I never saw my son more excited than in the e-mail I received yesterday. He wanted to announce his net worth just passed the million dollar mark. He's 27. Jon is a summa cum laude grad of the U of Colorado. He went through the program in 3 1/2 years and hated every second of it. He started amassing his gold pile the instant he was graduated from college.
I write this blog entry because I used an irregular technique I never heard of in the child-rearing process, and I got what I was hoping for as a result. There may be some value here for anyone trying to bring up a kid. It's tough today, and everyone's challenges are unique, but what I did with Jonathan can be done with any child. We never got a visit from the police during Jon's childhood. There were no drugs, no teacher conferences and no problems worth writing about. I think the plan I used made all the difference.
First...instead of demanding he follow a regimen I thought would benefit him and hoping for the result such behavior is supposed to produce, I began with the result I wanted.
From the first day of high school, I told my son he was his own master. His bed-time was his own affair. Who he hung out with was his business. How long he played video games and what he watched on television was his decision. I said I didn't care how he kept his room, though it hurt to see his decision on that matter. I told him it was up to him whether to do drugs, smoke, drink or to party all night. I told him things would stay that way so long as I never saw anything on his report card but A's.
I told Jon he had a job just like I had a job. My job was to make money. His job was to make A's. I also told him there was no shame in bringing home a report card with B's on it, but I knew it was unnecessary to have B's on one's report card, and that if I ever saw one I would help him bring it up to an A.
The only B he ever received came in the 9th grade. For the next 6-weeks we met after dinner to do his homework together nightly. I told him it was not enough to simply do the assignment if one required an "A". Completed assignments were expected of everybody, and would produce only an average grade. We read a chapter ahead in every subject where there was homework, so that he would be able to anticipate and be prepared for what would follow in the classroom the following day. We didn't simply answer questions on the homework -- we went looking for the importance of the question and its relevance to the lesson plan. Every night we did a little work on long-term projects so that he would not be faced with last-minute emergencies. In short, I intentionally turned what should have been a half-hour of work into 2-hours. I made it as annoying as possible. The part he hated worst was when I told him I wasn't in the classroom and needed background if I were to assist with the homework. That meant he had to explain everything to me that he was supposed to know or endure my time-consuming research.
The result of this 6-week-long nightmare was a 4-year-long stretch of nothing but A's and a scholastic scholarship. I didn't want to repeat it any more than he did, and I didn't have the time for it any more than you do, but I counted on not having to do it more than once, and it paid off.
He thought he could sail through high school doing whatever he wished, but the B taught him several things along with the price to be paid for it. He learned that straight A's require a kid to get a good night's sleep -- just like your job does. He learned spending too much time with a PC monitor or TV makes you groggy in the morning and gives you headaches. Hard to study with a headache. He learned that many of his friends had different jobs. They weren't expected to make A's, and so their behavior would be different than his. He avoided people who threatened to distract him from his job.
Beginning with the result I wanted -- a superlative education, I let him figure out the behavior required to meet the goal. Not coincidentally, it taught him at an early age to control consequences by applying certain behavior.
As he went though college continuing to maintain a 4.0 grade point average he learned to enjoy the attention and benefits that come to high achievers. By the time he was graduated he couldn't wait to apply the power he felt. Now, all he does is count his gold and develop new methods for turning the "M" in "million" into the worst letter in the alphabet -- a "B".
