IGY for Parents

This time, we will start with the Risks (Red flags). The biggest risk for families, parents and their children are the screens and all the other risks resulting from their use. There is already an extensive scientific research on the topic as well as a wide range of popular science books.

In IGY we focus on the so called Brain fragmenting distractions – Phone notifications, Chatting, Social media, Scrolling and so on. These are all Boxes that lead to further Boxes and minimise opportunities to experience Flows.

Your child should have less Boxes than you.

Children are extraordinarily easy to put into Boxes because adults love classification. Even praise can become a Box. If everyone tells a nine-year-old that she is “the smart one,” being confused at twelve can become an identity crisis rather than a normal part of learning. So better describe what happened rather than defining who the child is.

“You solved that very quickly.”

not

“You’re a genius.”

“You didn’t put much effort into this one.”

not

“You’re lazy.”

Thus the child remains free to surprise everyone – including themselves.

Flows

If we had to define “childhood” in a single word, it would be Flow. Every child is naturally in a Flow and should remain in such a state as much as possible. The most important Flow for any child is the so-called “free play”. Other common Flows are games;  sports – especially team sports involving a ball; dancing and books. And nature. The more time children spend outdoors in nature, the better.

Intuition

The ultimate Flow for almost every child is the free play outside. It develops its Intuition directly and also indirectly through the Diversity of Experience it enables. Intuition is later on crucial for everything else. It’s at the core of IGY and is one of the fundamentals.

Core Flows and Secondary Flows

The Core Flows are Self-love, Unconditional love, Meaning, Responsability, Scaling, Freedom and Intuition. Here is what each Core Flow does when it becomes a part of you and a part of your child:

• Self-love – destroys the Barriers within, you see yourself and your life experience as one whole. Never make Self-love and Self-worth dependent on grades, behaviour, talent, appearance or achievement.

• Unconditional love and compassion for others – destroys the barriers between you and other people. Love the child independently of what they do. You may strongly oppose an action without withdrawing love.

• Meaning – destroys all other barriers in the world, seeing it as a whole. Help your child discover what makes it genuinely care, rather than supplying them with a life purpose.

• Responsibility – destroys all barriers between our values and taking action on them. Gradually let your child’s actions become its own actions, including reasonable consequences.

• Growth / Scaling – destroys all barriers that slow us down on our mission to contribute to the world – eg. the false belief that we’re not made for greatness. Don’t freeze your child into an identity. Allow constant rewriting of the map.

• Intuition: Don’t answer every question for them. Give them room to notice what they like, dislike, fear, care about and feel drawn toward.

• Freedom: Increase real choice as your child’s ability to handle it develops.

Those generate secondary ones such as Curiosity, Playfulness, Joy, Love for nature and other wonderful Flow mixes.

The real signs of healthy child development are not grades and achievements, but stronger Core Flows.

Hunter mode

Many games, sports and outdoor activities foster your childs Hunter mode – the Life direction you want to encourage in order to help them become independent, responsible and active young adults by the age of 18.

Education, Entrepreneurship, Numbers and Money

If we want modern Education, we can give our children a computer or a laptop from a certain age onwards – preferably after 14 or at least after 12 – instead of a smart phone or tablet.

It’s extremely useful to teach them about the importance and Meaning of Science, numbers and money.

And, of course, we should not leave them in the hands of the old-fashioned school and educational system. Education should prioritize a supportive environment in which children care for one another and grow toward emotional intelligence, rather than reducing it to facts and performance.

Children are natural-born Entrepreneurs. Give them the chance to develop their own and unique Business and gain as much Diversity of Experience as possible!

Diversity of Experience

Instead of giving children an identity, give them experiences from which an identity can continuously emerge. Science. Nature. Sports. Art. Building things. People. Animals. Music. Books. Travel. Work. Helping others. Technology. Entrepreneurship. Silence. Adventure. Allow interests to appear and disappear without treating quitting as failure.

The important distinction is between damage and difficulty. Protect children from serious damage. Don’t protect them from every difficult experience. Otherwise they never accumulate the Diversity of Experience from which Intuition emerges.

Science and Arts

Still, if you ask which school subjects matter most, the answer is arts, music, dancing and crafts up to around the age of 12 years. Wondering why? Because they stimulate s child’s creativity and help them remain in a Flow state. And when the most important Flows work together, they create the foundation for what we call Intrinsic motivation. We desperately need Intrinsic motivation throughout life.

At the same time, we should never neglect languages—especially the mother tongue and English—as well as maths. Mathematics is the foundation of science. It also develops our Intuition about structures, Vibe Intuition, Intuition about quantities, Intuition about large numbers, Intuition about thresholds and Time understanding.

Between the ages of roughly 12 and 16, science becomes especially important. This is the period when young people can build the foundations of Truth and truth-seeking – one of the most valuable skills.

And, of course, society needs engineers, doctors, researchers, and scientists of all kinds.

Spirituallity and Religion

What is true of Education is also true of Religion: children need Spirituality, yes, but they do not need to outsource their spiritual experience to a Religion.

Sleep

A widely underestimated risk, not only for parents, but also for their children, is the lack of enough sleep. And guess what the main reasons are? Screens and the educational system. And who says that parents can’t protest alongside their children for a later start of the school day?

And insufficient Sleep leads to poorer health – weakened immune function, metabolic and weight problems, heart and blood-pressure problems. But also to poor concentration and memory, mood problems, daytime fatigue and sleepiness. Or, in other words, dramatically less effective learning process. And less Flows. Flow usually requires sustained attention, enough mental energy, a manageable level of arousal, and the ability to stay absorbed in a task. Sleep deprivation works against all of those.

