I haven’t read of any studies recently about French youth growing into world leaders at any greater rate than any other culture on earth.

So let’s begin there . . .

I read this on three levels:

1. One is about how to send congruent, clear, consistent signals to children and not to be afraid of them. In that regard, I think she offers a great example in this article. Personally if I don’t have my 5 year old daughter in tears at least a few times a month over the way I am sending a message, than I am probably not doing a good job of parenting.
2. 2) The second level is about deciding what kinds of behaviors do you want in your children as toddlers.
3. The last  is about what is actually truly good for children to be experiencing that will maximize their potential as they grow into full fledged humans, especially in this world in these times.

There is ample enough evidence about the value of Delayed Gratification. I don’t however know that what she is describing in the article is really delayed gratification. I haven’t read the book, only this excerpt. I have to take a leap of faith that she is right about this and I’m not so inclined to make that leap.

DG is in large part a byproduct of Temperament. It can also to a lesser extent, be trained. The key seems to be training it as they are developmentally ready.

Raising children to feed on schedule, letting them ‘cry it out’, etc are common modern parenting practices here in this US.

NOTE: Even the outspoken leader of the movement Dr Ferber, recently recanted and revised his writings on the topic. He finally came to see the obvious that creating early imprints that suggest you have to fend for yourself in the helpless stage of infancy has long term negative effects. No native cultures ever did that and they managed to survive in spite of every thing that worked against them…

Mostly I see these parenting choices as a matter of convenience for parents: What is more convenient for the parent?

American parents can do the same as  the French parents if they want quiet kids at the table. Just give them an ipad.

Again, where the evidence that doing it the French way leads to healthier, more evolved humans?

As I see it French kids are messed up. Irish kids are messed up. Chinese kids are messed up. So are Brits, Danes, Italians… and goodness knows Americans are. I’ve worked with some of all of them, and a whole lot more!

I know I sound a bit sarcastic with this, but I actually mean it. We all have our flaws and we all have our strengths and a whole lot in between. Most people turn out pretty darn okay in the end… Pretty darn okay, but not necessarily fully engaged, liberated, charged up, potential fulfilling humans.

I find that Americans parents in general are really lost and unsure of their parenting. I think this because they worry far too much about fixing everything now and getting it right the first time, rather than allowing for the years of brushing up against life’s rough edges that smoothes these things out and creates elegance.

Whether they are the kind of parents who are concerned about raising a winner Top 10%er who will go to Harvard and be an investment banker (Graves Level 5) or are concerned about raising a kid who will be happy and who finds his passion (Graves Level 6), they are obsessed with one dimensional results.

Last year it was Tiger Mom and the Chinese way of parenting. Now it is the French parenting. Next it will be the Ethiopian Shim Sham Method of parenting… They have this hope that someone out there has the answer from some place where the grass is greener…(Remember this is the culture that has gone on Polynesian Diets, China Diets, etc).. the magic bullet, the magic pill… the 7 habits of highly effective somebodies.

None of us has figured this out in regards to what is actually best to raise children into adults who will be best for the larger system we live in now, though I am beginning to see glimmers of truth and clarity about this.

Instead, we’ve only mastered small micro-methods that work to grow children into adults who possess certain character traits that make them far more inclined to fit into a certain system and to produce certain kinds of results – systems that are rapidly growing outdated as I see it.

My question when I read any of this is, regardless of how inconvenient it may be for me or my children, what is the best things to be doing to prepare them to take stewardship of this earth and our place in the cosmos?

Having them sit quietly at a meal, while nice, is not interesting to me if my child is spending that quiet time spacing out into nothingness… I’d much rather her be engaged, interacting and even interrupting, brushing up against life’s edges to be moving towards refinement.

I think the idea of children engaging with the world around them, be it with the grown-ups at the table or the sugar packets and crayons, is far more valuable than having the be “Table Trained”

On one of our first airplane flights with my daughter, we did what we do. We engaged her, played with her, walked up and down the aisles with her and let her tear every page out of the SkyMall catalogue.

