Lead or Manage?

As parents we lead and manage our children. If we lead without adequate management skills, logistical problems arise. If we manage without providing clear leadership, we may travel a long road to nowhere.

Leadership focuses on developing people, empowerment, doing the right things, direction and principles. Management, on the other hand, concerns itself with taking care of things, control, doing things right, speed and practices.

If we are leading in the wrong direction, does it matter how well-managed the journey is? Conversely, when our leadership can't manage to do things right, control outcomes and practices with a modicum of speed and sense of delivery, is our leadership effective?

Leading is an art. Managing is more about skills and organization. Parenting is the delicate balance of knowing when to guide and when to supervise.

Paul was a time management guru and didn't go anywhere or do anything without consulting his Daily Planner. For Paul, it came naturally to schedule time everyday to develop new skills. Fitness training was inked in from 5 to 6 a.m. everyday while Paul listened to tapes to learn French. Dinner was from 6 to 6:30 p.m. After dinner, every 15 minutes in the Daily Planner included activities for Paul to oversee with his children. Piano practice, reading books, yoga exercises, bath time, tooth brushing and prayers. Paul scheduled every minute of his day. Paul planned his wife's activities. Paul's children's events were in the book. By golly, Paul said, in his family they got things done. The Daily Planner organized everything.

As Paul's children began to enter into the independent stage of the older child, around age six years, small actions of rebellion and deception began to appear in the children's behavior. Dawdling at the dinner table in order to miss piano practice. Going to get a drink of water in the kitchen when it was time to brush teeth. Hiding the reading books. The children's passive acts of rebellion sabotaged Paul's Daily Planner.

Paul made the mistake of managing his children when they needed his leadership for vision, moral direction and personal development. For Paul the balance of leadership and management tipped completely towards taking care of the schedule, controlling time and practices and being efficient.

When we become overly concerned with controlling things and people, instead of empowering others to manage and control themselves, we may find ourselves surrounded by indications of low trust. Some of these symptoms, but by no means all, are escapism, anger, fear, chaos, in-fighting, back-biting, hidden agendas, withholding of information, poor-me attitudes and people saying one thing and doing another.

To effectively manage we must lead. To lead we must effectively manage. So the dance begins.

Our job as parents and teachers is to have a clear direction on how we are going to help our children learn to lead and manage themselves, so later they may, in turn, lead and manage others.

Otherwise, we may end up in a place we never intended, using a map to obscurity but running right on time.

Next week: Make a Date

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

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©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

The High Cost of Low Trust

''My parents don't trust me anymore,'' said thirteen-year-old Steve.

''Oh,'' I said, but thought to myself, RED ALERT. This wasn't going to be a regular sit-at-the-table-and-eat-pizza party conversation.

My memory neurons buzzed, trying to find the listening/questioning tool I had recently learned called evidence and impact questioning.

The gist of this two-step listening technique is to gather evidence by asking the classic who, what, when, where, why and how questions. When you think you've gathered enough evidence, you ask impact questions, such as, ''And then what happens?'' or ''How do you measure that?''

''Steve, why do you say your parents don't trust you?'' I said, trying to gather the information that would show the grounds for Steve's statement.

''Wherever I go I have to get my friends' parents to call my parents to say I got there okay.''

''When did they start asking your friends' parents to call?''

''Well, I guess it was after that boy in Missouri got kidnapped riding his bike. Then I was an hour late coming back from Joe's.''

''How does it make you feel to have to ask your friends' parents to call?''

''I feel like a baby, and I get so mad. Sometimes I just want to get away from everybody breathing down my neck.''

At this point, I thought we were ready for an impact question.

''And if your parents continue to not trust you, then what happens?''

Steve gulped and took a sip of his iced tea. ''I guess I might start lying to them or maybe run away or maybe get really mad and break something. But then I would be in really big trouble.''

Next I asked some more questions to help Steve define what he wanted.

''How would you measure trust, Steve?''

''Measure trust?'' Steve blinked. ''You mean like give it a grade or a number?''

''If you felt your parents trusted you, what would that look like to you?''

Taking a deep breath, Steve said, ''Well, my parents would trust me to say where I am going and when I'd be back home. And they wouldn't be checking up on me all the time.''

''Have you tried to talk to your parents about how you feel they don't trust you?''

Looking away, Steve said, ''No. They wouldn't listen.''

I suggested to Steve that we role-play with me presenting his point of view and Steve acting as his parents. Later we reversed roles with Steve stating his case as I played his parents' part.

Afterwards Steve told me he thought he could talk to his parents without freaking out, and then he headed off in search of more pizza.

A few days later, our doorbell rang. Steve stood on the porch, smiling. ''You don't have to call my parents. We're working on the trust thing.''

Next week: Lead or Manage?

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Need + Talent + Passion = Power

In his book The 8^th Habit, Stephen Covey writes, ''When you can give yourself to work that brings together a need, your talents and your passion, power will be unlocked.''

