McGuckin Factor

In our town we have a great hardware store called McGuckin Hardware.  I like them because they have everything and they have floor staff who know where to find everything, and they have enough floor staff that you can find them.

They have something more.

The floor staff know not only where in the store all the stuff is, but also they know what questions to ask.

You might bring your nephew or niece to the store with you while in the middle of a plumbing repair project at home.  You bring to McGuckin some weird contortion of copper tubing and brass fittings and rubber gaskets, and ask the employee in the plumbing department the essential question: “Do you have one of these?”

Then the magic.

The McGuckin person asks a return question: “What are you trying to do?”  Instead of just saying, “We don’t carry that,” or “I think we are out of stock,” or even “I think it’s on Aisle 3,” she will want to know what on earth you are trying to fix.  Once she gets a good idea of the nature and scope of your project, she can help you solve your problem.

You don’t come to McGuckin for a part, you come for a solution.  The staff there want you to go home and succeed.  So they ask a really great question.  They ask, “What are you trying to fix?”  Then they can suggest the right configuration of plumbing parts or whatever.  And give you advice about how tightly (or not) to turn the wrench on the faucet washer, or whether or not to use plumbing tape on the threads.

They are focused on providing solutions, not selling stuff.

With your siblings’ kids, resist the temptation to give quick, even obvious answers, to their situations, dilemmas and questions.  Ask another question—“What are you trying to do?”  Gather some more information. Ask a few follow-up questions.

Many times, your niece will figure out her own answer if you ask her enough questions.

This really happened to me.  At work, a colleague from another department came into my office, closed the door behind her, sat down, and said she needed advice.  She then told a quick story about being wronged by her supervisor, and wondered what she should do about it.  Her story hit me in a soft spot, and I choked up to the point where I couldn’t speak.  Being embarrassed by my tears welling up and focusing on tying to maintain some composure, and being all grabbed at the throat, I couldn’t utter a sound. 

After a few seconds of my silence to her question, she went on a bit about what alternatives she was considering, and asked what I thought.

Still, I’m locked up and can’t even croak.

Then she does some thinking-out-loud analysis of the alternatives, and settles on one.  “What do you think about that idea?” she says.

I’m still speechless, grappling with my emotions and still all choked up.

“Well, that seems like a great idea.  I think it will make things a lot better.  I’m going to do that.  Thanks.  You really helped me. That’s a great idea,” she said, then got up and trotted off, problem solved.

I never in this whole exchange, uttered a single syllable.  Not one.  It was my finest work.

With your nieces or nephews, when they come to you for help, first, ask another question.  “What are you trying to do?”  A problem well stated is half solved.  Get to the bottom of the problem.

Then find out what they have already considered as possible solutions.

And maybe let them talk it out.  The solution they find—on their own—

will teach them more and work better than the one you jump to offer.

Sometime when you are in Boulder, go visit McGuckin Hardware. And bring your niece.  She’ll like it. They have everything. Especially great questions.

Early Experiences Form Lifetimes

“I think I must have learned to climb before I could walk; Father Simard, who lived upstairs in a house we were renting, encouraged me to crawl up the stairs where I was rewarded with a spoonful of honey.  When I was about six, my brother, Gerald, took me out fishing and sneaked a ten-inch pickerel onto the end of the line and made believe I caught it.  I’ve been hooked on fishing ever since.”  Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing, p 8.

Kids form their passions early in life.  And some say that a child’s core values are pretty well installed by age 6.  Age 6.

If that’s true, then what experience, what passions, what values do you want your young nieces and nephews to have?

You can be deliberate about selecting their passions and values.

Imagine that.  One experience with fishing, and bam! Yvon Chouinard is a lifelong fisherman. 

If these early experiences are so powerful, so life-shaping, let’s use that to our advantage.  Explore life-shaping experiences with your young nieces and nephews.  Go find a bird’s nest.  Hike in the woods.  Swim.  Take them fishing.  Let them clamber over rocks.  Take them to an art museum. 

