With passion and wry humor, the former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford makes the case for parents to stop defining their children’s success via grades and test scores. Instead, she says, they should focus on providing the oldest idea of all: unconditional love.

She’s very concerned in this talk with the other side of the coin – not neglectful, uncaring parenting, but parenting that focuses on visible trappings of kid success:

But at the other end of the spectrum, there’s a lot of harm going on there as well, where parents feel a kid can’t be successful unless the parent is protecting and preventing at every turn and hovering over every happening, and micromanaging every moment, and steering their kid towards some small subset of colleges and careers.

And this:

What I’m saying is, when we treat grades and scores and accolades and awards as the purpose … What I’m saying is, our kids need us to be a little less obsessed with grades and scores and a whole lot more interested in childhood providing a foundation for their success built on things like love and chores.

She has a lot to say about defining kids and childhood beyond the kind of achievements that lead to admission to the best college. She has a good argument for including chores in childhood. And a serious plea for unconditional love instead of conditional success.

All of which makes me pleased with my post yesterday, about raising kids to be entrepreneurs. I suggested in that post that you don’t push too hard, live your own life instead of theirs, and let them study what they want, not what you want. Among other things.

The post How to Raise Successful Kids Without Overparenting appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

First, I should admit, we really didn’t plan it that way. I fell into entrepreneurship not because I believed in it in principle, but rather because I wanted to do what interested me and earn enough money to support the family. That became a software business in the heart of the Silicon Valley during the first PC boom; I was an entrepreneur with a Stanford MBA degree. And we never thought about raising entrepreneurs, just healthy, well-educated, happy, productive people.

So what happened? Have I learned anything about this that might help you? I’ve talked to my wife about it, as a reality check. And here’s what we think we’ve discovered, five pieces of advice for you as a parent:

1. Let them study what they want, not what you want

My wife and I believe in education. Period. Note we don’t say “business education”; I know just as many entrepreneurs with liberal arts degrees as those with business or technical degrees. So don’t push your kids into courses that promise to be the “hot fields” where opportunity exists — unless they’re already interested in one of those fields. Even then, by the time they’re out of school, the business landscape will shift several times, and what’s “hot” now will almost certainly have cooled down by tomorrow. Let them immerse themselves in learning they enjoy, subjects that already hold their interest, and they’ll find the way to learn what they need to succeed.

Of course, this approach to school pertains to higher education, not Mrs. Johnson’s fourth-grade reading class (basics are still basics)! Furthermore, I strongly disagree with the idea that kids be encouraged to just slide through school simply because a selected few of the richest entrepreneurs out there were dropouts. A handful of true giants in business lack a lot of “conventional” education, true — but for every one of them, there are a few hundred thousand others who’ve stayed the course and have the degree. Life, not to mention work, is just simpler with an education.

We practiced what I’m preaching here. We encouraged our kids to study whatever they wanted to study; but we also encouraged them to get all the way to the degree, and to study hard. All of them have college degrees now, two of them have grad degrees, and none of them studied business or entrepreneurship. Liberal arts was fine with us (not surprising, I suppose, since I’m a liberal arts first guy who started a software company).

2. Reject gender stereotypes

If your daughter loves tech, math, and science, let her study as much of it as she can handle. If your son loves art, music, or philosophy, don’t wonder if his brain just isn’t “sharp enough” for the nitty-gritty of “real life.” Stereotyping in either direction is unacceptable; don’t do it, and don’t accept it from others.

3. Don’t push

Resist the temptation to program your kids to enter any specific occupation, and especially don’t pressure them with expectations of following in your footsteps. If you invest the time and energy to encourage your kids in terms of being educated, don’t nullify all that effort by trying to shoehorn them into your own picture of what they should grow up to be. They’re supposed to do what they want, remember? Not what you want. Or are we still in the 19th century — when it didn’t work that well, either?

Doubt this? Try this trivia question: name a major movie in which a central character was supposed to go into his or her parents’ business but didn’t. Answer: tons, because this is more than a cliché: it’s an archetype. Kids have been doing this for thousands of years: witness Abraham trashing his dad’s store in the Bible! Come to think about it…Jesus didn’t end up a carpenter, either. In The Godfather, Don Corleone wanted Michael to be a senator, not the next don. And for a more recent example, take Hiro in Heroes.

