Joe Bruzzese (20 page)

To gain the extended support that families had naturally a generation or two ago, you need to assemble a roster of supportive team players that extends beyond the walls of your family home. Building the foundation of that strong support team begins at home. With a clear vision in place and a set of realistic goals to pursue, you are ready to add more members to your team.

Create a roster
. Who will affect your child's life this year? Think of the word
team
as meant to include anyone who has the ability to Teach, Encourage, Advocate for, or Motivate your child on a weekly basis, then begin by listing people who fit this description. Most middle schoolers will have a minimum of five teachers who
will play a critical role in their lives. Their influence in the hour they spend with your child every weekday can have a tremendous impact on your child's ability to grow both academically and socially. Outside of the classroom, schools have a full-time staff of counselors and administrators who can also fill spots on your roster. Principals and student counselors can turn potentially sticky situations into positive ones in the course of a single conversation. Connecting with these folks is crucial to building a solid team roster. Off campus, look for coaches and mentors who you believe will support the same morals and values that you hope to impart to your child. Their participation in the after-school hours rounds out the day for your child and can often set the tone for the evening hours at home. Family friends and extended family members could be possible additions as well. Keep the door open for anyone who fits the description of a potential TEAM member.

Position the players
. With a completed team roster, identify when and where your child will see these critical people. Teachers and school personnel typically fall within a specified seven-hour time block on a regular Monday-through-Friday schedule. However, the after-school hours are equally important, so be sure you include on the support team whoever will supervise your child beyond the conclusion of the school day. Now you've created an accurate picture of your child's life and the role that each adult will play this year.

Connect
. The beginning of a school year marks the start of many new relationships. During the first few weeks of school, take a few minutes to communicate with each person on your roster. Send a written note or email, or share a quick conversation in person. The message to convey is short and sincere: “Hi, I just wanted you to know how excited I am to have you in my child's life this year.” This quick introduction sends a powerful message to everyone on your team about the importance of their role for your family. Connecting with each team member puts the players into action.
When presented with an opportunity to become part of a support team, most people are ready and willing to offer their assistance in any way possible.

Check in
. Make an ongoing effort to maintain those team relationships over time. You can't just send an email in the opening weeks of the school year and then fail to connect in the following months. And don't wait until a problem arises to initiate a conversation. Every two to three weeks, check in with each of the people on your roster. Begin with an open-ended question; this allows the conversation about your child to evolve naturally. If instead you use a leading question—like “How was her behavior today?” or “Were there any problems?”—you're narrowing the focus to a potentially negative set of comments that may create greater distance between you and the key adults in your child's life, and you may lose the opportunity to share positive comments or questions.

Sustaining the team takes ongoing communication in the form of acknowledgments and praise. A short voicemail that expresses your heartfelt thanks for a coach's extra time and commitment to your child's progress does wonders for solidifying a relationship.

Celebrate
. Reaching milestones and achieving goals are cause for celebration. Place a quick call to your child's teacher after the conclusion of a class play or project. Express your acknowledgment and appreciation—two characteristics of supportive teams. The more often team members celebrate together, the stronger the relationship grows.

Remember, for a relationship to grow, it requires both parties to give. The time you spend acknowledging and praising the people on your team is an investment that grows over time. Acknowledge the simple things that people do for your child. No deed is too small or insignificant. As a former teacher, I well remember how I relished receiving notes from parents (and kids) in which they expressed their joy in being part of the classroom. Teachers in
particular love to receive these simple kudos. Although they show up and give it their all without intending to receive a reward, they truly appreciate the sentiments of parents who take the time to notice their efforts. The same can be said for any of the members on your team. Look for ways to stay connected with the people who are closest to your child and family. These folks are the ones who will come through for you if you need a shoulder to lean on.

Most adolescents, if asked, wouldn't admit their desire to actively engage in family activities, but when they do take part in the planning, the result is usually positive. Decisions about family vacations or weekly dinner plans give your child real opportunities to contribute to the ongoing growth of your family. Be on the lookout for regular, substantive issues that warrant your child's contribution; this will help to fulfill his need for meaningful participation.

Too often, we parents let an overwhelming feeling of responsibility for creating the ideal childhood get in the way of simply enjoying our time together with our kids, in the moment. If your parenting mind can't let go of its need to control, plan, and closely scrutinize every detail, you'll leave no room for the serendipity that a young adolescent mind might bring to the table. Parents who like this role of organizer and master planner have particular trouble relinquishing the position. Assuming a new role requires a steady diet of shared decision making. By bringing your family together at regular intervals through a strategy called the weekly check-in, you can ease the transition in your parenting role as well as relieve some of the stress that comes from assuming sole responsibility for all matters that affect your family.