The bluntness of that statement knocks the breath out of me, because isn't that what every one of us is looking for?

We spend our youth trying to discover our talents and our passion in life. If we are lucky enough to find and understand our gifts and enthusiasm, our next challenge is to find people who need our talents and passion. At the moment the third cherry, others' needs, comes round on the slot machine of life, we hit the jackpot.

At that juncture, if we will act with courage to fill the need we see, we gain the power to create.

When passion, talent and need come together, we have the motivation and the energy and the desire to learn skills that match our talent and passion.

Our job as parents and as teachers is to help our children uncover their talents and passion. When our children realize the world's needs, large or small, we can be confident that they will respond with ability.

Don't we enjoy doing business with the bookstore clerk who loves literature, the coffee shop owner who is passionate about roasting beans and the bike shop where designing your perfect bike is tantamount? Need, talent and passion have created power.

Seven-year-old Tyrone had difficulty reading and doing math, but Tyrone arrived at school everyday with a smile on his face, ready to be with his friends and to learn something new.

Tyrone knew everybody's lunchbox, coat, gloves, mitten, scarves, notebooks, dogs' names, date of birth--you name it. But 7 + 2? Forget about it.

Tyrone's classroom had an outdoor fishpond that required regular upkeep. The pH needed to be tested, leaves removed, lilies fertilized, fish fed, breathing holes chopped into the ice, and other pond-keeping chores. Tyrone volunteered to care for the pond on weekends and vacations. If Tyrone was ill, he asked for a classmate to check on ''his'' fish.

Tyrone was passionate about the fish, and he wanted to make sure they had everything they needed to live. Though Tyrone struggled to read, he pored over articles on how to take care of the fish and how to test the hydrogen levels in the pond. Tyrone charted the chemical readings with decimal numbers even though he could barely add two plus two. Visitors to the classroom were offered a tour of the fishpond, with Tyrone proudly telling about the life cycle of fish and the eco-dynamics (his word) of a small pond.

Tyrone's talent and passion for caring about living things, when added to the needs of the pond, unleashed a power in him to learn what some might have thought impossible for a seven-year-old with learning challenges.

Let's help our children find their passion and develop their talents. The world needs their gifts and enthusiasm.

Next week: The High Cost of Low Trust

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

The Seeds of Passion

The purpose of education, I believe, is to help a child find his or her passion in life.

Passion comes from the heart and not the intellect. It's not about how much you know. It's about how much you care. Enthusiasm is a synonym for passion with one of the definitions for passion being ''boundless enthusiasm.''

Education, from the Latin educare, means to draw or lead out. Education might be considered the process in which we help a child's personality unfold, much like a flower forming from a bud.

Optimism resides in flowering passion, as does excitement, emotional attachment and sense of purpose.

With passion we realize we have options, choices and opportunities. With this recognition enthusiasm follows.

Aristotle said, ''Where talents and the needs of the world intersect, therein lies your vocation.'' Today we might say: where your passion and the needs of the world intersect, therein lies your life's calling.

As we help our children uncover their talents and gifts, while helping them realize they each have a special role and purpose in the world, passion will be revealed.

To uncover talents, one must ''know thyself'' by looking and listening to messages from the heart. The glimmerings of talent are shown through a person'rs interests and connection to people and objects in his or her environment. Children reveal their interests and the seeds of passion, but often there is no one looking, ready to draw out and lead that interest into passion.

Four-year-old boy Simon spent his three-hour preschool session aimlessly walking around the lab school classroom, day after day, week after week. No activity seemed to hold his interest. The lab school trainer asked a student teacher to observe Simon to see if the student could discern any type of interest Simon might have.

After a couple of days, as Simon walked round and round the classroom, the student noticed that Simon stopped during each rotation and touched the top of a book in the reading corner.

Looking at the book, the student observer noticed a miniature of a flag on the cover.

The following day, the student observed Simon touch the picture of the flag. The student reported this hint of interest to the trainer.

''Do you like flags?'' the trainer went to the boy and asked.

''Yes,'' Simon said.

''Would you like to learn to embroider a flag?''

The trainer showed Simon how to place stitches on a cloth drawing.

The next morning Simon entered the classroom, going right to work on sewing his flag. As morning dismissal time arrived, Simon requested to stay and work into the afternoon.

''Can you call my mommy and ask if I can stay. But please don't tell her about the flag. I want to give it to her as a birthday present tomorrow.''

The next afternoon, a glowing four-year-old Simon left his classroom clasping a decorated paper bag. For his mother.

From that day forward, Simon's interests in varying activities and his enthusiasm for interacting in the classroom grew. Connecting Simon's love for his mother and his interest in flags helped his personality unfold and his passion appear.

Watch for glimmerings of interest. Handle with care. Our children's seeds of passion reside there.

Next week: Need + Talent + Passion = Power

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing