4 skills to work on to parent successfully as a team

There are lots of ways that the task of parenting and caring for your kid gets shared. I call the people that share in this “The Raising an Awesome Kid Team.”

Successfully coordinating this team of people is one of the greatest challenges that you will face as a parent, after actually growing and birthing a human.

In this article I’m going to teach you four skills that you need to have in order to build and lead a team of people around the vision that you have created for your child’s life.

We’ll also look at how you can use your vision to help create a life for your child that you are truly proud of.

skills for success

The four things that are essential to running a smooth and effective parenting team are:

Planning
Communication
Boundaries
Review

The most important of these skills is communication, and breakdowns in communication will account for many conflicts.

CHRONIC CONFLICT, BY THE WAY, IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU WANT TO HAVE IN YOUR PARENTING. WE WANT COOPERATION AND SUPPORT; A MISSION THAT THE TEAM IS AWARE OF AND WORKING HARD TO MAKE A REALITY.

Another way to talk about this mission is your “parenting vision” which is best defined as what you want your kids to experience in their life as a part of your family.

In my view (which I know may feel outdated and not hip to what the kids are saying), the actual parents are the ones to craft this vision. They then let everyone else know what their role will be.

The team starts with mom and dad, and then people get added to the team after that.

Some members of your team are built in from the start, like your parents, or family that you are in contact with regularly. Others you have to be more intentional about including and will make choices about, like teachers, babysitters, or neighbors. The further you go down the list of the team, the less of an impact they will have on the vision itself, but the four skills will not ever be less important. Even the once a month babysitter needs to be communicated with.

understanding your own priorities is the first step

Before we get to the the good stuff, the vision itself needs to be established.

It’s best to start some of these conversations before you have kids, but this is often not the way things work, and is ultimately impossible to do perfectly anyway.

You won’t have an answer for every single situation you will encounter before your little bundle of joy comes home. You can have a general idea of what you want their life to be like, but things will come up and surprise you.

You get to change your vision as you go! You will continue to grow and learn as a parent, and will find new goals for your family and new things you want to incorporate, or new ways of practicing values that you already had.

So, before you recruit your parenting team, this is my invitation to you: talk about (and continue to talk about) your vision for parenting. What kind of life do you want your children to have?

planning is about being prepared

Planning in the sense of a parenting team might also be called coordinating. It also might be called making decisions. Both of those things play a role in what I’m talking about.

When you are planning, you are setting dates, putting down money, then finding help. This is the logistics of your vision, the nuts and bolts of how you start giving your kids the experience you want them to have based on your dream and vision. It could involve the team, but isn’t essential.

The team will probably be called upon to help make these plans happen, and you may have to adjust your plans based on their availability, but really, this part is on you. Put legs to the ideas and values that you have and are excited about!

Plan big, plan small, plan for the near and the far, and keep doing it all the time. Then set all of those plans on fire and watch them burn so you can plan some more. Then stop and have some water (or something stronger), so you can get back to planning.

PLANNING IS ABOUT BEING PROACTIVE. YOU HAVE ALREADY CREATED THE VISION, TALKED AND THOUGHT ABOUT THE KIND OF LIFE YOU WANT YOUR KID TO HAVE. YOU ARE MAKING IT HAPPEN, INSTEAD OF WAITING AND WONDERING IF IT WILL HAPPEN.

communication makes the magic happen

“COMMUNICATION IS NOT A SINGLE STEP IN A PROCESS; IT IS THE AIR YOU BREATHE.”

Communication in parenting is about so many things, but when it comes to our current topic, it means that everybody is on the same page about the vision.

Communication is not a single step in a process; it is the air you breathe.

Communication happens before, during, and after plans are being created. Communicating well is the essence of a successful team.

It’s not easy.

Big ideas and small plans all need to be communicated effectively.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the basics of what it means to communicate, but I will say that it involves making yourself understood by other people. Practically, your communication skills (and they are skills) need to be able to address big ideas and small plans. The team needs to not only know that you care about your kids ability to swim and what time practice is over so they get picked up. Who you are communicating with depends on who is on your team.

Like all of these steps, communication starts at the top, with mom and dad.

Which means we need to talk about your marriage. Briefly.

If you have been married for more than 35 seconds, you will have understood that communication is work, and it must be done intentionally, and lots of times will not be done perfectly.

FEELINGS WILL GET HURT, FIGHTS WILL BE HAD, AND CONVERSATIONS WILL BE REPEATED OVER, AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THIS IS TOTALLY NORMAL, AND IS A FANTASTIC LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR THE BOTH OF YOU.

You and your spouse will have plenty of practice communicating while you are building your parenting vision (and figuring out where to get dinner), but make no mistake: it never stops being important.

boundaries: if you’re off the team, give me back the jersey

The parenting team is the team for a reason. Under ideal situations, they are there because they are trustworthy, and are willing to follow your lead when it comes to the choices that are being made about your child (choices that are dictated by the vision that you have created).

Some people are on that team because they have to be.

But lots of times, even if you don’t get to pick everyone who is on the team, you can control how long that team member gets to play.

I’m not really a sports guy, so I may have butchered that metaphor.

I’LL SPEAK MORE PLAINLY: WHERE YOU CAN, LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOUR KIDS SPEND WITH PEOPLE THAT AREN’T HELPING THE VISION.

This is much easier said than done, and there are lots of reasons why trying to maintain boundaries (and enforce your vision) are hard. You might be worried about maintaining relationships, not wanting to be a pain or inconvenience for people that are going out of their way to help out. It sucks to have some kind of confrontation with your neighbor or daycare provider about the snacks they feed your kid.

Having boundaries means that you have those conversations. It means that you make hard choices about where you children spend time. If members of your team are not helping you live true to your values, it’s time to reevaluate what they’re doing in the “game” of your kids life.

review the plan, regularly

At some kind of regular interval, you and the important members of the team need to sit down and do a good old fashioned check-in.

You might be feeling a certain way about how things are going with the vision, or maybe you just need to follow up on a plan that did or did not happen the way you had thought it would, but you must include specific communication to review.

This might mean you and your spouse talk about the last three months, or you call your mom and see how her part of the plan is going. It can be low key, it can be scheduled, but don’t forget to actually make sure that what you want to be happening is actually happening.

Schools do this kind of thing all the time. So do companies. Everybody gets reviewed and evaluated. It’s just the best way to see if you are reaching your goals or not.

So…do it.

last thoughts

“YOU ARE EXTENDING A GREAT PRIVILEGE TO THEM…TO BE IMPORTANT IN THE LIFE OF YOUR MOST PRECIOUS POSSESSIONS.”

My true hope for you is that you would be excited about your vision for your kids, and able to recruit people and educate them on the grand plans that you have for your child's life.

Do not assume that people involved on the team know and understand the vision.

They have to be told, and it’s an honor for them to be told and to be included. Think of your plans like a party. A stupendous party that will go on for decades.

You are not being difficult when you invite people, you are not putting them out or being a pain for having rules and expectations.

You are extending a great privilege to them…to be important in the life of your most precious possessions.