Made by Navid
Your parents can either be your biggest supporter or your greatest hinderance. 95% of TKS students underestimate how powerful a strong relationship is with their parents is. Your parents love you and they want you to be happy. Sometimes we forget that we're all on the same team. In this playbook, I'm going to help you learn how to create a strong dynamic with your parents.
✅ How parents can help you:
- Give you resources to help you grow (e.g. money to buy technology, access to programs like TKS, pay for courses, get you things you might need for experiments, pay for a flight so you can attend a legit conference or meet smart people, etc.)
- Help you with teachers at school that are giving you a difficult time. Your parents should be on your team, not on your teacher's team. They can help influence the school and your teachers when you need help.
- Support you when you feel down. You will go through ups and downs, and when you're at a low point your parents will be there to help you. They could be the reason why you don't give up and keep going, even when you feel like the rest of the world is against you.
- Introduce you to helpful people in their network. Remember that your parents know people. A lot of TKS students forget that their parents can be a great networking resource for them.
🚫 How parents can hinder you:
- Engage in fights and conflict that creates negativity. It's hard to grow and get stuff done when you're always fighting about things.
- Give you unnecessary pressure, which can make you feel anxiety and stress. These feelings are not helpful when trying to grow. Often times it will make you focus on things that don't matter and you'll end up performing poorly because of all the pressure.
- Not providing you with the resources you need to accelerate your growth.
4 things you can do to build trust with your parents
#1 Align on what success means
Your parents want what's best for you, but often times I see a misalignment between what they think success means for you, and what you are trying to achieve. If you can align on what success means, then all other conversations will become much easier. This is step 1.
→ Action: Have a conversation with them about how they would define success for you. Push their thinking to define success in the short-term (this year), medium term (within 3 years), and long term (10-20 years). If you don't agree on their definition, explain what your thoughts are and why you think that way.
→ Note: The world is changing exponentially. The mindset your parents grew up with is likely different than the mindset needed to thrive in the future. Be patient, understand their perspectives, and help them to understand yours. Remember, you both want what's best for you.
#2 Create KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
KPIs are quantifiable metrics used to measure performance in a company or an employee. You can use this method to create KPIs for yourself that your parents can use to measure if you're on the right track. Often times the only KPIs parents have to measure you is school grades. I hope we can all agree that only using school grades as an indicator of success is 💩. It should be one variable, but there are more KPIs you should use, especially KPIs that link to your definition of success.
→ Action: Create KPIs with your parents that align to your definitions of success. You can use these KPIs to track your progress over the year.
→ Examples of KPIs:
- Progress on projects your working on (e.g. your Focus, passion project, music, art, etc.)
- Number of days that you felt happy and motivated.
- Quality of your friendships with the people closest to you.
- Number of braindates you've been on (i.e. interesting new people you've met).
- Number of workouts you did this week.
- [you should create your own KPIs based on what you and your parents care about]
→ Tip: KPIs must be measurable and quantifiable.
#3 Communicate effectively with each other
The biggest issue I've seen between TKS kids and their parents is poor communication. Work with your parents to create a communication style that works for you. If you do this, you will be able to have more freedom, trust, and support from your parents.
Here are some best practices for communicating with your parents:
- Share your goals for the week and give them updates on how things are going without them asking you. You should proactively bring it up. By sharing your weekly goals with them, they'll feel in-the-loop and have confidence that you know what you're doing.
- Tip → Organize your goals in a Notion doc, then show your parents the [well organized] doc.
- Share new insights you gained after TKS sessions and talk to them about what you're working on in your Focus/Explore. Your parents are paying for this program! They want to know what you're doing in TKS and how it's helping you grow!!! Be excited to share what you learned with them, they'll appreciate it.
- Send them your monthly newsletters.
Action → Build a communication strategy with your parents. Make sure it doesn't feel like you're reporting to them. It should feel like you're sharing what's happening, not like they're policing you.
Tip → You should also update your teachers on what you've been working on. Many TKS kids didn't think their teachers would care, but after sending them monthly newsletters and telling them about the projects they're working on, their teachers were super impressed and the relationship become stronger.
#4 Earn independence
There's a direct correlation between how independent you are and the amount your parents control you. If you want more freedom, flexibility, and ownership of your life then you need to become independent and earn your parent's trust.
Here are ways to earn independence:
- Stop being a little kid. Don't let your parents wake you up in the morning, clean up after you, remind you to do homework, tell you to clean your room, etc. Think like an adult.
- Do the little things without being asked. This can be taking out the garbage, making your bed, cleaning the dishes, etc.
- Don't let you parents remind you to do anything. Be on-the-ball!
Action → Make a list of things you can do to be more independent. Then, make another list of kiddish things that you need to stop doing.
Ultimately, your family is likely the most important thing in your life. Put effort into developing a healthy relationship with your parents so they can support and encourage you. Align on what success means, the KPIs you should use to measure growth, and communicate with each other consistently.
I've seen so many issues between TKS kids and their parents, which is why I wanted to create this playbook to help you avoid mistakes that others have experienced in the past.
I hope this playbook was valuable.
- Navid