Sure, it’s okay to hope they’ll want to get involved. It’s okay to dream. It’s okay to make some tentative plans to hand things off when the time comes. Maybe they will love what you do and want to do it, too. But freedom to choose is essential. Working in the business has to be their choice, not yours.

4. Trash the rose-colored glasses

I understand the strong thread in our culture of protecting kids, no matter what their age, from feeling anything but happy, positive, and enthusiastic about themselves all the time. It wants to eliminate the notion of “competition,” of winners or losers, or of failing. You’ll hear it in platitudes like “you’re all winners here!” And I coached kids’ soccer, so I went through the exercise of getting trophies for all and coming up with an award for every kid. And we were helicopter parents too, especially with our younger ones, hopping on a plane to console a daughter with a twisted knee.

Is that bad? I’m not sure.

So we didn’t harp on the cruel hard world. But every kid knows from a very early age who really won the race, no matter how many ribbons the grownups hand out — but that doesn’t mean kids need to learn to constantly hedge their bets, either. We didn’t coddle our kids or lead them to believe any false promises. Lemons happen, but lemonade isn’t always realistic, and they learned that. And some of the best ideas entrepreneurs ever get come from trying one thing, and then another, and then a third, until one “clicks” and they take off.

In our case, I’m not saying we were wise, or smart; maybe just lucky; and maybe even chronically broke, during all those years we were struggling with Palo Alto Software before it finally took off. Even if we might have wanted to wrap cocoons around our kids and buffer them from disappointment, trying, and struggle, it’s hard to actually do that when you’re bootstrapping a startup. All of our kids had to do their own homework and buckle down on occasion to do the hard things that came up.

5. Live your life, not theirs

Be an accidental, unintentional, role model. Let them see you enjoy your work when you do; and don’t pretend when you don’t. Show them where the money comes from, how your business works, how you grow it and adapt it. Let them participate in some of the details. Let them see you (and your spouse, if your spouse is so inclined) working the business goals, having realistic expectations, and dealing with setbacks. Let them see you as you are with what you do — and know it’s not the end of the world when things go wrong. From this, they’ll absorb something better than false “self-esteem”: they’ll know that it’s okay to try new things, it’s okay to experiment, and it’s okay if they don’t hit ultimate “pay dirt” the first time. They’ll still survive, and so will their parents!

People don’t always find their best place right away. Sometimes it takes one or two (or a dozen) false starts on the way to hitting one’s stride and finding the perfect fit. So don’t push your kids into corners. Let them work where they want, with whom they want, on what they want; let them learn by doing, and even learn by failing.

Entrepreneurism isn’t all there is to life, but it’s a great way to work…and live. Bottom line? In the best of all possible worlds, you’ll end up with well-educated, hardworking people who know where your business came from, and why, and have a good understanding of that when they figure out where they want their lives to go. And they’ll have what they need to go there.

(image: copyright Timothy J. Berry, 1989. Not for reproduction. This is our youngest, Megan Berry, now VP Product at Octane AI. Filling her dad’s shoes.)

(Ed note: does this seem familiar? I published it first on LinkedIn, then on Medium. I apologize for repetition. It came up in conversation and I wanted to bring it into the fold here, on this, my main blog.)

The post 5 Tips for Raising Children as Entrepreneurs appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

But I do say that easy access to keyboards, computers and the right kind of video/online/tablet games are steps in the right direction. And good for kids.

Do you have kids in your house? Do you regulate their screen time?

I’d like you to take a second look at kids and computers. Not all screen time is the same thing. And I’m pretty sure the right kind of screen activities can be good for kids. I’m not suggesting that unlimited access to mobile devices, living on the smart phone, is good for anybody. But some kinds of games, and screen time connected to keyboards can be really good.

Not that all parents want their kids to be entrepreneurs or techies — nor should they. But some do, and for any kid in 2015, a comfortable relationship with technology is a good thing. High tech is not going away.

I draw from my experience first:

• My brother and I grew up in the 1950s with strategy games. Sure, we played football, baseball and basket ball first. But we also spent hours with strategy board games moving pieces of cardboard over a map. We learned how to optimize results within a framework of set rules while playing, and it was good for us.
• I argued with my son’s fourth-grade teacher back in the 1980s about his bad handwriting. She worried about it; I didn’t. Even back then I knew they needed keyboarding skills, not handwriting. Fast forward to today, and wow, I was so right.
• My five kids grew up with computers and some computer games. They’re now ages 28 to 40, and all in high tech. I treasure the hours I spent playing computer strategy games with one or the other (and so, they tell me, do they). With Warcraft and Age of Empires (real-time strategy games) they learned how economic resources trump military power. With Diablo and Dark Crystal they solved puzzles and planned ahead. And these games were collaborative, the opposite of isolating.

