The Big Shift

How Not to Parent a Teenager

I don’t know how to parent a teenager but I think I know how not to parent one.

In other words, I don’t know how to stop a teenager from being rude or sarcastic, make her act with adult-like judgment, prevent her from experimenting with… stuff, and ensure that she starts studying for her math test five days in advance of the exam. I don’t know how to do any of that and, what’s more, I’m quite sure that the countless parenting “experts” don’t either.  

What I do think I know how to do is not close down communication with a teen so that you have an idea of what your kid is actually up to (as opposed to what you naively think they are up to) and so that you can possibly—if you’re really lucky--exert some modicum of influence on her behavior.

I like to call this “realist parenting” because it acknowledges what parents don’t control and what they just might control if they play their cards right. Realist parenting refuses to trade the possibility of influence for the illusion of power. Realist parenting starts with how things actually are, and acts within that reality.

Realist parents know that teens face a myriad of influences, from their genetic makeup to their peer group culture to the ever-present media. They know that we parents are but one voice--albeit an import one--in our teen’s development. They take an honest look at each kid, their peer group, and their attitudes toward the world, and try to guide their kids within those parameters. They accept conduct in their teens that they don’t much like in order to bear some influence on their teens from doing something even worse. Realist parents would rather hear the truth and talk about it, than try to enforce the unenforceable.

Realist parents know that some kids will readily comply with parental dictates, some kids will partially comply and partially rebel, and some kids will give us total hell. Realist parents attempt to go as far as they can but no farther in influencing the choices of their complicated teens. They know what worked for their obedient first child may not work for their wild and temperamental second child.

Un-realist parents, by contrast, like to think that if they use the right combination of carrots and sticks, they can keep their kids on the straight and narrow. And because they think they can stop their teens from doing stupid teen things, their kids simply don’t tell them about the stupid teen things they do. By overestimating their power over their kids, the un-realist parent loses the opportunity to influence her teen’s behavior by the only real parental weapon parents have —talking with them in a mature and thoughtful manner.

Un-realist parents may suspect that their teens are up to no good and play an endless game of cat and mouse. Their kids become experts in not getting caught. In the process of trying to catch their kids in the act, un-realist parents actually bid up the value of the undesirable behavior. A parent who does everything he can to prevent his 16 year old son and his friends from drinking alcohol probably only makes drinking more desirable, like it was during prohibition. That parent may successfully stop the drinking party at the neighbor’s house from happening one time, but he can do nothing to prevent the same kids from drinking at the nearby park, which involves more driving around and greater risks. By unrealisitcally trying to lower the risks he elevates them.  

More often than not, however, un-realist parents simply don’t know what their kids are up to. How do I know this? Realist parents tend to hear not only about their own kids’ lives, but about the lives of other kids as well. They know that the un-realist parent's kid smokes marijuana frequently and does everything he can to hide it from his parents. Unfortunately, the un-realist parent is missing out on the opportunity to influence the frequency that the teen uses marijuana or her decision to draw the line with marijuana or the all important choice to decline driving while under the influence.

There are many realist parents out there. But we tend to stay quiet for fear of being judged by the un-realist parents for being permissive or indifferent. So we realist parents often pretend to be more “strict” than we actually are.  It’s good for neighborly relations.

Maybe it’s time, however, that realist parents come out of the woodwork. Somebody’s got to tell the emperor that he has no cloths.  

An Ode to the Status Quo in Education

I've always been fascinated by the fierce loyalty some people have to the current school model. You'd think that it had been around for millennium and codified in the Bible, rather than a century and fashioned by mere mortals. Any time you suggest that it's time to rethink education you hear from the status quo chorus 101 reasons why what we have now works fine. I've collected some of these rationales and turned them into this ode (yes, I know, it does not technically qualify as an ode).

