Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (26 page)

Sometimes it can be difficult to define an abstract concept like “funny feeling” for a young child. Ask your children to think of a time when they were afraid. Maybe it was in the dark, or maybe it was on a roller coaster or a haunted house at Halloween. Ask them to recall the physical feelings they had at the time: butterflies in their stomach, sweaty palms, shivers up their spine, or whatever it was that identified that fear to them. That is what you want them to watch for and react to. Identifying physical symptoms makes this concept concrete enough for even young children to understand. Let those symptoms be the trigger for them to recognize that they are in danger.

Teach your child about boundaries, and make your communication age-appropriate. As a parent, you don’t talk the same to a 5-year-old as you do to a 15-year-old. You don’t need to have the “sex talk” to explain to a young child where the physical lines should be drawn. Just tell them, for example, that it’s not okay for anyone to touch them where their swimsuit would cover them. Teach them to listen to their bodies and to listen to their instincts.

It may be a sad commentary on our current society, but we need to teach our children to self-protect and not just blindly do as they’re told by people. They need to learn that they have your full permission to say, “No way am I doing that, call my parents, send me to the principal, send me home, put me in detention, do whatever you have the authority to do, but I don’t trust you, and I’m not doing what you’re telling me to do.”

If they find themselves alone with an adult and get that “funny feeling” and they need to start screaming for help, they’re less likely to get stage fright if they’ve practiced that scenario a number of times before. We should actually rehearse it with them so they don’t freeze up and fail to do what we want them to do. I mean, really, I have had kids yell and scream in their front yard with their parents. So, then if something bad happens, they can do it because “Daddy told me to scream louder,” and they’ve done it ten times before.

They need to know that if their instincts are telling them they are in danger or if they feel uncomfortable, it is okay to go to another adult and ask for help or to just leave. For example, if a stranger pulls up beside them in a car as they are walking or riding their bike on the street, teach them to turn around and walk, ride, or run the other way, against traffic. They can take themselves out of harm’s way in the first 50 feet. Teach them to make a U-turn and go back, because they’re more agile than a car is.

The most important thing is to let your children know that it’s okay for them to say no. If they are wrong, they won’t get in trouble. They need to know you are behind them 100 percent. Can they use this “permission” to make some excuse to get out of doing something they don’t want to do? Yes, they can, and you’ll have to deal with that if and when it arises. But I would rather get manipulated by my child than set them up to be an easy target for BAITERs.

At least for me, one measure of myself as a man, as an individual, has been how well I have parented my children. Compared to that, how much money I’ve made, how many awards I’ve won, and how many degrees I’ve earned are insignificant details. And it hasn’t been enough for me to just “be” a parent; I had to learn how to “parent.”

Protecting and nurturing your children and preparing them for the next level of their lives compel a new understanding of the responsibility of parenting. Everything your children will ever be, they are now becoming. You are raising adults, not children. You are writing on the blank slate of your children. Sure, they inherited a lot: maybe your skin color or the color of your eyes or your body type. But so much of what they will become is a function of what they learn, and so much of that is what they learn from you.

Your job is to prepare them to do well in this world when you’re no longer around to help them. If you always entertain your children when they’re bored, they’ll never learn to entertain themselves. If you comfort them every time they cry, they’ll never learn to self-soothe or take care of themselves. You have to teach your child to live without you.

This means that the best way to protect them is to teach them to protect themselves when you’re not around, since you won’t be there forever. After all, BAITERs are unlikely to approach your children when you are there, hovering over them. Predators will carve your child out from the herd and then take advantage of them when they’re isolated.

But you have to strike a balance so your children don’t see the world as a scary, hurtful, horrible place that they should fear rather than a place that must be respected and managed. There’s a difference between paranoia and healthy skepticism, between fear and awareness. Of course, there are places your children can go and places they can’t go and things they can do and things they can’t. For them to understand the difference, you have to prepare them by building strength and confidence within them.

The goal of all your discipline is for your children to internalize your lessons and become self-disciplined. You tell your children to brush their teeth, but sooner rather than later they should discipline themselves to brush their teeth…or get enough sleep or eat their vegetables before their dessert or do their chores or their homework. Your goal as a parent is to work yourself out of a job—to become a voice that lingers in their heads in your absence.

And the way to measure your worth and value as a parent is to ask yourself this: How well am I doing in teaching my children to value themselves, love themselves, have confidence in themselves, protect themselves, and do for themselves? And all of your teaching needs to be relevant to the world that you have now learned we live in.

Knowledge like this has to be learned and earned. That’s why you had to read the rest of the book before you got to this chapter. If you haven’t taught your children what you’ve learned and what they have to do to protect
themselves
, then you’ve cheated and crippled them. You might as well pitch them the car keys and teach them to go on red and stop on green. If you put them out in the world like that, they’ll get slammed.

But preparing your children for the full-contact sport of life goes beyond just teaching that there are some evil, unfair, exploitative, dangerous people out there. It’s not enough just for your children to learn how to spot BAITERs. If you don’t help your children understand their tactics when approaching a social or work situation, then your children are just lambs being led to the slaughter.

