I am at my Harvard Business School Reunion. It is so great to see all my friends again and catch up!
But we also get to attend great classes by Harvard Professors. One that I find intriguing today was by Charlie Collier on the Practices of Flourishing Families.
The highlights included:
— A discussion on what it takes to be a member of your family (do you have a set of family values, and a mission?)
— How do you encourage your children to lead their own lives yet stay connected to the family (tough one that we debated for a while!0
— How do you influence your child to be the best they can be (The discussion was around leading by example)
— We also discussed how you discuss money and prepare your kids to manage money (his theory was that we do not spend enough time educating our kids on how to manage their money)
— And we discussed how to raise a child to give back!
We discussed at length these questions and he ended with 6 questions that you should ask your parents and video tape to show your kids.
The 6 questions were:
1) What was the turning point in your life?
2) What was a high point in your life?
3) What was a low point in your life?
4) Who were the most influential people in your life and why?
5) What is your biggest regret?
6) What is the unifying theme of your life? Your legacy?
I think I am going to do this exercise — for my in laws, my parents, and me!
What do you think?
This is very timely post for our family (recent decision where our daughter should go to college, Duke or Case Western) A lot of factors played in the decision on which college to go to including value of education associated with institutions, geographical location, weather, and on and on.
Finally we wondered, should we have made this decision for her or should we have been just advisors? It ended up us making the final decision while she was wavering. The good point is that it we learned a lot of our family values from the experience.
I think taping something to hand over to your kids is an excellent idea but I am not old enough yet!