When we got off the plane, a man who was sitting in front of us complimented how well we managed her on the flight.

He said, “I have to say when I saw there was going to be a little baby behind us on the flight I was worried. You know how sometimes these kids can get on airplanes.”

I looked at him and said, “I don’t know. That stuff never bothered me. I just figured ‘one day it will be my kid doing all the screaming.”

He didn’t like that.

I guess he forgot we were all once that kid.

Jeffrey Leiken,

February 2012

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

When Steve Jobs died this past week, the youtube video of his Commencement Address at Stanford University from 2005 ‘went viral’, being sent around to millions of people.

What always strikes me each time I hear that speech by Steve Jobs is the extraordinary irony of it:

Here is a man addressing the graduating class at one of the elite Universities in the world, who himself not only never earned a college degree but cites dropping out of school as being one of the best decisions he ever made! Then he cites how getting fired from Apple was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

This is his message to a collection of young adults who have spent most of their lives doing everything they can to ensure they secure that degree that will minimize the risk of ever getting fired from a job, minimize the risk of ever struggling financially – who are hoping will minimize risk in life period.

When I point this irony to many parents, they grow weary that I am going to encourage their sons and daughters to be like Steve Jobs and drop out of school. They say things like: “He’s the one in a million who does this and winds up being financially secure.” Many quote the term made popular by Malcolm Gladwell that “Steve Jobs is an Outlier” – the one who deviates markedly from the masses.

I can’t stand this representation of Steve Jobs that Gladwell in his endless quest to oversimplify or deconstruct the magic of life, has instilled in people’s minds.

In this case he associated a series of variables that hinged mostly on raw luck, being in the right place at the right time, that made Jobs have the life he had.

If we want to look at Jobs as having gone from nothing to being a billionaire, then sure he’s an exceptional story, one few on earth will ever match.

If we look at what truly made his life so extraordinary though, we can look at something far more common than raw luck of being born in a certain month on a certain street, the moment a certain song played on the radio.

What Jobs did (and he says this overtly in this speech) was follow the path of his heart, trust his instincts and intuitions and have the courage and tenacity to follow where they led, even when the path was extremely difficult.

Does this make him a radical revolutionary icon that none of us can ever be like?

Of course not!

Quite the contrary…!

This makes him like all the people who lead happy, fulfilled lives and can tell fascinating stories of how they trusted their instincts and intuitions, followed the path of their heart, and found that doors opened for them and life worked out for them too… (And by the way, most of them have University degrees!)

This is my story. It is probably the story of many of the parents reading this email today too.

Will it be your son’s or daughter’s story too? Will they make critical life decisions the way Steve Jobs advised them to do?

Will your sons and daughters follow the path of their heart, learn to notice for and to trust their instincts and intuitions, and develop an incredible capacity to stay the course, make excellent choices  and do the hard work, even when it is anything but easy to do so?

Or will they instead settle for being like the many, many people who don’t follow their heart?  Will they who opt instead to ignore their instincts,  and wind up leading lives of compromise?

We don’t know what opportunities await them, what people they will meet and where their adventure will lead them.

We can be certain that the answers to these questions will be markedly different depending on which path they take.

Through my Evolution Mentoring and the training I offer through at HeroPath For Teens, I am dedicated to teaching your sons and daughters how to making decisions the way Steve Jobs did:

• How to notice the subtle signals of their instincts and intuitions.
• How to recognize these as being different from just having the momentary impulses which often lead to making bad decisions.
• How to grow in themselves the deep and critical capacity they’ll need to make excellent choices for themselves, even when the work will be hard and seeing results may be a long ways off in the future.

Are these important for you to have your son or daughter learn? If so, how do you ensure they learn to live this way and make decisions this way? It isn’t taught in school. It isn’t on the SAT exam.

It is taught here though!

Then send them to our workshop in London October 28th or in Copenhagen January 20th.

{{{ You can register for London here –>>> http://www.heropath.co.uk/booking }}}

Or, contact me to discuss my entering into an Evolution Mentoring personal relationship with your son or daughter.