The main thing is to have them have fun, and to see you having fun with that same fun thing.  They take their cues about what’s good or bad by watching you, to see how you sum it up.  Go to an art museum, yawn, look at your watch every seven minutes, roll your eyes in your head, and make some choice comments about how boring this is, (“Hell, anybody could paint that thing.) and you have put an indelible pall over art and museums. 

On the other hand…

Show interest.  Demonstrate curiosity.  “I wonder why the painter put this little ray of light coming through this window?” you ask your niece. “Why do you think he did that?” 

Once, while hiking in Yosemite Valley with a group of high school students, I spied an uplifted clod of leaf litter, about the size of a pie plate on a two-inch pedestal on the forest floor.  I stopped, pointed and said, “Hey, wait a minute.  What’s this?” and asked a student to lift up that round chunk of forest floor.  Underneath is a giant, red-capped mushroom.  After that, everybody in the group is forever searching for more of these big, beautiful mushrooms.  Not to eat, of course, but just to find and look at.  Like an Easter egg hunt.

On purpose, with great deliberation, you can help shape very positive passions and values in your siblings’ kids.

Do fun things and demonstrably have fun doing them.  And do worthwhile things, too.  Back to young Yvon Chouinard:  “Somewhere along Route 66 we stopped at an Indian Hogan, and my mother took out the preserved corn she had put up for the trip and gave it all to a Hopi woman and her hungry children.  That incident was probably my first lesson in philanthropy.”  Let My People Go Surfing, p 8.

Now young Yvon, early in life, is a climber, fisherman and philanthropist.

While this is especially true that young kids are shaped early, reinforcement of valuable values in later years is also important.

“When I was seventeen, I saw Glenn Exum teaching his son, Eddie, how to fly cast over by the climbing school shack (in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming).  Glenn was a mountain guide and a climbing legend in the valley.  He was also and elegant caster and a superb dry fly fisherman.  When he saw me watching he yelled, “Come on over here, son!” and proceeded to teach me to cast with a fly.  I put away my spinning rod and superduper lures and have fished exclusively with flies ever since.”  Let My People Go Surfing, p 13.

The kindness of a stranger, one simple act, changed Yvon’s life in a positive way.

Yvon Chouinard is founder and Owner of Patagonia, one of the most innovative and forward-looking companies in the world.  Makers of climbing and outdoor equipment and clothing, Patagonia is based on a strong set of enviable core principles around fair dealing, elegance of design, functionality and sustainability.  They have a 100-year business plan.  Yvon co-founded 1% for the Planet, an association of more than 400 business donating 1% of profits to environmental sustainability.

Chouinard is a climber, fisherman, and philanthropist.  All started at an early age, but a few seminal imprints.

Do you have the chance to help nurture another Yvon Chouinard with your nieces and nephews?

Catch them doing things right

April 1, 2011

There are two ways to make an impression on a kid about her actions and performance. One—point out everything she is doing wrong. Two—catch her doing things right.

Which one do you want a kid to remember, to have imprinted on her young, indelible mind? What she is doing wrong, or what she is doing right?

I’ll give you a minute to think about your answer.

While you are thinking, remember some advice that George H.W. Bush received when he was president: “You can’t veto your way to greatness.”

Okay, time’s up.

Kids remember—and act upon—those things that make the biggest imprint in their minds. If you’d rather your nieces and nephews remember and focus on things that they are doing right and well, catch them in the act and comment on it.

At soccer practice, when you see your niece hustle into position as the ball changes possession, tell her so. “You really have a feel for the field. I really like the way you got into position at that last turn.”

Okay, I know what you are thinking: “But what do I say when she is doing something wrong?”

Simple. Tell her what is the right thing to do, then compliment her as soon as she does it.

Back to soccer.

Your niece is statute miles out of position, and the opponent is roaring the ball down the field. You could call out, “Position, Ellie, position! Get back and help the goalie.” When Ellie finds her spot on the field, you could say, “That’s what we are looking for. Great position! More of that!”

If Ellie is doing something dangerous, go ahead and intervene. Then explain the right thing to do in that situation, and move along. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. “Oh, we just don’t do that around here.” That kind of thing.

Watch your siblings’ kids to see what they are doing well and right. Catch them in the act. And compliment them.