There are great teachers who teach great classes. It is good. Kids need to learn how to function in the system. It is good. The school is well respected. It is good. Some kids are critical thinkers and creative. It is good. Many kids are happy. It is good. Most kids don’t need medication to get by. It is good. Kids work with a tutor on their weaknesses. It is good. Early bloomers excel. It is good. Kids learn with others the same age. It is good. There are certain things we should all memorize. It is good.  Every subject we teach has value. It is good. We can measure what students learn. It is good. Some aptitudes are higher value than others. It is good. Grades motivate some students to study harder. It is good. Children don't know what they're interested in. It is good. Colleges want us to do it this way. It is good. Parents want us to do it this way. It is good. My daughter got into Princeton.  It is good. Some teachers don’t know another way. It is good. Doing it another way may not work. It is good. Changing the system would be very difficult. It is good.  I am content with my role in the system. It is good.  

Can everyone really be creative?

“My starting point is that everyone has huge creative capacities as a natural result of being a human being, The challenge is to develop them.”

--Sir Ken Robinson, Author and Creativity Guru

At a recent staff party, a young staffer—call her Alisa--challenged me on my views on education and creativity. Alisa was dubious that schools could scale up creativity among the masses of students.  “I don’t believe that the vast majority of people are capable of creativity,” she argued. “Most people need a basic education just so they can get by. Given my background (born in Russia), I’m suspicious of all utopian claims.”

It was a fair challenge. After all, while there are numerous examples of instilling cultures of creativity in particular schools, it’s never been done in an entire American school system. How do we know that Alisa is wrong that such a shift is unattainable?

Let’s take a look at the evidence:

Children are creative. Several studies show that vast majorities of children start off creative and gradually become less creative as they get older. Ken Robinson, among others, suggests that the rigid, one-size-fits-all education system routinely kills creativity. Skeptics like Alisa might argue, however, that the loss of creativity is a natural if regrettable by-product of the brain’s maturing control functions. Perhaps. But how much of that childhood creativity must be lost? Longitudinal studies show that learning environments that promote imaginative play are associated with enhanced creativity later in life. In an interview with Barbara Walters, the founders of Google cite their creativity-inducing Montessori education as a major factor in their success. Evidence clearly suggests that we can preserve some creativity.

 

Some schools are creative. Numerous alternative schools have successfully inculcated creativity. San Diego-based High Tech High, for example, utilizes a project-based learning approach that seeks to turn its diverse student body into “savvy, creative, quick-thinking adults and professionals in a modern world.” The school's students, many of whom are economically disadvantaged, not only produce highly creative projects way beyond what you'd see from students at typical schools, but virtually all get into college.

Again, Alisa might argue that while High Tech High may be a model of excellence, it relies on a charismatic leader at the helm, hand-picked teachers predisposed to such an environment and more motivated parents, all necessary conditions for success. There’s no reason to believe, she might argue, that such schools can be brought to scale. But even if not every school can attain the level of excellence of a High Tech High, I don't see why we can't develop a school model that is far better than the current system at bringing out creativity. Finland, for example, has created a school system that places a much higher premium on creativity than school systems in other industrialized nations. There's no reason that it can't be done here too.

Some societies are creative. According to the book "Start-up Nation," Israel, for a combination of cultural and structural reasons, leads the world in start-ups on a per capita basis. It has more companies listed on NASDAQ than all European countries combined and more global venture capital entering the country per person than any other country. Its Middle Eastern neighbors, by contrast, have stifled the creativity of their populations. The UN-commissioned Arab Human Development Report in 2002 asserted that Arab societies are being held back by a lack of political freedom, subjugation of women and “an isolation from the world of ideas that stifles creativity.” If nothing else, freedom is a necessary condition of creativity, and societies, history shows, can be made more free.

 

Yet even among democratic societies there are major differences in creative output. Education scholar Yong Zhao points to the link between societies with rigid education systems that rely heavily on standardization, and lack of entrepreneurship. “Correlational analyses show a statistically significant negative relationship between test scores in math, reading, and sciences and aspects of entrepreneurship,” he said. This suggests that more rigid social and educational systems allow less room for creative pursuits and produce less creative kids and adults.