I offer the critical Third Voice that all young people need to make the transformation from child into adulthood.

Location is irrelevant. Thanks to the technology of people like Steve Jobs, I am able to do this work with clients around the world. It won’t happen though unless you take action.

To Contact Jeff:  Click Here

I’ve had a number of people forward me the link to the Sports Illustrated cover story excerpted from a scathing book written about the dark side of Walter Payton’s personal life, especially after he retired from pro-football.  Some of their emails and comments to me are downright sinister.

Sports Illustrated chose to excerpt a chapter of a new book written by one of it’s authors that talks about Payton’s infidelity, struggles with his marriage, use of pain killers and struggles with mental and emotional health, especially after he retired from an illustrious career that made him one of the revered athletes to ever play American sports.

Since 99% of the population who reads the article will never read another thing about him, this will be his legacy to them. They will chalk it up as “yet another icon who turns out to be a schmuck”. Some will feel sad about it. Others like some who have emailed me today, will feel righteous about it. Others just confused.

Many people know that Payton was my sports hero when I was a kid, and that the NFL Man of the Year award is named after him ( he didn’t ask for it to be). I have over the years quoted several stories about Payton, the legacy he held as an elite athlete and as a teammate. I have told two stories in particular:

STORY #1: When he didn’t score a touchdown in the only Super Bowl he played in and was asked if he was disappointed, he refused to say he was disappointed about it, even though he later admitted he was. He focused instead on the joy of winning and the accomplishments of his team.

Months later in a candid interview, he was asked the question again except this time, he acknowledged his disappointment. Then he went on and said:

“Of course I was disappointed. Every NFL player dreams of scoring in the Super Bowl. But when they ask me that in the locker room minutes after winning the biggest game of our lives, what am I supposed to say? Can you imagine the headlines the next day? “Bears Win Super Bowl. Payton Disappointed.” There was no way I was going to let my personal desire get in the way of being the teammate and leader I want to be. What’s best for the team always comes first.”

Then the interviewer, in a moment of respect and humility for Payton’s thoughtfulness and candor said, “Well there’s always next year. “

To which Payton quickly and succinctly replied, “Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone!”

The day Payton died in 1999 at the age of 47, that quote was the headline in the Chicago Tribune. I still have it in my office next to where I sit right now. I read that line and think about it more often than anyone can realize. It is one of the guiding principles of my life.

STORY #2: Months before Payton died, he did a Public Service TV ad, encouraging people to become organ donors. People knew that Payton had a rare liver disease and would die without a transplant. His critics ripped into him for being self-serving by making the ad, only showing an interest in the cause because his life depended on it.

None of them knew – because Payton and his family were extremely private – that it was by that point already too late for Payton to get a transplant as he had terminal cancer too. He made the ad because he wanted to try and contribute something while he still could.

That story so impacted me, that it still inspires me and always will.

So my thoughts on the article:

I was far more dismayed by Sports Illustrated deciding to publish that chapter of the book, than I was by what was in it. Quite candidly, I have long sensed  that something must have been off in his life for reasons that I am not going to discuss here. I had no need to know what they were.

Dragging Payton’s personal challenges into the spotlight 12 years after his death, borders on being unconscionable to me. I feel deeply for his family, especially his kids and his widow who clearly have had to suffer enough. There is a principle of Jewish Law called Lashon Hara that I opened this piece with. Anyone who wants to know what Lashon Hara looks and sounds like, just read the article in SI.

Any time I hear about marriage problems like Payton and his wife had, I have enough maturity and life experience to know that “it takes two” – and that none of us is in the inner-lives of another person enough to really know the whole story. My clients pay me to invest the time enough to be able to help them with these issues, and even then we go more on innuendo and interpretation than on reality. My point: None of us will ever know the truth of what went on between Payton and his wife, and none of us should.