Listen to Their Sports Stories

You have all kinds of stories from your youth that you could tell your nieces and nephews.

Save them for another time.

When your siblings’ kids want to tell you about their present-day sports endeavors, just listen.

You could, of course, counter their stories about your days as a competitive swimmer, or regale them about your championship soccer game, or even show then your operation scars on your football knee.

But don’t.

Let your niece tell her whole story about the swim meet last weekend. How cold the water was. How she anchored the 200 x 4 freestyle relay, and caught the swimmer ahead to nab second place. And what a hero that made her with her relay teammates.

Ask for more.

“How did you know how far behind you were?”

“Did you think you could catch her?”

“What was it like to hit the wall in time and realize that you pulled it out?”

It’s her moment. Let her revel in it.

Most conversations are really two people talking right past each other. One waits more or less patiently for the other to finish talking so that he can get his turn to talk. What he says may have some relevance to the previous speaker’s words—or not. At any rate, it’s just ping-pong, sentences pinging and ponging back and forth. Each person can hardly wait for the other one to shut up so he can talk. And, he’s not really listening anyway. He’s thinking about what he’s going to say next.

You can do better.

Ask, don’t tell.

When your nephew opens up about soccer practice, ask for more. Listen to what he just said, and ask a follow-on question about that very same thing. Give him plenty of space to expound.

And sometimes, just let the silence hang.

“Coach made us do 10 sprints at the end of practice. And if any of us didn’t make it in 18 seconds, we all had to run two more. It was hard.” Your nephew hangs his head a bit and talks into his chest.

“It sounds hard,” you reply.

“It was,” he says.

Now, you might be tempted to say, “You know, when I played football in college we had to do 1000 sprints at the end of practice, while carrying 500 pounds of lead ingots, up the stadium stairs and to the top of the Empire State Building, hopping on one leg on broken glass. Now that was hard.”

But don’t.

When your nephew says, “It was,” make a little nod to let him know you heard him. Then keep silent. Give him time to transition to the next thing he wants to say. Ten seconds of dead air feels like an eternity, but it’s not. It’s giving him the chance to keep talking.

It’s just love.

Uncle has an IPad

IPad is uncle's new best friend.

Neva has a brand new little brother. And she just loves him. Oren is less than two weeks old, no longer as wrinkled as a raisin, but not yet as smooth as an ironed shirt, either. Neva thinks that Oren is terrific. She rocks his little car seat cradle thingy when he fusses and squirms. She calls for mom when she thinks Oren needs a snack. She announces to everyone, in clear, forceful tones, when Oren is pooping. "Hey everyone! Oren is pooping!"

One evening, when all the uncles and aunts show up with dinner, to spot mom and dad bit, Neva has more to do. After she shows off Oren and rocks him a bit, Neva is ready to be entertained. Uncle Jeremy is the favorite, hands down. Neva just calls him J. And Neva, all four years old of her, is ready to mix it up with J.

Neva and J kid around a bit, then get to it, when, magically, an IPad appears. J pulls up the piano keyboard app, and Neva bangs the virtual ivories with spirit, if not innate talent. Of course, J shows her how to slide the volume up to full blast. Now everyone can hear Neva pounding the keyboard. Not just everyone in the house, but everyone in the neighborhood.

"What else does it do?" Neva asks J as she hands him the IPad, flat as a tray waiting to be loaded with goodies. J provides the goodies.

"Look, it has a clinometer," says J as he buttons to that app. Neva cranks the IPad like the steering wheel on a bus to see the needle stay plumb and watch the numbers run up and down the scale. J says, "Now lay it flat." The bubble level pops onto the screen like a liquid emerald. Neva gives J The Look: "What does it mean?" she asks with that silent glance. "So, now we know that the kitchen table is not really level," J calls out in the general direction of Neva's father, who mutters something about having to add leveling the table to the to-do list.

Neva wants to know what else it does. This time she surrounds the IPad with her twiggy little arms. She's not giving it up, not to J, and that means not to anybody.

