Lost Parent Diary

Intro

This is the first in what I hope will be an on-going series about how to maximize our efficiency as parents. I know what you’re thinking, “what on Earth does that even mean?”

Look at it this way: in the recent years there has been almost an explosion of personal productivity products onto the market. It kind of all started with David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and seems to have taken off from there.

Why can’t we adapt these techniques to work for parents? In this series, I hope to do just that. I’ll be pulling from the internet but will also have some great original content, too.

It’s kung fu

Grant Balfour of 43folders.com came out with an original post that really gets to the heart of being a Productive Parent. In his post It’s not a bug, it’s kung fu., Grant connects two very different ideas: martial arts and parenting. The essence of being a master at both is use your opponent’s (or child’s) own force to your advantage.

How? If Bobby and Jane wanna help you, let them! Grant was inspired by events transpired in his kitchen. Believe it or not, kids love to help! (I think it makes them feel big and important) Grant’s wife even started a blog, Junior Kitchen, which shows all the wonderful culinary experiments the Balfours conduct. Take a gander, it’s very cute

I found this post an eye opener and very demonstrative of what can happen when parents fight the typical urge to shoo away their kids from helping them when, in fact, this kind of help is good for parent and child alike: for one, kids and parents spend time together; two, kids learn something; three, parents learn what their kids are capable of; and four, no need to drown out the kids creativity with TV or video games while the parents are doing “adult stuff”.

Questions to the readers

Can you think of any other benefits to letting your kids help you out?
How else can children help parents out?
Any ideas for future posts in this series?

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