To learn that he struggled with life after being in the sports spotlight is only a reinforcement of what is a common story. After a lifetime spent in the intensity of competition, the thrills of victory and the agony of defeat, so many of them struggle to make a peace with life afterwards. In a way this seems to be the cross these superstars bare, and those who resolve it would be an invaluable resource to help those who haven’t. Too many of them wind up unraveling, dying young or destroying the lives of those around them. Whether they be Hollywood stars, musicians, sports stars… the story is all too common, and all too sad.

When they die, if I feel anything, I feel compassion for them for failing to find peace in just being, without being in the spotlight.

Ultimately, what enrages me about this whole issue, is the way that we have developed into a society that must decimate it’s heroes, exposing their imperfections, dragging their incongruities and personal struggles into the public spotlight. No one is allowed to stand as an icon anymore – as a model of something for us to aim towards and aspire to replicate with our own lives.

This is because the “average folk” hate having that kind of standard out there… They envy the rich, the famous, the “successful” and the sense that these people are something that they themselves are not… They tear them down so that hey can  sit back, rub their bellies and think “See you ain’t so much better than me”… all while secretly wishing they were one of them.

They do this as if proving that our heroes are human and have flaws too, somehow justifies their own life of mediocrity. Anyone who read this article and felt somehow righteous and judgmental of him, you are the epitome of mediocrity. You just don’t know it and probably never will.

One reason learning more about Payton’s personal struggles doesn’t upset me, is that I accept certain truths about what it means to be human. I accept them so much in fact that my honesty about this is one of the things my clients tell me makes me so compelling and useful to them.

I understand implicitly that every person’s shit stinks, including my own. I understand that every one has skeletons in their closet. I understand that if we looked deep enough into anyone’s life that we will find their flaws.

I just don’t choose to do put my attention there unless there is some legitimate reason to.

I never get lost in judging a  person based on the lowest moments in their lives. I am far more concerned with who they grew into and became afterwards.

Jon Edwards cheating on his wife while she had cancer is as shitty a story as I’ve ever heard. Had it stopped there and he had a moment of blatant self-truth, realized how far off base he must be in his life and changed himself, I could actually earn respect for him. Had he cancelled his campaign for President before publicity forced him to, given up everything else to address what clearly are massive flaws in his character, he might have become someone to be modeled.

I think anyone who wants to use Tiger Woods as an icon of golf and wants to model their game after him, would be wise. Just as I think anyone who wants to use Payton as the model of how to be an athlete and a teammate and team leader would be wise.

I think anyone who wants to use Tiger as an icon of marriage, may or may not be wise. It depends who he grows into from the mistakes he’s made. One thing is for certain that if the decades go by and he grows into an extraordinary husband and father, we will never know about it. There’s no money to be made in that story, just as another book being published about Walter Payton and all his accolades and contributions wouldn’t make money either.

Sadly for Walter Payton, it is too late for him to change his story.

As for his story with me and the icon he was for me, very little changes. He was my childhood sports hero. He taught me three things at an age and time when hearing this made a massive impression on me:

He taught me to “never say die, never give up.”

He taught me make the most out of what you are given to work with, and to never make excuses for failing (another Payton story too long to go into here).

And he taught me tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.

Not me, not you, not anyone.

So while many people  will use these revelation to justify their own mediocrity, for me, this only further inspires  me to refuse to settle for it.

Jeff Leiken
San Francisco, CA
September 29, 2011

If you effectively address this issue, you will resolve almost every concern you now have about the role drugs, sex and rock  and roll (or hip-hop!) will play… and I will even help you do it.

Q: So what is the reason?
A:  To feel grown up and to prove TO THEMSELVES that they are grown up.

It is not because of peer pressure and wanting to fit in (that is #2), nor is it because of curiosity ( #3).

Thus all the lessons in how to handle peer pressure or education about health risks will barely make a dent in how much they drink!

All that well intentioned effort never has worked and never will.

Here’s why, and here’s what will work:

Teens reach a point in life where they no longer perceive themselves as kids, nor do they want to be perceived as kids.   They reach this awakening and realization  typically by 16 years old.

It happened for you, just as it happens for them.