J reaches taps into the page dappled with a pallet of app icons. He points through each one and explains what it does. He saves the chalkboard app for last, then says, "Watch this." J invokes the chalkboard, and Neva is on it like a cat on a yarn ball. She figures out pretty quickly to select different colors of chalk, and scrawls around like a doodlebug. When Neva discovers that she can use all her fingers at once to make ten chalk lines in parallel, she becomes hard at work.

J shows her how to use the eraser, getting Neva to clear a little space, then the whole screen. Then he writes Neva, big and legible, in pink chalk, right in the geographic centers the screen. He hands the IPad to Neva and says, "Now you write, right over the letters that I wrote.”

Suddenly, Neva can spell and write her own name. Her parents take notice. Neva and J take turns writing over each other's words, spelling out the names of everyone present. Neva is decidedly and deservedly proud of herself. She can write and spell everyone's names. This is all going so well. Her parents have a mixed look of wonder and pride, but J? He has a different look, the seed of a smile underneath sprouting devil horns. J is about to show Neva another feature on the chalkboard. The one everyone dreads about a real chalkboard, which, by the way, young Neva has never seen. But whoever wrote this app has. Because he or she has programmed in—you got it—a little icon that looks just like...fingernails. Complete with sound effects. Neva beams as she rakes her fingernails down the chalkboard, and everybody squirms.

Young Neva trots the IPad over to show it to even younger Oren. He smiles as only a two-week-old can do.

I love this, Will. This could be a best-seller.

If you want comments or ideas, here's mine.----Some of my favorite memories with my N&Ns are from making presents for their parents. That way, they get to "surprise" the parents. From tree ornaments to movies, aprons to art, we make a huge mess and have a great time. ----One of my favorite activities is making plaster casts of the children's faces and hands. They loved casting funny faces and contorted hand positions. It works for a wide variety of ages over about 5 and even adults have fun taking part. Basically, you cut plastered gauze into short pieces and set them aside. (That is the same stuff you make an arm or leg cast out of and comes from a medical supply store -- which is pretty darn cool to the kids in and of itself!) You then tie their hair back and completely smear the face with Vaseline, carefully avoiding eyes, nostrils and lips. Dip the pieces of plaster gauze in water, shake off the excess, and begin sticking them on the face, again carefully avoiding eyes, nostrils, lips and hair. Get a few layers on and keep shaping it to the face. Don't worry about rough edges. The child must sit perfectly still and quiet until it dries. (I might have fibbed a little about how long that plaster took to dry, but the break does give you a chance to clean up before the white blobs become permanent on your furniture.) Then gently pull the mask off and let it completely dry while they scrub the Vaseline and plaster dust off their faces. From there, you can paint, trim with scissors, make more, have fun. Use it as a mask at Halloween or display it as a piece of art. You can do the same with hands, but remember to cover only the top half so the cast can be lifted off. Older children can cast a top half and then a bottom half and put them together. You can put a rubber glove on them and scare your friends at Halloween! ---We take our N&Ns rafting when we decide they are big enough and mature enough. More important than the actual boat and water is the right of passage that we have created. We get to look forward to it for a long time and then we get to remember it and talk about it for even longer. ---My mother always kept a drawer of stuff for kids to play with, mostly to keep the kids occupied while the adults did whatever needed to be done. When Mama died, I gathered her stuff into a big basket, adding some of her old colorful scarves and trinkets that I pick up at conventions. Now when young N&Ns come over, we dress up, build "forts" with sofa cushions, and play with puzzles and games. As we play, I soak up my mother's energy, recreating the best of my childhood.

Lynn Sadler

The Definitive Guide to Being an Aunt or Uncle

Close your eyes for a second and picture your favorite aunt or uncle. I’ll bet you are smiling right now. Aunts and uncles are special people in our society. They fill the role of adults who kids can talk with and look up to. Aunts and uncles make a big contribution by helping their siblings’ kids grow up with solid role models and with additional learning that their parents and grandparents can’t provide. Everybody has a favorite aunt or uncle, or both, whether a blood relative or an unrelated person so fondly considered that the family just naturally calls him “uncle.”

Everybody's got a favorite story about their favorite aunt or uncle. We are collecting such stories and want to hear yours.