Aside from my experience, there is research. The American Psychological Association reviewed research on video games for an article in the February 2014 issue of its journal Monitor on Psychology. They found:

• “While one widely held view maintains that playing video games is intellectually lazy, such play actually may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception, according to several studies.”
• “Playing video games may also help children develop problem- solving skills, the authors said. The more adolescents reported playing strategic video games, such as role- playing games, the more they improved in problem solving and school grades the following year, according to a long-term study published in 2013.”

Last weekend I watched grandkids aged 7, 8 and 9 spend a couple of hours together, collaboratively, solving puzzles involved in a Lego-based game getting Lego-character super heroes through mazes and over obstacles. It reminded me of the real-time strategy and role-playing games of 20 years ago. It was good for them.

And then there’s Minecraft, in which kids create new worlds of structures and adventures using virtual block landscapes, managing resources and building virtual things. There are lots of other examples of good computer games, including some in which kids program robots, solving puzzles with programming sequence. Or consider Scratch, the programming language MIT developed for kids to play with.

So, yes, I agree with all of you generation X and millennial parents that you need to limit screen time in general, and particularly those mobile devices that end up replacing real life with non-stop txt messages, or endless cartoons and such. But don’t treat all screen time as the same. Differentiate between screen time with keyboards, programming and programming-like games, strategy and adventure games, and other potentially educational computing experiences.

Some “screen time” is good for these kids in my opinion. And whether or not it encourages them to be future entrepreneurs, if it helps them develop the right kind of familiarity with technology, it can’t be that bad.

(Note: this is an only slight modification of  my latest column for the Eugene Register Guard, my local newspaper in Eugene, Oregon.)

(Illustration: thanks to Donnie Rae, Flickr, creative commons)

The post Screen time helps build next generation of techies appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

Our oldest was born in 1972 and our youngest in 1987, and in our case, during those 15 years a lot of things changed.

With the younger ones I was a lot more involved in the gritty details, like giving them bottles in the middle of the night, and changing diapers.

With the older ones, in contrast, I just wasn’t there that much. We lived in Mexico City, I worked much longer hours, there were no computers for productivity, and I’d leave home at 7 a.m. and get back at 8 p.m. My wife had more help too, because her family is from Mexico City.

We moved back to the United States from Mexico in 1979. I discovered computers and modems and worked much more at home. And my wife needed a lot more help because she was alone with multiple children. So I discovered babies and toddlers and diapers and all that from a radically different point of view.

What happened was that those kid chores, diapers and bottles and all, that nobody thinks they want to do? Dads who do that win big. My older adult children and I get along fine, thanks, so that’s not the real difference. What I regret, simply put, is what I lost out on by not spending more time with my older ones too, when they were babies and toddlers.

Social norms have changed, I’m happy to see, so the involved dads are much more common now than they were 40 years ago. My own son and my son-in-law are both very involved fathers giving a lot of quantity time. So maybe this is just old news. But I’m saying that I learned the hard way that you dads who don’t do this are missing out. You’re not winning your way out of chores; you’re losing their way out of a really great part of your own life.

(Image: Reggie Fun/FlickrCC)

The post Heartfelt Advice for Young Fathers appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

My dad, Frank D. Berry, MD, turned 91 last Fall. His four children are in their 60s and 50s. He still plays tennis twice a week, and golf on occasion, and he’s on the web every day, watching the business news, political news, discussions, ideas, and the world. He voted for Goldwater and Reagan as a middle-aged conservative, and for Gore and Obama as an older liberal. He’s always had the ability to change his mind. He put up with me being a hippie in the 60s when he was a conservative. He puts up with my brothers being conservatives, now that he’s a liberal.

