I love parenting remotely.
I thought I was going to hate it, but it turns out it has a lot of the perks of day-to-day parenting, without some of the drawbacks of water bottles everywhere.
I also like supervising remotely. I enjoy the written word, sometimes prefer email to conversation, and am a ‘supervise by perimeter’ person.
What I mean by supervising by perimeter is probably best described as it relates to zone defense in basketball.
*Side note, I played 7th and 8th grade basketball for my school, never scored a point except a little bunny shot in a game where we scored, as a team, 9 points (we lost, so it was pretty anti-climatic). I was usually first off the bench, or 6th man, as it is sometimes called.
I like to use the zone defense to supervise others and to parent. I like watching the edges, I like knowing my role, and sometimes I like to sit more than others. 🙂
Our 8th grade coach loved a certain Robert Montgomery Knight, or Coach Bobby Knight.
Bobby Knight coached IU basketball for all of my childhood and into my adulthood. Coach Etherington, my 8th grade head coach and 7th grade assistant coach, loved coach Knight’s offense so much that we learned the motion offense, both high post and the low post motion offense, and I think we probably avoided zone defense for the most part, since at that time Coach Knight was anti-zone, and purely a man-to-man guy.
During 7th grade, we were playing a local team where we planned to played a ‘Box and 1’ against a local school system, Noblesville, who was much better than we were. They had a hotshot player, Courtney Cox, who was just killing it.
We practiced the ‘Box and One’ defense for the whole week leading up to the game. I got to be the ‘one’, so my job was chasing ‘Courtney’ around the court keeping her from scoring or affecting the game, and the other players were the zone, to defend the rest of the players.
No one can be the ‘one’ all of the time, as it is exhausting, so we continued practicing as both the other team and in all positions to prepare us.
As it worked out, she ‘played up’ during the game, meaning she played with the 8th graders, because our 8th grade team was pretty amazing. Since we had practiced all week for the zone defense, I learned about watching the perimeter.
When you play a zone, you watch to make sure, when someone is in your ‘zone’, that they are defended. Once they leave your zone, it is someone else’s turn to defend them, and you continue to watch to see when/if they come back in as well as watching for other players to enter the zone. You also use ‘help’ defense, which means we would double team a player near the edges of the zones.
How this relates to supervising both children and employees at work, for me, is that I clearly state what my expectations are.
Parenting: You can go to the party, but you have to come home at 11, you have to spend the night here, and you have to call us if you are uncomfortable.
Supervising: You absolutely have to get your paperwork in by 10am on Friday. Please work to get it done earlier in the week, but I have to have it by Friday because I have a report to complete, and you will want to get paid for your work. If you do not get your work completed, that will result in having a meeting with me, and we have rules that have to be followed. I don’t ever want to ‘write anyone up’, but I have to encourage people in the way that is effective for them, so I want to be clear about expectations before we are both in a situation where we are uncomfortable.
I am very unlikely to micromanage if I feel confident that I do not need to. As in all things, sometimes there are exceptions to the rule, but my go-to is managing by watching the edges.
As it relates to parenting, I supervised my children at the playground by keeping my eye on the gate, the open area if there was one, and listening and watching for injuries. I can remember going to a playground with a childhood friend, and noticing that other parents watched their children differently, keeping track of every move.
Those parents made my job more difficult, because they were taller than my children and blocked my view of all of the things I listed earlier.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to supervise, or lead, or parent, but some of our tendencies are better suited for our natural temperaments. My temperament, is that I really care about what I care about, and I care much less about many other things.
2019
Wellness
The term wellness has really taken off in the last few years. My children took Wellness instead of Physical Education, my current primary care physician is in a Wellness Clinic, and a lot of advertisers use terms like ‘clean eating’, health instead of physical or mental health, and we hear wellness being promoted on local advertisements.
This term, for some people, is hard to hear. They want to be well, but they do not feel well.
They may like their current diet, or have some concerns with how overweight they perceive themselves to be, and don’t want to be reminded that eating more healthily would probably help their life expectancy extend.
I prefer to use the word ‘health’ instead of discriminating between mental and physical health. We all have health, we all have brains that affect our chemicals in our body, and we all have bodies that function better or worse depending on the day and the germs we have been exposed to.
The change to using the word ‘Wellness’ has been welcomed by me. I like to think about what is going well, and talk frequently with clients/people I know about things that helped things go well since the last time I saw them.
If they talk about an event that went better than expected, I like to break that down to figure out what the triggers were for them that helped them perceive the situation positively, what triggers were missing that caused them not to view the situation negatively, and what occurred to help increase the changes of having another experience that is well received and experienced as positive.
Pilates
I have been attending Club Pilates of McKinney pretty much since I moved to McKinney.
My childhood friend works there, and it turns out it is a great fit for some of these long term injuries I have acquired over the years.
I like to be active, and being on a reformer allows me to exercise parts of my body without having to put all of my weight on my feet or back. In turn, Pilates focuses on Core Strength, which has been a huge weakness of mine for much of my life.
An interesting thing happened a few weeks ago. The Dry Cleaners who are moving in next door were moved from their intended location to next door to the studio.
There were chemicals used to seal the floors, which were intended to be outside chemicals, utilized in a very small space.
For these reasons, the Pilates Studio was closed for 17 days.
You know the phrase ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?’
Well this was very true of my Pilates classes, My back pain had lessened so much since I began attending 8 months ago, that I had kind of forgotten it existed.
I had not paid attention to feeling well, because it is harder to focus on things that go well than it is to focus on things that are wrong.
My back reminded me of what Pilates does for me as I neglected to do the exercises that my friend had put on social media to encourage all of us to stay strong in the core.
What this means for you
It is important to keep re-scripting ourselves as we grow, get older, and continue to have interactions with people.
As you think about what makes YOU well, what do you think of?
Do you think of sunny days? Days without plans…or days with lots of plans?? Time enough to talk with others or time to have a second to plan your week…
All of those things affect our health. We have differing abilities to absorb the serotonin that is in our body, and serotonin makes us feel good. It just does; it is the role of serotonin.
Vitamin D also affects us. I have heard that Vitamin D can help people as they work to get cancer cells out of their body. Before I had any knowledge of anyone taking Vitamin D or needing sunshine for actual health, I would talk about how I was ‘addicted to Vitamin D’, because I love sunshine.
When you think about what makes you feel well, and what helps you supervise others, what helps you interact and continue to feel well?
How can you use those thoughts to work toward feeling better more often than you did last week, last month, or last year?
How can you remember how it feels to feel good, enjoy the times where you have fun and feel less stressed, and replicate the amount of times that happens?
I hope you feel some control of your week this week. I hope you have a moment to enjoy yourself, and I hope that something happens that you like. 🙂