Alisa might counter that if Americans are already more creative than the citizens of the vast majority of countries, why mess with success? Be that as it may, we are not creative enough to assure prosperity in the 21^st century. With the growth in international competition and the automation of tasks once performed by humans, our remaining competitive advantage is our ability to separate ourselves though innovation. We will sink or swim on our ability to become more creative.

While Ken Robinson may be right that everyone possesses the ability to be creative, it’s safe to say that not everyone is capable of being creative in equal measure any more than everyone is capable of doing math or playing the violin at the same level. There’s no reason, however, for creativity to remain as rare of a human trait as webbed feet. That we are not all capable of being Picasso or Einstein or Steve Jobs does not mean the average person cannot become far more creative than she is today and that we cannot increase society’s total creative output.  

Alisa is justifiably doubtful about building a creativity utopia, but such realism should not deter us from aspiring to a better dystopia. We can become much more creative.

Book Recommendation: Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner

Is it ok that your teenager calls you an ass?

A few nights ago, I was sitting around with two other parents of teenagers doing what parents of teenagers do in such situations: talk about our teenagers.

We are all proud of our teens. They are “great kids with great heads on their shoulders.” They know that it's bad to drink and drive, and that nothing good can come out of snorting cocaine or having unprotected sex. They occasionally surprise us with acts of loving kindness. They can be exceedingly mature and generous.

But then one of the parents, a mother of two teens, decided to rain on the party and blurted out: “Jared said to me today ‘you are being an ass.’ I wish that was the worst thing he’s ever said to me but it’s not. It really gets under my skin. I would never in a million years have said that to my father!”

The other parent, a prominent doctor and very involved father, sighed, acknowledging without saying as much that his teen had also called him an ass. “I would never have even thought such a thing about my father, let alone called him it. I just had too much respect for him.”

“Did you have an open relationship with your father in the way that you do with your boys?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted.

Is there a tradeoff between preventing your kid from calling you an ass and having an open and honest relationship with him? And if so, which is better, being called a bad word but open with your teen, or being revered but closed?

One of the worse things that can happen is for your teen to call you an ass in front of your parents or in-laws. That does not go over well. Your parents will lecture you endlessly, as if you were the teenager, about the need to instill respect in your teenager.

Your parents have been off the parenting circuit for a very long time, going on cruises or playing Bridge with their friends in Florida. They are not accustomed to the adversarial behavior of a teenager. Their selective memory romanticizes your teenage days. Never mind that they allowed you to get away with ten times more than their parents allowed them to get away with. They value deference and respect. They don’t realize that the culture of parenting has changed, just as it had changed from the time they were kids to the time they became parents.

Indeed, allowing your teenager to get away with calling you an ass is really a function of larger change in our culture. Our society is much more irreverent to authority today than it was a generation ago. We see such irreverence on TV, film, and the internet. Our kids see it in how other parents and kids interact. We parent within the parameters of larger cultural norms. No parent is an island, notwithstanding the usual parental drivel “I don’t care that Mikey Smith’s mom gave him an iPhone.” Parents care a lot about what other parents do and say, whether we admit it or not.  We have become more tolerant of being called an ass because our friends and neighbors have as well.

Some decry the decline in reverence, but it’s really just a sign that society is beginning to place a higher value on independent thought and creativity than on compliance. Many parents have come to realize, based on their own experiences at work, that being compliant or obedient is not all it’s cracked up to be. It may get you a job but it won’t get you ahead. These parents have ceased instilling blind obedience in their children, but then feel guilty for allowing their kids to speak to them in a way they wouldn’t have spoken to their parents.  

