Reorganize

Kid CEO: How to Keep Your Children from Running Your Life
by Ed Young

(Page 5 of 7)

If you are in a kid-CEO household, the first thing you need to do is reorganize. God has put certain people over you for a reason. He put certain people over me for a reason. The same is true with this flow chart. Parents think they need to give their children undivided attention 24/7. But we need to realize it is possible to give our kids too much attention.

Kids need oxygen, but too much oxygen will smother them. Kids need attention-there's no question we need to spend time with them regularly and strategically-but too much of a good thing can suffocate them. It can be counterproductive to the overall goal of parenting. Too much attention gives them the idea that they are in the driver's seat and Mom and Dad are just passengers on the bus.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins presented the results of a study of companies that have moved from mediocre to meteoric. One of the things he found was that great companies not only get the right people on the corporate bus, so to speak, but also get the right people in the right seats on the bus.3 The problem with many families is that while the right people are on the family bus, they are in the wrong seats. In the family bus, parents should sit in the driver's seat. If there is a void in the driver's seat, kids will quickly fill it and do everything they can to stay in it. Family counselor and author Gary Smalley wrote about a child's propensity to make a family power play: “A child senses that he is in the driver's seat and can play the parent accordingly.” You don't have to teach kids how to do this. They know how to gain control of the seat of power and then take their parents for a ride.

Again, it's not going to be an easy thing to put your kids in their proper seat on the family bus. They like the driver's seat. They like setting the course. They like the power that comes with controlling the accelerator and revving up the family engine. And believe me, they're not going to give all that up very easily. However, if you do not take back the key to the bus now, it will end up hydroplaning over what you need to be and do as a family. The longer you let them sit in that high-backed driver's seat, the harder it will be to retake control.

Set the Agenda

This reorganization process takes place as you begin to change your behavior and set the agenda for your family. You do this not only by what you say but also through your own example. You must model the priorities you dictate to your children. Parents set the schedule. Parents step up. Parents cast the vision. Parents move ahead. They don't get everybody's opinion and then make a democratic decision. The permissive parenting style teaches that all members of the family carry equal weight in terms of authority and decision-making. But everyone is not equal in the family. Spiritually before God we are equal, but in terms of the practical organization of the family, there is a flow chart and a prescribed chain of command. God has placed parents over children for a reason. Parents, we must lead and set the agenda for the family.

Before I highlight some specific issues related to this, let me be clear again why you need to take such a firm line of authority as a parent. You need to communicate to your children (maybe even in a family meeting) that you are doing what is best for the entire family, and that begins with keeping your marriage a priority in the home. As I address several different practical issues in the next few sections, I will show you how it benefits both your children and your marriage. Marital issues cannot be compartmentalized into a neat, tidy little chapter. They are part and parcel of everything you do as a parent, so I want to communicate to you how the marriage is benefited and impacted throughout this process of setting the agenda in the home.

Say Good Night!

We will be looking at many different practical issues related to setting the family agenda throughout the book, but by way of illustration in this opening chapter, let's start with a perennial problem area in every household. Let's look at the dreaded issue of bedtime. I believe establishing a bedtime routine is one of the bedrocks for household organization and structure. Most parents agree, at least in theory, that bedtime is very important. Taking that theory, though, and living it out on a daily basis is where most of us fail. Too often we allow our kids to decide when they want to go to bed. But deep down, children really crave a structured routine set by their parents.

Small children, especially, need to have a regular bedtime. By establishing a pattern early in their lives, you are establishing a pattern for all of childhood. The actual bedtimes may change, but the principle of a parent-CEO bedtime should remain the same.

Many kids today are sleepwalking through life because parents are not enforcing this fundamental routine in their family. An April 2003 article entitled Experts Say Kids Need More Sleep reported the findings of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research regarding children and sleep. These experts say, “Families just aren't paying enough attention to the importance of sleep.” They go on to say, “A tired child is an accident waiting to happen.” If your children are regularly exhibiting “crankiness, lack of focus or difficulty controlling emotions,” you probably need to make a change to the bedtime routine. The article gives the following advice to parents: “Schedule a 'quiet time' each evening, and keep distractions such as TV, games and computers out of kids' rooms.” Sleep experts recommend a minimum of nine hours of sleep for kids, and the only way for that to happen in most households is for kids to go to bed earlier.

Lisa and I have four kids. We have a teenager who is sixteen, an eleven-year-old son, and twin daughters who are eight. During the school year, our eleven-year-old and our eight-year- olds go to bed around 7:45 to 8:15. That's their bedtime, no debate, no questions asked. Lisa and I set this time by figuring out how much time it takes us to connect once the kids are asleep. That has worked well for us. It has done great things for our marriage and great things for our family.

Now, with our teenager, it's a little different. When the clock hits nine, she knows to disappear to her room. She can stay up for a while, talk on the phone to her friends, listen to music, do some homework, or whatever she wants, but she has to stay in her room. Now, we don't let her stay up all night. She understands that within an hour or so free time is over and she needs to be in bed.

Copyright © 2004 by Edwin B. Young

About the Author

ED YOUNG is senior pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX, one of the fastest-growing churches of the past century. Ed's other books include High Definition Living and Know Fear. He and his wife have been married for over twenty years and have four children.