Scott Schimmel 0:20
Couple days ago, I was getting into the car in a parking lot after a soccer game. And I overheard, I don't know if it was the mom or the dad, I can't remember. But there were a group of little kids, family of little kids. And one of the parents said to a kid that was having a difficult time getting to the car. It was one of those, like, whisper-yells that parents can do when they're in public. And this is what the parents said, the little kid, who I think was five, that's my guess. Act you're age! Welcome back to another episode of The YouSchool podcast. I am your one and only host, Scott Schimmel. And that's what we're going to talk about today. This idea of acting your age, we've probably either said it, thought it or intended it, in some other words towards our kids. And I have three kids, 17, 14, and 10. And there are these markers in time, these ages- 16, when you get a driver's license, 18 When you become an adult, 21 when you can drink. Getting into middle school, there's these milestones- get into high school, getting your driver's license, being able to vote. Like there's these milestones that are markers in time, waypoints on the way towards, towards what? Towards adulthood. Towards self-sufficiency. Towards getting out of the house? Towards paying your own bills. And there are on one side of the ledger, a series of I don't know like skills, I mean, people call them life skills, knowing how to do your own laundry, knowing how to make yourself a meal, knowing how to pick up a prescription at a pharmacy, they're on that kind of side of the ledger, there are these life skills that I think as parents and educators and coaches, we understand a kid needs to have these. You know, kind of you should probably learn how to drive. You should probably, especially in school, there's I mean, there's just hundreds of them. These expectations of things that kids should know and be able to do conjugate verbs and Spanish, solve a complex math equation, write a five paragraph essay. Those are, and what I think is interesting about those is they're measurable. Does your kid know how to iron a shirt or not? Can your kid cook an omelet or not? Can your kid pay off their credit card bills on time or not? Can they change their oil? There's all these sort of measurable things. But here's here's the point of this episode. What does it mean to act your age? What does it mean from an emotional, relational human development standpoint? What we're trying to do with YouSchool is provide clarity, for the roadmap towards the things that I think we all care about. Which you put your spin of words, onto this, I want my kids to be happy. I want my kids to be successful. I want my kids to marry well. I want my kids to be self-sufficient, so I don't have to pay their bills. Those are all things. What we've chosen to do in YouSchool, and the phrase I use is "a meaningful life". It's yeah, I want them to be happy. But I also want them to contribute to solving problems and being a good citizen and being a good neighbor. Like meaningful life to me fits over all those. It's hard to imagine a kid living a meaningful life. If yeah, if they don't have to write essays, can they live a meaningful life? If they don't know how to conjugate Spanish verbs? If they don't know how to do laundry? If they don't know how to, if they get intimidated when they have to make a phone call? Can they live a meaningful life? On the other side, the more let's say abstract side that we're trying to provide definition to- there are actually three big categories. Identity, purpose and belonging. These are the waypoints the milestones on the path, on the road, to becoming happy, healthy humans who live and lead meaningful lives. Identity, who am I? What matters to me? What do I stand for? What am I good at? What matters most in my life? What do I find beautiful? Like, that's who you uniquely are. What makes me different than others? What makes me valuable? What's the unique value that I bring? Those are all identity questions. And that's the point of acting your age. What we want to do is help you know that there are milestones on this more, kind of abstract side of things, and you can measure them. It's specifically done through questions. There are a set of questions. Where is it?
Speaker 2 4:57
I wrote a book about it. Where is that? I wrote a book about it called
Scott Schimmel 5:02
Critical Foundations. This is not a commercial unless you want to buy it. Critical foundations, the 30 questions everyone must answer to build a meaningful life. There's 30 of them. You can check them off. You can measure that. Does your kid know how to answer those questions, identity questions? There's also purpose questions. In what ways can you contribute? What value do you bring? What problems do you want to solve? Those are open kind of purpose questions. And then there's belonging, questions about relationships, and community, and friendships. The questions are things like- What makes a good friend? How do you resolve conflicts? How do you care for the people around you? Remove those, remove the answers to those questions, you have people that are turning a certain age 18, 20, 21. They're passing these certain thresholds, high school diploma, college degree, getting your first job, buying a house, who are in some ways acting their age, maybe they're paying their bills. Maybe they have meaningful, you know, gainful employment. Maybe they've been married and have kids, but yet, there's this larger sense, they're still growing, they're still developing. What if our task was, of course all the other stuff like laundry, and the quadratic equation,, but alongside them? Are these questions that have answers. There are answers to these questions. And the number one thing that you can do to support your kid on their journey towards a meaningful life is for you to come up with your own answers to those questions. Why are you here? What's most important to you? What do you stand for? What are your strengths? What makes a good friend to you? What kind of problems do you want to solve with your life? These are the kinds of questions that you can answer. You answer them by thinking about them, writing your answers down, talking out loud with people that can be a good, good sounding board to you. Come up with your own answers to these questions. And then share your answers with your kids. Share stories about how you're kind of figuring this stuff out with them. And then prompt them to answer those questions at the appropriate time. That's that's what we're doing. That's what this is. So, super quick episode. What does it mean? For a kid, or for you and I, to act our age? Hey, thanks for joining in on The YouSchool podcast we'd love to share with you the resources available on our website at theyouschool.com. Not just articles, ebooks, worksheets and other podcast episodes. But specifically you should know about a free course we have available called The Real Me course. It's digital, it's interactive, and it will guide you to get clear about who you are in a great store you could tell with your life. So go register for a free account and get started on The Real Me course today at theyouschool.com. That's the you school dot com.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
