Carragee Consulting

Thoughts on raising kids

My friend Karan asked last week if driving our kids from one structured activity to the next kills their ability for self-play and other skill development?

Below is my response:
I’ll answer your question obliquely —
My daughter sometimes comes to me complaining “I’m so boring” which is a linguistic foible. What she means to say is that she’s bored and not getting enough attention, that we aren’t entertaining her sufficiently.

I’ve explained to her that I love the way she phrases this because she needs to learn to create her own fun and that being in a state of boredom means that you’re not engaging your mind. People who are bored themselves are less engaging to others, they themselves are not only bored, but boring.

The tough thing with kids is that they need to learn all the structure, patterns and frameworks they will continue to build on a reference the rest of their lives.

Team sports and music lessons provide these frameworks and to some extent that topic or content within them are irrelevant at young ages, just to learn that your capabilities can grow with practice and repetition and that other people can draw things out of you and believe in you when you can’t see it in yourself.

It’s one of the reasons I feel like we have to move out of Palo Alto and back to the Midwest.

In the bay area many people are pursuing exceptional lives, vast fortunes and unlikely outcomes.

In the Midwest many more families seem to embrace time affluence, community fabrics and a diversity of activities, rather than a specialized or narrow focus at a young age.

Parenting is an impossible problem.

Too many future unknowns to even guess at what tradeoffs we’re making for our kids.

Already I know many doors are closed to my daughter because at barely 4 we haven’t gotten her started down those paths early enough.

C’est la vie…

How do you find the right balance for your kids of structure and exploration?