How to Parent a Management Driven Child: 4 ways to make your day Smoother
Clarification to the title: This post is not going to tell you how to manage your kids emotions or behaviors. I’m going to leave that alone with a 10-foot pole. This post is going to share with you tips to parenting a child who is the manager of their own selves. As in, you, the highly educated, 30+ year old parent, are not qualified to be their manager, therefore they must take management into their own hands.
You see, you don’t manage their time, their choices, their ideas or their decisions... at least they would like to believe this.
Here are four tips to help you through your management driven work day.
Tip 1: Collaborate on an action plan.
A child who believes they are the manager of your family is going to want to run a tight ship. To help him feel his management skills are up to par, create an action plan together, praising him on his good ideas, and downgrading your suggestions. He will walk away feeling like he owned that business meeting.
Tip 2: Don’t mingle with other office staff
He has created the plan (well you have, but don’t send out a company email announcing that) now is your time to stick with it. Don’t take up petty talk in the break room, there is no time for lollygagging when your plan clearly states what to do next. You don’t want to be called into management’s office and experience the Wrath of Management because you took a detour from the plan. In other words, once the plan is created, you must set it in action.
Tip 3: Don’t reach out and friend management with humor or sarcasm
Certainly, don’t try and include management into ongoing office jokes. You might feel that sarcasm is your love language, but management requires you to present him with scientific facts to your claims. All the while, repeatedly informing you that your claims are inaccurate and have no backing.
Tip 4: Stick with the plan
You might feel that today is a good day to roll with the punches and go with the flow. However, management will not see that in the plan. He will remind you, with intensity, that he requires a complete itinerary emailed, faxed and laminated under his door precisely at 7 am.
There you have it. The four tips you need to make it through a management driven day.
The challenge you are left with once applying these four tips is to get the whole office staff (your family) on board without turning their work day into the game of “Walking on Eggshells.”
Bonus tip: Encourage Buy-in from the rest of the staff
Sometimes the rest of the staff needs motivation and encouragement to go along with managements plan. A simple request to follow the manager may or may not be well received. Try and understand the feelings and emotions the rest of the staff is experiencing. This can make or break your day when management is going strong. Lastly, a simple chance to be empower themselves, such allowing them to choose the desert or the story for the evening, can be the buy in the remainder of the staff needs to follow managements plan.
Should you succeed, your work day will be productive and fly by, BUT should you fail, your nightcap will be more rewarding and ever so welcomed.
Edited by https://www.kelly-hamilton.biz/