He hasn’t lost his razor-sharp wit or his intellect, but he’s lost his quick reflexes, and most of his hearing (except on the phone), so he compromises with his limitations. He plays triples in tennis instead of doubles when he can, because he hits everything that he can reach, but he can’t reach like he used to. He settles for shooting in the high 40s for nine holes now, even though he used to shoot 70-something for 18. He drives a steel blue mini-cooper when he drives, but he doesn’t drive much any more, just back and forth from his home — the same one I grew up in, and I’m 63 — to the club, and to the corner store, and sometimes the video store.

He never smoked. He has always — except on nights before surgery — had a drink or two before dinner. He has never stopped getting regular exercise.

My dad has been a quiet hero for a lot of different people at different times. At the height of his career as an Ophthalmologist, people flew from all over the west, up from Los Angeles and down from Seattle, to have him do their eye surgery at El Camino Hospital in Mt. View, California. He was one of the first in his generation to do lens transplants. He was the first chairman of the first committee to create El Camino Hospital.

He was a straight-A student who went from a small mill town named Milford, in Massachusetts, to Holy Cross and then Tufts medical school. He was also the starting guard in high-school basketball (he scored 32 points in one game), and second baseman on the AAU team that won the state championship in Fenway Park. That was back in the middle 1930s when baseball was the national sport and the state championship put little Milford on the map. He was an army doctor during World War II.

He quit his medical practice at 65 to care for my mother, then his wife of 43 years, who died of cancer when he was 69. And now he’s caring for Liz, his wife of 22 years, now 87, struggling with the skeletal effects of aging. He was 70 when they married, and she was 66. We thought it was one of those December romances because they met a few months after their respective spouses had died. If so, that December’s been a long one.

My dad is the model of teaching by example. He’s always given his best at whatever he does. He loves competition, but he honors winning with quiet dignity and losing with grace. He’s never booed an opposing team, and he’s never lost a game on purpose, because that would disrespect the opponent. He tells the truth, he listens extremely well, and — only if you ask him to — he tells you exactly what he thinks. He made his own career out of skill and intelligence, and when he could, as he gained stature, he focused on the parts of Ophthalmology that he liked — the surgery — and left the rest for other doctors.

Today, on Father’s Day, I’m thinking about an important lesson my dad has to teach me and every father.

He has always given advice the way everybody should. His advice has no baggage. You take it, or not, and he’s okay with simply having shared what he thought was best. He gives it truly like a gift, meaning that once given, it’s yours, not his, and there’s no hard feelings about what you do with it. I love that. I wish I’d always done that as well as he has.

The post An Old Man to Admire appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.

I think it’s about Empathy. That’s too big a word for a kid, so I called it feeling what the other kids feel. You have to be a friend to have a friend; the golden rule; kindness. etc. My mother would have said “put yourself in the other kid’s place.” My mother-in-law called it “see yourself through the other kids’ eyes.”

Just a few hours later, in a group of mostly-baby-boomer types drawn together by interest in entrepreneurship and possible angel investment, Twitter came up. I like it and I said so. Somebody asked me for supposed secrets of success in Twitter.

Without actually thinking of that  moment with my grandson earlier that day, I gave them these five tips for success with Twitter. And as I did so, it struck me that it’s mostly the same thing: empathy.

1. Offer something other people want. In Twitter specifically, nobody cares what you’re watching on television or eating for lunch. It’s publishing, not babbling. Use twitter to offer people quotes, humor, ideas, and – my favorite by far – useful links they can follow up on.
2. When in doubt, treat others like you want them to treat you. Teasing, mocking, insulting, shouting (all caps) are not appreciated.
3. When you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.
4. When you’re angry, wait. Breathe. Think about it before you do it. Public arguments are ugly. And (when published on Twitter, at least) they live forever. Angry words are not biodegradable.
5. Return favors. When somebody does you a favor, remember it, and do them a favor back. Thank you is nice but a favor in return is more effective. In twitter at least, too much thanking becomes clutter. Twitter involves a lot of passing other people’s tweets (posts) along, called re-tweeting, so when somebody likes what you’ve published (tweeted) there and passes it to others, find something of theirs to pass along (re-tweet).

The next time I was with my grandson, I gave him almost this same list, revised only slightly, for kindergarten use. And while I’d like to report that he took it to heart and he’s now the life of the proverbial kindergarten party… well, at least we’re both still trying.

(Image: My own photo. All rights reserved. © Timothy J. Berry)

The post 5 Rules for Kindergarten Friends and Twitter appeared first on Planning, Startups, Stories.