We can learn a lot from having kids

We can learn a lot from having kids. What we learn is not necessarily what they want to teach us. People often say that you are behaving like a child as if that were a derogatory thing. It isn’t.

Most of us deliberately decide to have children. We wouldn’t do that if we didn’t want them.

When I had children I took the opportunities it presented to experiment. I replaced Calpol with placebo and cured phobias with meaningless points. I taught left from right through the direction that you read.

I used to say “kids are just like software engineers, they want to live up to your expectations”. Research shows that saying ‘you must have worked hard at that’ increases their score in subsequent tests. Chastising them by saying “that’s not very kind!” has allowed me to have kind children, for which I am grateful.

Giving children real responsibility allows them to achieve independence. When they helped me cook they actually helped. They slowed my wife down, but they speeded me up. Give responsibility paired with authority and watch them master any skill they choose. My kids were going to buy things in Starbucks from eighteen months. I didn’t abandon them for this, but when they wanted to I watched and intervened when grown ups pushed ahead in the queue. They had assumed that the kids were too young to be queuing. 

When they were little I gave my kids challenges and helped them enjoy puzzles. I assumed they would enjoy exams and so they did. I followed the principle that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic and watched them out perform the children of pushy parents. Theo didn’t take to the ‘follow in my tracks’ ski tuition. He would pause and think out the route for himself. He was soon out performing more tutored children as he really knew what he was doing.

The three main intrinsic motivators are purpose, autonomy and mastery. I watched both children master walking. I remember my daughter go from cruising the furniture to stepping away to reach me. When she was two steps out she suddenly realised that she was not holding on anymore and sat down with a bump. After that she knew she could do it and she mastered the art faster than expected. She had a brother to show her what was possible. 

You could tell the second children at primary school because they had second mover advantage. They seemed smarter and more confident. When Talitha was being stroppy at about three and refusing to get dressed before going out I said okay. Theo took her aside and told her not to as would take her. He had been there before her and remembered. 

When he had done the same I had taken him across the way to Marks and Spencer where I told him he had to dress to be allowed in. As it was snowing he was motivated.

These principles apply to adults too and allowed me to create a world class team; the world came to Clickstream to understand internet tracking. I trusted the my techies just like kids. I let them choose how ( autonomy), which technologies they needed in order to learn them (‘mastery’), and the success of the tracking (independently audited at 99.997%) provided the purpose.

We can learn a lot from kids, they are just like software engineers.