Our kids need adult leaders and mentors.
“Our kids need adult mentors, not friends.
You want to make a real difference in their lives?
Package and gift them with discipline, accountability, & sound work ethic. Bring it from a place of real love and care.
You being “cool” now, makes them losers later.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
The “cool” parent or the “cool” coach resonates immediately with the kid’s first, initially.
“My parent’s don’t care about ‘x’.”
“Coach is awesome he’s really chill about ‘y’.”
Of course the impressionable, immature, egotistical kid is going to resonate most (on the surface) with the adult who is playing down to their level in an effort to appease them.
But is the “cool” adult really the one who makes the biggest difference in their lives? No.
Now I’m not implying any parent or coach should be an asshole just for the sake of being an asshole. There are plenty of adults who use their superiority as a badge and defend being a jerk because “I’m dad” or “I’m your coach”. You want to wall a kid off faster than lion chasing a gazelle, use this approach.
I believe the adult mentors who make the biggest difference in the lives of our youth are the self-aware disciplinarians leading by example.
This is not an easy task.
Not only does it start with the adult living the code and walking the walk in their own life, they have to auto regulate their mentorship approach to tastefully resonate with the mentally immature teen (or pre-teen).
While I am no master of mentorship, (though I do actively, intentionally work on my mentorship skills every single day of my life) here is what I have found to work best:
1. Show them you care. Notice I use the word show, not tell. Obviously I WILL tell them how much I love and care about them, but I believe it to be essential to tangibly show them with my actions. I think this is the first step to developing trust. I know I have no chance of (positively) impacting them if they are not 100% confident I truly care about them.
2. Once they know I care about them, I can then and only then begin craftfully dosing the lessons or takeaways I want them to take from me: leadership skills, discipline, accountability, work ethic, etc.
This is an ongoing, ever evolving process.
I realize it’d be much easier to ‘reach’ them initially by foregoing the whole “uncool” route and trading it for immediate “cool” resonation, but I’ll play my hand in trying to be the impactful leader whose lessons stick with them deep into the future.
Set up your today with your eyes focused on their tomorrow.
