Written by: Jamie Bessette
It's easiest to start with an example before actually getting to the point so follow me on this one for a few minutes. Let’s say you are building a house. How would you go about doing it? Think on that for a moment. I’ve never actually built a house or had one built for me but I’ve watched friends go through the process. I do believe it’s very stressful. The husband wants linoleum in the kitchen and the wife wants tile, the compromising can go on and on. Some couples fight a ton, I mean a ton. I've heard of people getting a divorce over building a house but I don’t know anyone this has actually happened to. Some couples have built multiple houses together and they seem to enjoy this experience. I think, personally, there is no way my husband and I could build a house together and I’d say he’d agree with that statement. The details of picking out flooring, cabinets, bathroom mirrors etc. does not sound like good time to him and we are both perfectionists so we would drive ourselves crazy.
So in this process of building a house, in my mind, you find a builder and you hire a General Contractor. The General makes sure the timing is planned correctly. The General plans the steps your house will need to make it get to completion. He/She plans things so that the plumber doesn't show up before the walls are up and so on, following me on this? The General also goes around to make sure the work is quality work and is in charge of making people redo their work if it's subpar. The General can also act as the mediator between the people building the house and help them make decisions. Generally speaking the General doesn’t care what color paint you pick but if you change your mind and pick another color after he’s already bought the 1st color you have created more work for him, sometimes extra cost and potentially a delay the next step in the process of building the house.
As the person commissioning the house to be built you don’t think about the small stuff like the 2x4s being straight or the nails being pounded all the way in, but your General does. They care because a mistake could mean faulty building. For example, in one of the houses we lived in the flashing on the deck had been installed incorrectly. It’s not something you can see once it’s covered up by the deck so when we bought the house how would we know it was improperly installed? One morning we were sitting on the patio (under the deck) and when we looked up there were mushrooms growing out of the side of our house. Needless to say we had a problem.
The General missed that mistake which resulted in a faulty building. I don’t know who the General was and the problem with building is anyone can be a General. I could be one if I was building a house, so could you. One of my friends is the General for her house being built. Would she know if the flashing was put on backwards? Until that day I didn’t even know decks had flashing so how would I know if it was on right? My friend, she’d know because she’s in the industry.
So here is the point, sometimes jumping the hoop, finishing the step is not enough. Who’s going to complete the baby step of making sure the flashing is actually put on correctly? If you don’t know how to tell, you should make darn sure you can find someone who can or that you spend the time educating yourself so that you have the knowledge to make the decision. There are times in life that if you don’t pay attention to the small details it can have big consequences and my unplanned mushroom growing experiment is one example.
Some of you are thinking how does building a house relate to kids? Well here it comes... kids aren’t preprogrammed with how to do the small steps of their day. You need to be the general and think of all the steps that need to be taken in order for your child to manage the world we live in. Your child isn’t born knowing how to shake someone’s hand or how to pay a restaurant tab or how to ask for help when they have a problem. That’s your job as the parent, it’s to teach them all the baby steps in life. It takes a lot of thought because these things come naturally to us since we learned them when we were young. As the General you have carpenters, plumbers, roofers, and painters that help teach some of these steps but as the general it is your responsibility to make sure the steps are completed. If you leave the steps of building your house to one of the tradesmen the possibility of the house being built incorrectly is much greater. In a kids life the tradesmen are people like: aunts/uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends etc. While they play a role in helping your child learn and grow ultimately the responsibility falls on you, the parent- the General.
Within each baby step are little steps that need to be taught as well, we'll call these tiny steps. For example, when your child is asked to set the table what steps in there do you need to teach them? Do they instinctively know where to put the spoon, knife and fork or do you need to teach that to them? Each skill you want your child to learn you have to think of all the tiny steps that make up that step and teach those too. This takes work and thought but it’s well worth the time.
If you ask your child to do a baby step, let’s say bring a piece of mail to the neighbor that was accidently put in your mailbox and they give you a blank stare, take that as a teachable moment. Explain each tiny step to the process. On the positive side as your child gets older they need less and less of these teaching moments because what you’ve taught them is getting built upon and they can use their learned knowledge and apply it to new situations. For example, if you have taught them how to ask you for help (I actually give kids the words to use when teaching this skill and there are more tiny steps than just the words, like where to put your body and when to interrupt) and now they need to ask a different adult for help I say something like “You know how to ask me for help, you do the same thing except with them.”
The reason you want to take the time to do all these baby steps and tiny steps is because your main job as a parent is to raise a child who is an independent adult and a productive member of society. As mentioned earlier if you don't complete the steps in building the house you are delaying the process, if you don’t teach your child these skills you are delaying their independence. When kids are young and you teach this to them you are laying the foundation for their adulthood, yes even when they are just 2 years old you are working to make them an independent adult. If you are ever in doubt about whether or not you should teach a skill ask yourself this question… Do I want my 40 year old child living in my basement? If the answer is no then teach the skill!
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