I'm sure there are more than a few parents out there who think I’m out of my mind for countenancing such disrespect because their precious teen would never call them an ass. They credit their skillful parenting for their kid’s upstanding behavior. But those of us mere mortal parents with mere mortal children have a tough choice to make when our teenagers mouth off at us. We can go to war with our teen in the hope that she won’t dare do it again, and risk creating a chill in the relationship and shutting down conversation. Or we can simply and calmly tell her that we don’t appreciate the disrespectful language and move on, and risk producing a kid who…. Ummmm…Will be disrespectful her entire life? Is that really a risk? Seriously?

No, it’s not ok that your teenager calls you an ass. Yes, you can live with it.  

Four changes we must all make to thrive in the 21st Century

The chart below lays out four big shifts we must make in order to become more innovative and thrive in the future:

 

Old Order	New Order (Shift)	Rationale
Compliance: Exhort our children to learn the material and comply with authority	Creativity: Cultivate in our children risk-taking, critical thinking, and creativity	We need to produce a generation of innovators who can think for themselves
Competence: Train people to be adequate at a defined set of professions, based on stability, local economic conditions, or financial rewards	Passion: Bring out the sense of purpose and passion of every individual, encouraging that person to do what he or she loves and is best at	Purpose-driven people are more innovative, effective and happy
Uniformity: Uphold a single standard of intelligence, learning and professionalism	Diversity: Embrace a diversity of attributes/strengths as indispensable assets in today’s economy	A thriving society and economy requires a wide variety of people, including those with unconventional strengths and weaknesses
Hierarchy: Impose hierarchical management structures and teaching to maximize efficiencies	Self-organization: Create flatter, self-organizing structures in school and the workplace to maximize innovation	Self-organized teams and learning units are more nimble, and better able to learn and innovate

 Book Recommendation: Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner

The Painter and the Sculptor

“Teaching is nothing like the art of painting, where, by the addition of material to a surface, an image is synthetically produced, but more like the art of sculpture, where, by the subtraction of material, an image already locked in the stone is enabled to emerge.”

--John Taylor Gatto

When I first came across the quote above, I was struck by the powerful metaphor of the sculptor, and not just in its application to education. For the past 100 years, we were busy painting. Our industrial economy required us to synthetically produce an obedient and docile workforce. Teachers were painters, parents were painters, managers were painters. Leadership involved defining the world for and giving instructions to followers, be they children, students, or employees, with little respect for individual differences, passions and aspirations.

The emerging connection economy no longer requires us to produce a conforming and homogenous population. It thrives on authenticity, creativity and differentiation. Individual differences have become the key rather than the obstacle to success. The new economy requires the sculptor--the parent, the teacher, the manager—who helps reveal the unique image locked into each slab. In today's world, leadership involves empowering each individual to find her purpose and live up to her potential.

Being a sculptor is scarier than being a painter because we don’t know what we'll uncover as we chip away at the stone. We secretly worry that the image won't meet our hopes and dreams for that person or will reflect poorly on us. The sculptor is the parent who helps a child pursue a passion in theater, despite the parent's misgivings; the teacher who sees a flicker of genius in a teenager everyone considers a troublemaker and works to bring it out; the manager who allows a young employee to take on an innovative but risky project rather than direct his every move. Being a sculptor requires putting aside fears and relinquishing a measure of control.

Sculpting is, unfortunately, less common than we might care to admit. Most people and institutions are still telling people what they ought to be rather than helping them become what they were meant to be. Giving people their marching orders used to work for us, and it seems safer to rely on what used to work than to try something new. So we work harder and harder at doing what's not working. At the very moment we need to cultivate individuality, we double-down on uniformity. At the very moment we need to encourage creativity and love of learning, we issue "common core standards," insisting on what  “every” child ought to be able to do and when, as if every child was meant to do the same things and be the same person.

We are a learning society—a slow learning society, but faster than most others—so eventually we will overcome our insecurities and shed our outmoded beliefs. Eventually we will learn a new way of teaching, leading and inspiring. The question is: how much more painting must we do before we realize that the image we are looking for is just beneath the surface?