Let me tell you right up front: I’m here to try to manipulate your thinking, and I think you need to manipulate your children’s thinking. The difference between me and those who would manipulate you for their own evil ends is that I’m transparent about it. I’m
telling
you I want to change the way you approach things. And I’m telling you what and why. Challenge me, look things up, talk to others, but when my message rings true and can’t be discounted, then act on it for you and for your family. Manipulation has a very negative connotation, but the truth is that it’s one of the main ways to parent effectively. I constantly manipulated my two sons when they were growing up. I manipulated them to get better grades or to practice basketball harder. I set up a rewards system, I incentivized them, and that’s what manipulation is. Rewarding to encourage behavior and punishing to discourage it are forms of manipulation. It’s a way of making that connection between cause and effect, between effort and reward, and between action and consequence, which children must learn to participate effectively in the world.

“Thank God you manipulated me,” my son Jay tells me now, “because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten into college. I wouldn’t have gone to law school, and I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.”

I also encouraged my boys to be psychologically-minded, whether in sports or with a teacher. I would try to teach them to ask themselves questions about what was going on. When they’d say, “This teacher is just being really rude to me,” I’d always ask why. They would say, “I don’t know; I haven’t done anything wrong!” And I would say, “Okay, but out of everybody there, why you?”

I was trying to get them to see things from the teacher’s point of view. “Well, I don’t know what she wants,” they would say. “I hate that class.” So I’d ask, “Well, does she hate it?” And they’d say, “Well, no, I mean, okay, it’s her job.” Then I’d say, “So, you hate her life’s work? How do you think that makes her feel?” I would try to just gently walk them along the path of asking themselves questions to see other people’s points of view.

Eventually, we’d get to the point where they’d say, “Well, she probably feels like I’m putting down what she does for a living because I don’t take it seriously. But I’m not going to pretend I like it when I don’t.” I’d agree with that and then add, “But you can respect the fact that this is important to her, and, you know, if you disrespect
it
, you’re disrespecting
her
, and she has power over
you
.”

Now, when children think through things like that with their parents, pretty soon they’ll be psychologically-minded. Step by step, they understand that life is more than simple hydraulics; personalities and politics come into play, and self-interest is a factor.

Remember what you learned in Chapter 6 about negotiation? Your children need to learn the same skills. Your children have to recognize that, just as they have self-interest, other people do, too. Getting along in the world involves understanding how to align your interests with someone else’s. That’s what negotiation is all about; that’s how business deals succeed. You’re both going to do a whole lot better if everybody is “eating out of the same platter.”

I would always tell my boys that if a deal isn’t fair, it’s not going to work long-term. Sure, you can always try to convince somebody to do something, and they might even agree just because they like you. “Okay, here’s the deal, you do all the work, and I get all the money”—that’s a heck of a deal, right? Well, no, not really, because it’s not going to take the other party very long to say, “Wait a minute, I’m doing all the work, and you’re getting all the money? That’s not okay.” If you want some longevity, then you need to make sure everyone is getting something out of the deal, whether it’s in business or in a personal relationship.

The same is true of when you negotiate with your children. Remember #16 of the “Sweet 16?” You must pick your battles and never let your opponent have control.
This is particularly true when it comes to those inevitable battles with your children.

When my sons were growing up, I never picked any battles over fashion because, ultimately, what they wore didn’t matter. It’s just not worth it to have a knock-down-drag-out battle over pants hanging halfway down your son’s butt. If you have a daughter and you don’t like her style, get over it. Now, if her style has crossed the line into being provocative and inappropriately suggestive, that’s a battle you want to choose, especially if she’s way too young to appreciate what her appearance signals. But if you just don’t like the fact that she wears layers, nine different colors, socks that don’t match, or something that you think makes her look homeless, you know what? She can always change her fashion (and, as a teenager, she will, believe me), so why would you pick that battle?

Save your energy for the battles that matter. If she’s 15 and wants to move in with a 27-year-old guy, that’s a battle you pick. If she’s doing drugs, that’s a battle you pick. But how about tattoos? I realize children belong to a different generation now. Thugs got tattoos when we were kids, but now everybody gets tattoos. They were just tattoos for us, but for them, they’re “body art.” So, when my son Jordan wanted to get a tattoo, I negotiated with him. I said, “I’ll tell you what, get a tattoo; just don’t get one that you can’t cover up with a T-shirt.” So, he has several now, but if he has to cover them up in order to avoid someone drawing the wrong conclusion, all he has to do is wear a T-shirt. Drawing a line like this is important because kids often don’t have the foresight to recognize the potential downside of their (often impulsive) acts.

My older son, Jay, was very preppy as a teenager. He’d always dress super-sharp, his hair was always perfect, and his car was always neat and clean. My younger son, Jordan, was (and is) very creative. He’s a musician, and he would want to dye his hair black with blue polka dots all over his head—I’m serious, blue polka dots. Then he would want to get a Mohawk, and he used to look at my balding head and say to me, “Dad, you have a reverse Mohawk, so why can’t I have a Mohawk?”

But you know what? As much as I didn’t like his hairstyles, I never picked that battle. You know why? You can wash it out or shave it off. It doesn’t matter how stupid your kid gets in the moment—if you just wait a little while, it’ll pass. Sure enough, one day Jordan would have jet black hair with blue polka dots in it, and ten days or two weeks later he’d just buzz it all off. Then he would grow it into a Mohawk, and then a couple weeks later that would be gone and something else would take its place.