Historically adults recognized this critical shift in their youth. Then they had a system in place to ensure that when it happened, they stopped being treated like kids, and were appropriately trained and readied to take their place in the community as adults.

Our modern society that has developed over the past 150 years, offers no clear, universal demarcation between childhood and adulthood. The traditional all-encompassing initiatory rites-of-passages have all but disappeared in any truly meaningful way.

In lieu of this, teens just do what they see grown-ups do:

Things like drink “adult beverages”, have sex, smoke, etc. All the things  laws and “R” ratings do to keep out of the lives of children.

Think about your own life history:

When this awakening happened for you, did the adult world around you recognize it, update their relationships and expectations for you, and give you the opportunities you needed to fully grow into the adult you had the potential to become?

If not, how might your life have been different if they did?

I can tell you, because I see it all the time in my practice.

I see the remarkable transformation that happens when teens begin getting their legitimate needs for guidance, mentoring and experiences that mature them properly met. The way they start being excited about life again, more engaging with their parents, inspired by the possibilities for their lives, more positive… The way they make healthier choices, associate with more positive people… the list goes on.

Yet in spite of this, no matter how many times parents hear this message and the overwhelming evidence I can point to, most of them ignore it. Most people reading this even now will too… They’ll say “oh that’s interesting” then get on to what they believe is more important… but isn’t.

Repeatedly I see what happens in their families when their teens’ needs for growth and evolution are not met. I get the late night calls from parents just as I do from their kids.

The symptoms run the gamut:

• Losing motivation.
• Sneaking out.
• Temper tantrums.
• Getting depressed.
• Anxiety attacks.
• Reckless behavior.
• Acting out in school.
• Going internal and not talking at all.
  
• Indifference towards school.
• Sexual promiscuity.
• Smoking.
• Drinking.

Here’s the greatest dilemma parents face today:

Unless you (we) as parents personally decide to make ensuring your teen gets the mentoring, training and experiences that will transform them into adults when they are actually ready for this, they won’t.

They need more than what happens ‘naturally’. Without getting this “more” that they need,  they are destined to spend years, if not decades struggling to learn things and mature in ways that they should have learned and gotten to by the time they are 16 or 18… And the cost to them, and society, is enormous.

It doesn’t have to be that way for your son or daughter!

I’ve spend more than two decades learning and mastering the art of Mentoring youth across the threshold of adolescence into mature, responsible adulthood… Filling a void that has been left by a society whose values in terms of time and priorities, has mostly turned its back on this sacred responsibility.

I urge you not to wait until the dark cloud of unlived life settles over your teen… Don’t wait until the tantrums, the negativity or isolation shows up in your home… Don’t wait until the cynicism about learning and burn-out on school impacts their grades, or worse, their health… Don’t wait until the glazed eyes and lies about their substance use becomes a regular worry for you and a damaging problem for them…

There are things you can do right now!

Recognize that there is a whole domain of life that they need exposure to… a whole realm of experiences where learning resides that will fulfill them… that will complete their transformation from child to adult, from just potential to their unique gifts and greatness realized.

Participating in the kinds of experiences I write about or that I am offering through Evolution Mentoring, will do more than just help… this can complete the journey, setting them in a direction where the best in them and for them resides, waiting to emerge into the world.

The vast majority of folks who read this message will ignore it. Then they’ll wake up one night two years from now to that phone call from the cops that their kid has been caught shoplifting or passed out drunk… and resort to all the things that don’t work – like punishments, psychotherapy, long lectures.

Please don’t be one of them.

Our kids – and our world – need us to step up and offer them what does work. Please join me in my quest to help ensure they get it.

Best regards,

Jeffrey Leiken

PS: If you are in San Francisco or Marin, I am offering an *All New* High School Boys Mentoring Group starting October 2nd. Sorry but space is limited. If you want your son to get involved, I encourage you to register as soon as possible:  http://www.leiken.com/high-school-boys-group

PPS: I have several spots available in my Private Practice. Location is not relevant. I work with teens and young adults across North America and Europe. Contact me for a free consultation. Jeff@Leiken.com 415.441.8218