I Am the Author Daniel Pink and This Is How I Parent
Daniel Pink is the bestselling author of several groundbreaking books on behavior, motivation and organization, including his latest book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing . So he should have this upbringing in reserve, right? “I am more than willing to offer research, advice and guidance to my family – and they are more than happy to reject anything that comes out of my mouth,” he jokes. But we’re here to listen. Here Pink talks about his life and what he has learned about parenting.
Name: Daniel Pink. Location : Washington, DC. Family: wife Jessica, children Sofia (22 years old), Eliza (20 years old) and Saul (16 years old).
About his morning routine:
I usually wake up at 7:15 or so. I’ll shower and maybe go downstairs at 7:30, in which case I can have a small cup of coffee and my 16-year-old grunts at me intermittently for 15 minutes before he leaves at 7:45. Typically, morning table conversations are 80 percent about sports, 10 percent about Donald Trump, and 10 percent about scheduling. After my son starts school, I read the newspaper for a bit, and then on the days I write, I climb into my office, which is the garage behind my house. And then I count the number of words I need to type before I’m allowed to do anything — before I’m allowed to open my email, read my texts, or watch Twitter.
On the role of iCal in his home:
If you took a look at our iCal, you would see something that looks almost like a hallucinogenic drug in its rainbow. We have different colors for different things: blue for family and kids, purple for my wife, green for my work, orange for my travels. And we also have other colors that I can’t even fucking figure out looking at them right now. Without iCal, we wouldn’t know what’s going on.
About the presence of a family abbreviation:
It will sound crazy, but we have a family acronym: HAHU. It stands for “Hustle. Anticipate. Watch out. “It was originally designed for traveling with three small children. When you’re at the airport, you have to rush . You cannot mess around. You have to anticipate what will happen next. And heads-up means you have to keep an eye on where you go and try not to bump into people. It has become a persistent acronym in our house – we use it all the time. In the photo on my computer desktop, the five of us are sitting on a bed in my daughter’s dorm room with a white board that says #HAHU.
On giving your children the right to own their own property:
My son has been playing sports all his life. I’m not a fan of parents going to all or most of their children’s sports. When their parents are around, children spend too much time thinking about their parents, or looking up at them, or wondering what they are thinking. This is their game. As a sports parent, I tried to back off, which I think some people find a little surprising.
On household chores (and how he applied his research on motivation to parenting):
We never paid children to do housework. I think this is a terrible idea. We gave them small sums of money so that they could, you know, go out to have a slice of pizza after school, or do those modest things that they are going to do on their own. And we always ask them to do something around the house, like taking out the trash, washing the dishes from the dishwasher, or setting the table. But these are two very different worlds. The reason we give them a small scholarship is so that they can learn to manage money and manage their lives on their own. The reason they do housework is because it is part of their commitment to other family members. These are two good things, but if you combine these two good things, they turn into a bad thing.
What happens is that if I had paid my son to take out the garbage, he could have done it first – he would have been encouraged to get paid for the garbage collection. But then it can get a little boring and he wants more money, and if for some reason I decide to stop paying him, I’m not going to take out the trash anymore. Signs of motivation tell us that people do things for different reasons. We can do something for reasons of reward, or we can do something for reasons of morality. Trying to combine the two never works.
About your favorite family ritual:
We are a sincerely religious family. We are not involved in any organized religion at all. And yet I understand some of the value of organized religion and community building, as well as some rituals. We do not celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, but we have our own winter holiday ritual. Since our children were very young, we made homemade pudding for the New Year and called it Lucky Pudding. Lucky Pudding’s goal is to make the year a good one.
About how it decompress:
When my children first started school, my wife and I ran together because it was effective. We could play sports at the same time and talk, for example, that we are going to have lunch, or some problem on the playground that one of our children had. Now my wife doesn’t run much because of injury, but I still run. I would be a minor person if I didn’t run.
At the moment of upbringing, he is ashamed:
Years ago, we were all driving around our area when my son, who was two or two and a half years old, started screaming in the back seat. Shout. Just screaming with all her might. It was one of those times when I was probably running late for some time and we had no food in the house and the toilet was closed and one kid had to go dancing and the other kid had to go to pottery and we were late for both of these cases. And this little guy was screaming with all his might. So I asked him to shut up. Then I told him to shut up. Then I shouted to him to shut up. And then they chopped me off so that I said, “Sol, if you don’t stop screaming, I’ll stop this car, get you out of the car and leave you on the sidewalk.”
This is a terrible thing for parents, and no parent would ever do something like this, except he called my bluff and started shouting even louder. I stopped the car, unbuckled him from the car seat and put him on the sidewalk. Then I got back into the car and started to drive away slowly. The rest of my family remained silent. My wife said, “My God, I married a madman.” It was then that I realized that I had reached the breaking point. This little guy was standing on the sidewalk in the bright sunlight. He stopped screaming because he was so scared. I drove back and put him back in the car seat – I didn’t even get a full block. I regretted this for 14 years.
At some point, he is proud:
It’s strange, but this is the first thing that comes to mind. When our daughter Sophia was in high school, she had a phone interview about some summer event she was about to do. She was 15 years old and had never done an interview before. Therefore, we advised her to think about the questions they might ask and how she might answer them. And then we said, “Besides, they’ll probably say,“ Sofia, do you have any questions for us? “” She looked at us and said: “What ?! No, they are not. They interview me. I don’t interview them . ” And we thought, “Well, come up with a question or two anyway.” So she has an interview, and – I remember this moment – she comes down the stairs and the first thing she says is, “They asked if I have any questions.” I think for the first time in her life she realized that her parents are not complete morons.
On the advice, he would give his parents a career juggle:
You know, kids are much tougher than you think. If they don’t take a bath one night, they will live. If you miss a school show one day, they’ll be fine. They don’t have an Excel spreadsheet that says “How many stories did my father read to me?” or “How many dinners did my mom cook?” They just want to know that you are there and you care.
About parental truth:
Once I had a boss who told me: “Everything will go very quickly.” I went through the stages. The first stage was: “Come on, old man.” Stage two, “Hey, this is going to be kind of quick.” And the third stage was: “My God, he was right.” I am trying to say the same to other parents. I’ll say, “You probably won’t believe me, but everything is going very fast.” When people become aware of this and just pay a little attention, they get much more satisfaction from the whole experience.