Does the term
family
meeting bring back fond memories from your childhood? No? Many of my experiences as both a child and now as an adult talking with children have confirmed that family meetings follow a typical pattern: parents speak, children listen. Reflecting on my own childhood experiences, I remember my parents focusing on their expectations of responsibility and respect. As their accusations and my defenses escalated, most meetings took on an adversarial tone. Not exactly a picture-perfect moment of quality family time together. You can provide a different experience by reframing the family meeting as a “weekly check-in.” Different from the traditional family meeting, the weekly check-in focuses on positive comments, goal setting, and acknowledgment of effort and achievement. The notion behind the check-in is simply to bring everyone together as the name implies—to check in. Rather than waiting for problems to arise that would dictate a call to action, you hold check-ins regularly; this helps stave off potential trouble before it reaches a critical reactionary state.

Finding the time to schedule a weekly check-in is probably the greatest obstacle to overcome. Look for a time, preferably on a Sunday or Monday before you get too far into the week, when your entire family can share twenty to thirty minutes of uninterrupted time.

Begin with appreciations
. Set the tone for a positive discussion by giving everyone the opportunity to share an appreciation with someone else in the family. “Thank you for taking me to the
movies” or “I appreciate your helping with dinner” are examples of simple yet powerful appreciations.

Acknowledge effort
. Next, turn your family's focus to acknowledging effort and its connection to achievement. It's easy for a child to say, “I'm so busy with homework, studying, and after-school activities. You don't understand, Mom.” When parents share examples from their lives that highlight their own efforts, kids begin to realize that effort and perseverance are issues that all family members struggle with. By sharing authentic experiences, you create a team mentality in your adolescent's developing mind. Your child won't be so quick to complain about the homework load when she realizes that you too are struggling to muster the effort to deal with life's daily challenges. Give everyone at the table a few minutes to talk about the effort they have given throughout the week; this restores team camaraderie and naturally leads into the goal-setting portion of your check-in.

Plan for the future
. Goal setting keeps people moving forward. Goals need not be long, drawn-out lifelong pursuits. In fact, short-term goals function better when it comes to the weekly check-in. Creating a goal that can be achieved during a seven-day period confines effort and focus to a workable time frame for everyone. Goals can focus on personal pursuits, like a commitment to exercising three times during the coming week, or academic achievements, for which the goal might be to study every evening in preparation for the big test on Friday. In either case, the stated goal should focus on the effort required to achieve the goal and not merely the product you aim to achieve. Getting straight A's on the quarterly report card is not achievable within a seven-day period; making an outstanding effort in preparation for the weekly math test is both achievable and directly connected to the effort a child chooses to expend.

Check the calendar
. Small enough to fit on a desk, yet large enough to display a month of activities at a glance, a desktop calendar should be standard equipment for any adolescent making the transition to middle school. Keep the calendar in a location that's equally accessible for all family members, and begin to note events or commitments that will occur in the coming week. Charting the week's events gives everyone a snapshot of the family's activity load for the coming week as well as an anticipatory look at any potential conflicts. Now you all can troubleshoot time conflicts and double bookings as a family activity rather than something Mom and Dad have to solve. An evening commitment at work could easily conflict with a late-afternoon baseball practice. This conflict presents a good opportunity for your child to step in and offer a possible solution. Look for these exercises in conflict resolution as times of growth for your family. As a parent you have the chance to step aside and share responsibility with your child, who wants to contribute. These win-win situations don't come along too often, so take advantage of the ones that do come your way by hearing and acknowledging your child's voice.

Schedule the next check-in
. Before everyone heads out to start the week, take a final moment to plot a date during the following week when you will come back together for your next check-in. In twenty-five minutes your family will have had the opportunity to appreciate each other, focus on acknowledging effort, plan for the future, and problem-solve your way to a more connected school year.

Family dinners with everyone gathered around plates of homemade food are heartwarming to think about, but these Norman Rockwell renditions of the American family are far from what most of us experience on a daily basis. For many families, including ours, mealtimes may not be the ideal times to bring everyone together. Although we strive to share at least one meal together each day, there are days when we are moving in too many different directions. The alternative for many families is finding time outside of traditional chow time to connect and share valuable experiences together. Try each of the following strategies to identify some of the places where your family might find time to share. My guess is that you will discover more opportunities than you previously thought existed.