although we strive to share at least one meal together each day, there are days when we are moving in too many different directions. The alternative for many families is finding time outside of traditional chow time to connect and share valuable experiences together. Try each of the following strategies to identify some of the places where your family might find time to share. My guess is that you will discover more opportunities than you previously thought existed.
Soliciting participation and support for the home team takes time and ongoing effort. The “picture, plan, and promote” strategy can be a powerful way to bring family members together in a way that benefits everyone.
Picture. Take five minutes to recall the events that have brought your family together in meaningful ways. Sharing a meal, enjoying a movie, and taking family trips garner the top spots on many lists.
Plan. Find the family calendar and look for opportunities to designate as family time. Plotting a date on the calendar increases the possibility of going to the beach, sharing a picnic, or taking a weekend excursion tenfold.
Promote. If spending time together as a family has not been a regular part of the weekly routine, there may be some apprehension or, in some cases, strong opposition to planned family gatherings. By including everyone in the planning process, family time becomes a group effort in which everyone has something invested.
“In the Moran family, everyone is responsible for preparing one part of the weekly family dinner. Our six-year-old likes making ice cream sundaes, so dessert is usually his contribution. Julie, our thirteen-year-old, typically opts for an original creation of vegetables or fruit. Sharing dinner together as a family keeps us talking and working together.”
—Dee Moran, mother of two, Scottsdale, AZ
Using the “picture, plan, and promote” strategy creates an initial boost of energy and motivation among family members that can launch the home team forward in September. But it can be more difficult to maintain excitement over the long haul.
It takes ongoing effort to sustain momentum through consistent communication among family members. The weekly check-in is a great routine to begin at the start of the school year. When families become accustomed to regular and frequent communication, they can move beyond the scheduled approach that a weekly check-in promotes. Varying the venue also helps families come together. Search for new and engaging activities and environments for your family to explore this year that will bring new life to family gatherings and, above all, keep fun at the heart of your interactions.
Chart a strategy
If you like more structure and appreciate the appeal of a formal calendar of events, then you may find the charting strategy more useful. The goal of this activity is to predict when family members will come together so that the time you share is more meaningful. Anticipating moments of shared time gives you a wonderful opportunity to focus on the interactions you want to have rather than waiting for those moments to arrive and then reacting to whatever shows up.
On a standard sheet of lined paper, create a chart with four columns. From left to right, label the columns Daily, Weekly, Quarterly, and Annually.
Fill the chart with events or activities that will involve the whole family. Begin with the Daily and Weekly columns, then move across the page as ideas come to mind. After you have exhausted the list of activities that involve everyone, turn to activities that only a few family members might take part in (a trip to the movie theater or a lunch together could provide the ideal setting for you and your child to connect, separate from the whole family). Sharing special time with a child or spouse can be just as important to keeping the family together as a whole-family experience.
Consider planning a mini-vacation or long weekend once a quarter. These two-to-three-day excursions can be as basic as a trip to your local camping area or a short visit to see extended family members. In the “Annually” column include birthdays—both those of your immediate family and any other birthdays that your family celebrates with either close friends or extended family members. Holidays belong in this column. Are you planning to stay at home or travel for any of the major holidays on your calendar? Anticipating these extended family times can help you start coordinating a few planned activities that will bring everyone together. Finally, add an extended trip to the list of annual family events, if possible. As with the mini-vacations, don’t feel compelled to plan a grand, multi-week adventure that leaves your bank account depleted for months. The goal in planning your trip is to create a time that brings everyone together to share and appreciate each other.
Staying connected throughout the middle school years contributes significantly to your child’s growth as a productive and healthy adolescent. Regular conversations with you and the members of your support team create a web of security that children need in order to feel comfortable as they take risks and explore the world.
Why expectations are important
It is important for middle school parents to create and communicate a set of high expectations for your child’s ongoing development. But be careful not to confuse high expectations with unrealistic goals that have little to no hope of being realized. High expectations clearly articulate the boundaries that you believe to be achievable in your child’s life. The challenge comes in trying to accurately and objectively determine what is appropriate for your child, given his current level of development. In the area of academic achievement, parents can easily overload their child with advanced classes and optional electives that push the child beyond the limit of what’s possible. What a parent believes to
be realistic and what an adolescent perceives as realistic can differ dramatically. The following story helps to illustrate this point.
Having become accustomed to daughter Carey’s steady progress of A’s and B’s in elementary school, her parents registered her for the honors courses in middle school. Their unstated expectation was that Carey’s level of achievement would remain on par with her past performance. After the first few weeks of school, Carey found herself overwhelmed with assignments and anxiety over learning the course content. The B’s and C’s on Carey’s first report card reflected her quarter-long struggle to achieve. Even though her effort had remained high, the rigor of the coursework had increased. The argument that followed ended with an ultimatum from Carey’s parents: “Things had better change, or else.”
Although the elementary school years create the foundation for a child’s achievement, parents should be careful when scheduling classes for the first middle school year. Typically the workload of upper elementary school courses won’t compare to a full slate of classes at the middle school level. Before you schedule fall classes, have a conversation with your child about the challenges that lie ahead. It’s part of your coaching role to encourage your child to take a path that will stretch his ability to learn and grow. As the discussion unfolds, don’t forget to ask your child, “What do you think? Does this list of classes sound too challenging?” rather than making the assumption that you and you alone know what’s best. Over the preceding six to seven years of school your child has also developed an acute sense of what “challenging” looks like with respect to instruction and assignments. Co-creating the year’s class schedule brings two added benefits. First, your child will appreciate being included in decisions that affect his life. Second, by sharing responsibility for course planning you forge a stronger bond with your child that will get you through some of the difficult times that lie ahead.
Joe Bruzzese Page 14