The author of the international bestseller «How to Raise a Successful Person» Esther Wojcicki (part-time mother of three daughters, two of whom are on the Forbes list) shared her pedagogical «tricks» in an exclusive interview with Forbes Woman.
About the Author:
Esther Wojcicki (Woj) is a renowned American educator, Vice Chair of the Creative Commons Advisory Board, served as an Education Consultant at Google, and has taught high school journalism in Palo Alto for 36 years. Woj is also known as Silicon Valley’s most famous mother, having raised three of the most successful women in the United States. The Wojcicki family is sometimes affectionately referred to as «the royalty of Silicon Valley». Esther’s pioneering professional development program for educators is renowned worldwide and recognized by the Wallenberg Foundation as a milestone in «teaching excellence».
I named my strategy TRICK (trick) — by the first letters of the keywords: Trust (trust), Respect (respect), Independence (independence), Collaboration (collaboration) and Kindness (kindness). In my opinion, these are fundamental things. Look at these five words (in Russian translation, Esther Wojcicki’s rule sounds like 5S: (self) trust, (self) respect, independence, cooperation and cordiality. — Forbes woman), they mean that you give people independence, encourage cooperation and treat them kindly. These points work in tandem. There is no independence without respect, there is no trust without kindness.
That is, we add joint trips to the 5C rules. What else?
Ability to handle money. Teach this to your children from an early age. Ask them to pay small bills, instruct them to check prices in the store. Involve children in solving everyday problems. Encourage questions! Call them when the air conditioner doesn’t work or the faucet is leaking. Let them help you figure it out. It will be much easier for them in life if they know the algorithm of actions.
More planning. The easiest and most efficient way. Now everyone has the Internet, so let the kids decide what your family will do for the weekend. Make a plan, calculate the time and budget, think about where to eat, prepare interesting facts about the place where you decide to go. I gave the children a lot of errands around the house. Clear the table, wash the dishes. I now do all this with my grandchildren. I have nine of them, and the tenth is about to be born. And, I emphasize, I instruct them to clear the table much more often than children did in their time. After all, if you have someone who can do it for you (mom, dad, housekeeper), you lose your sense of responsibility. I even make them clean the toilet after them, honestly, why not? It’s not easy, but they can do it.
Do you punish children when they do not follow your instructions?
My method of punishment is not to let them have something nice that they want. And if someone is seriously wrong, I ask you to write about this essay. I brought this recipe home from school. If one of my students is to blame, we analyze the situation, discuss it — and they write an essay. This is a powerful way, because when you write about something, you reflect. You ask yourself if I could have done differently. An essay helps to comprehend the situation and fix it in memory. I’ve been looking for different ways. And this one is the most efficient. After the conversation, I leave the children in the room alone to think and then write an essay. And if the child is small, then I ask you to draw a picture. In fact, when we punish a child, we want him to think about the fact that he offended someone, or upset, or created problems for his parents. So let’s immediately move on to this stage, omitting the punishment itself. Yes, there are uncontrollable children who are very difficult to control. But I think it’s because adults have shown them many times that they are not going to listen to them. And in this case, you need to honestly say: I did it wrong before, and you are used to me not listening to you, screaming and punishing, but I promise to try differently.
Your relationship with your grandchildren. These are the children of the new generation, the digital generation, how do you raise them? Do you try to control your gadgets?
My grandchildren are from 0 to 19 years old. And the appearance of the first ones was a real stress, we did not know what to do. But it turned out that the principle of cooperation helps a lot here too. The situation with smartphones primarily requires self-control and understanding when the time is right to use a mobile phone and when not. And the children themselves came to the rescue, they generated ideas, they developed the rules. In fact, they themselves resolved this situation. And what I noticed, for example, last week at dinner (usually once a week we all have dinner together): none of the grandchildren (and there were nine of them) took out the phone, even leaving the table, let alone at the table. And after dinner, they all played a board game, again without gadgets. And these are technically very advanced children.
They are allowed to play computer games, but not more than two hours a day. Some play Minecraft, it is popular in our family. But more often they do not even play games, but shoot videos or do something else interactive, where there is an element of learning. The older ones make films that we then watch as a family. That is, they do not become isolated on gadgets, do not remain alone with them for a long time. We try to get out together to the movies and other places, that is, to turn what they like into family activities. The idea is to discuss what you saw. And where I saw it — it doesn’t matter, on the big screen or in a smartphone. Of course, grandchildren sit on social networks and post something, but not every five minutes. And they know an important thing: people only post photos or videos where they look good. And do not think that in life everything is as great as in the photo.
In a word, we do not strictly limit them, but inform, explain and give freedom of choice. And this is also an important step towards independence and self-confidence. Time will tell how successful we have been. It is pointless to ban, it does nothing. It remains to teach them how to use new technologies correctly. Children want to be respected, to be reckoned with, to be trusted. If a smartphone can help with this, use it too.
Esther Wojcicki’s book How to Raise a Successful Person was published in June by Bombora.â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