Parenting Plan

Reading Made to Stick : Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and really enjoying it. Early on in the book I read a line that really stood out for for "No sales plan survives contact with the customer. No lesson plans survives contact with teenagers" That mirrors my experience at work and at home. Parenting is not a lesson plan but you do incorporate ideas about raising kids that you have seen working with others or even borrowed from them. As you gain experience, you begin to have original ideas. I learn a lot from other parents my age and older, specially those who have raised more than one child and found lessons from round one fail in the next ones. Yet the are able to consolidate the gains from their experience to be more effective parents over time. There are no "similar" kids. They may appear to share common traits and even exhibit similar behavior but that is no reason to assume what worked for one will for the other. A parent's job is to improvise on the fly while working within a framework. Go too far off-script and the kid will be confused even if there are temporary gains. Stay too inflexible and you will not solve the problem at hand. Learn and relearn the kid every day so your methods remain relevant. All of the  same is astonishingly true for customers as well.

Empty Nest Onset

First time I was physically apart from J for more than an hour was when she was about seven months old. The memory of the physical pain it brought on is still bright. I experienced a version of it yesterday as I watched her drive out of the house for the first time. A driving license is a grand rite of passage and now it has happened for her. My friends had warned me about how it would feel and the mixed emotions this event would bring. And yet I was very far from being ready. The umbilical cord tugs just as strong as it did so many years ago. I was the one that had to leave back then and now it is her turn.