Episode 91: Leadership in Youth

Transcript

Timea: 0:00

Welcome to season two of CEO Meets Homeschool. My name is Timea Parker, and I'm both a CEO and homeschool mom to my four boys. Welcome to episode 91. So I'm recording this toward the end of February. It's probably not going to be getting uploaded until later March, I think, but I have. Gone skiing or it is a family. I've hit 20 ski sessions and I'm super pumped. Actually, wait that number's wrong. I've gone 18 times and my family has gone 20, but it's still pretty good. I. And our goal for quarter one or before the mountain shuts down is we're trying to make it to the mountain 30 times. And this has been such a fun kind of challenge as a family. My keyword for the whole year is healthy together. And let me tell you, the muscles in my legs are getting stronger, so I'm feeling. Pretty good about it. But tied to that one time while I was going up the chairlift, it was my husband and I, the kids were all over the mountain. We rode up with two high school senior students and I had asked them what they were planning to do when they graduated, and one of'em was gonna travel, and I think the other one was gonna go into like community college, I believe. And I had told them my idea to take a gap year. And to come up with a business idea and their, the ultimate challenge is for them to make a hundred thousand dollars in that gap year with their business idea and then to, if they like the idea, what they should consider doing is find a business that would sponsor them, possibly even give them a small business, low to no interest loan. I probably like overloaded those poor seniors in high school, but. I love the fact that one of'em was like, oh yeah, that's a really good idea. And I could see the wheels in their minds churning, I think that's the right word. They were just thinking about it and they liked that and I, I had so much fun, it just in a few minutes that we went up on that chairlift and I got a visit with those seniors. I really do think there's something where higher education. Is causing a lot of debt and the amount of debt to the type of job that they can get once they graduate doesn't always line up. And if entrepreneurs and business owners would. Mentor or take new graduates under their wing and invest in them. I think there's a lot of opportunity in that. So I wanted to mention that. And then I'm gonna shift onto the wild west of what's going on in my home, homeschooling my four boys. So my kids right now range from 10 years old to 17 years old, and I am completely outnumbered and having teens and preteens and then my age. I am what you would consider full perimenopause, and I bet you a bunch of my girlfriends are like, she finally said that word.'cause I say that word all the time, my inner circle. But I say that to just ever. All women will hit this phase and some get it worse than others, but like the hormones in my house between the teens, preteens, and. Myself is just delightful. That's a terrible word, but you understand where I'm going and. In general, like I, my kids are pretty rowdy. We have a good amount of unstructured creative schooling going on, and for better or worse, this is the path that I've chosen. And most of the time I really love this, but sometimes it's a little nutty. So I recently had a conversation and I was sharing this very unstructured type of like environment, but I also was sharing with somebody that. I don't do a lot for my kids. I want them to take ownership. And somehow this conversation got into Boy Scouts and I don't know anything about Boy Scouts. My kids haven't done that, but he was sharing that. There's two types of groups, so. If I'm wrong, do your research. But I'm just gonna give you my version of the story. Two different types of groups. He said, one is parent led group and then the other is student led group. And then he went on to say the parent led group had the check, these check marks that like they'd do check boxes. They'd say, we have to get all this stuff done. They'd be really structured, organized, and they'd check all the boxes. And then the student led groups. Were like wild and chaotic and crazy, but what they found was those students took ownership and grew a lot more coming outta that program. And I, when he defined the student led i's like, that sounds like my house. Like it's. It's crazy, but my kids, they have like unique skills because of it. Like I let them figure it out. And sometimes I'll mention this, one of my kiddos quite a few years ago, like he learned how to find deals all over the world. He knew all the airports. He find the craziest deals, and that's part of the reason we've been able to travel in the United States and over in Europe. And so. I love those types of unique things and it's not really textbook, you know, something they'd learn out of a textbook. But we were planning two, my two middle kiddos, they got, they had some cash and we were planning one of our first get togethers. Since we've been in Montana, I'm not big on being a host, maybe it's just, I don't have the time, but kind of stresses me out. And so I told my kids, this is on you. You guys have to do this. And so on Friday we ended up having, there were 17 people at our house, which is a lot for us and. I told my, my kids that they had to help plan it. It was happening on Friday and I was gonna be gone, a good chunk on Thursday, and I thought, I don't think I can keep doing what I had planned on Thursday. My kids are gonna need me. And then I, I had stopped myself and I go, you know what? Let them figure this out and sometimes we forget to do that. So my kids on Friday morning got up super early, which is not common in our house'cause we have a pretty laid back homeschool schedule. They cleaned the whole house. Then they actually wanted to get to go to the library before our company came. So the craziest thing happened, and normally when we have company, I do not stop cleaning or working or doing anything until they arrive. It's stressful. But what happened is my kids did pretty much everything and they had time to go to the library, which actually gave me almost two hours in the middle of the day to just. Read a book and, and have a quiet moment before, you know, we had 17 people in our house and I thought, to me, that's leadership in young people. I, I thought of the, the Boy Scout story. I recently heard the chaos, but the ownership and how much they, they grew when they were responsible. And I had experienced that in my own kids just a few days later. I just thought it was a special story and worth sharing. Have a great day. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please consider liking and subscribing. This will help me reach more CEOs and homeschoolers. Thanks so much.