Truth, Love for Truth, Intellectual trust, science, the scientific method and Bullshit

As a parent, you must love your children and the Truth above all else. Without Love for Truth, Intellectual Trust, and a strong connection to Science and the Scientific Method, you and your children may very well end up in some Bullshit group. In a world in which not only people but also systems and companies seek to manipulate you, understanding and feeling the Truth is crucial for a fulfilled and happy life.

Game of Self, Game of Life, Probabland and the Underworlds

A good understanding of the Game of Self and the Game of Life is also crucial so that you and your children do not dwell in Probabland or one of the Underworlds – the Mindless Underworld, the Escapist Underworld or the Delusional Underworld. What your child learns from your behaviour is very important – learning by example. If you manage well your Game of Self and your Game of Life, it is quite possible that your child will do the same.

From the parent’s perspective the Game of Life (behaviour) of a child can require boundaries. But the Game of Self (feelings) usually require understanding. Ask both the Vibe question – “How do you feel?” and the Time question – “What do you do all day?” The first is the central Game of Self and the second the central Game of Life question.

A child who says “I’m fine” but spends six hours alone scrolling is giving you very different information through the Time question. A child whose schedule looks perfect but says “I hate every day” is giving you equally important information through the Vibe question.

Chaos and Structure

Chaos and Structure are the Universal forces. Chaos in the Game of Self is necessary for creativity, invention, development, Meta-skills and Ultimate skills. Chaos in the Game of Life can be destructive.

Children need Structure around safety. They need Chaos inside the safe space. The structure can include reliable caregivers, sleep, food, medical care, physical safety, nonviolence, basic respect, predictable protection and some household routines. Inside that structure, however, children need Freedom: Leave empty time; Let play evolve without adults deciding the game; Let a project change halfway through; Let interests appear and disappear. The parent designs the safety boundary. The child explores the Chaos inside it.

Compass of Forces

The Compass of forces is one of the most important concepts in I Grow Younger. It contains the universal forces Chaos and Structure on the horizontal axis and the Human forces Love and Fear on the vertical axis.

The Teenager

This is the age when you naturally feel stuck and Inertia takes over. Ideally, this should be the first and last time in your life when Inertia briefly dominates. On the other hand, this is also the age of Change. With a smart strategy on the part of parents and educators, every child can resist Inertia and become a real winner in life from an early age.

Between the ages of 12 and 16, during the teenage years, it is crucial to concentrate almost entirely on the Game of Life and explore the world – our reality. Diversity of Experience in the Game of Life is everything at this age. Science is extremely important, and Logic and logical thinking develop. This is the only age at which we may slightly favour the development of the Left brain and, to some extent, “neglect” the Right brain and Intuition. At all other ages, Intuition will be much more important and necessary, simply because it is more powerful.

First real attempts at Entrepreneurship, as well as real-life experiences with numbers and money, are the best education at this stage. Only at this age do we recommend some basic structure and even some discipline. Teenagers create their own Chaos all the time, so we do not need to encourage it further. The Ultimate skills of your children do not have to be addressed and developed deliberately – they will form beneath the surface and will become conscious by the age of 16.

The natural Chaos in the Game of Self can be very dangerous at this age and can lead to devastating problems, including all risks, Personal barriers and much more. On the other hand, just imagine how effectively it can be channelled and used in the Game of Life by allowing your child to build their first business.

Entrepreneurship will not only protect teenagers from the risks in life, but will also help them develop essentual skills – Ultimate skills, Intuition about numbers and money, Time understanding. With the right strategy, Time understanding and all the others skills, will form naturally.

The life stories of humanity’s greatest minds can give teenagers not only further inspiration and a firm anchor but also many ideas about how to become even better Entrepreneurs. And what could better develop Love for Freedom and the feeling of Freedom? These are the first seeds for your children’s future Long-term Freedom.

Freedom and Long-term Freedom

Parents choose the safe space of possibilities. Children choose inside it. Over time, parents expand the space.

The parent increasingly becomes an adviser after the age of 14-16. Talk through decisions rather than simply issuing instructions. Let the adolescent form views that differ from yours. Allow real decisions about education and interests. Help them understand consequences, resources, relationships and risks—but don’t write their future for them.

Long-term Freedom is the number of meaningful paths available to your child. And you should ask yourself whether the number of these meaningful paths is expanding or shrinking over time?

A child with perfect grades, no practical skills, crippling fear of failure, no independent judgment and no idea what they actually like may look extremely successful while their Long-term Freedom is quietly collapsing.

A child with imperfect grades, curiosity, strong Self-love, real-world competence, good relationships, many interests and the confidence to try unfamiliar things may have a much better future.

Love, Self-love and Unconditional love

Love is crucial in every single relationship, especially between parents and their children. If you feel and show Unconditional love towards your child and Self-love towards yourself, it will be easier for your child to do the same. Unconditional love is the highest possible form of goodness that enables everything else. Self-love is the foundation on which you must build.

The child should receive a stable base of Unconditional love without learning that Love means absence of consequences.

“You are accepted.”

and

“Everything you do is accepted.”

are completely different.

And this protects Self-love. The child’s subconscious lesson becomes: My mistakes change situations. They do not change my worth.

Morality

Morality is closely connected to Self-love, although often not in the way you might expect. Many alternative and innovative pedagogies offer the same advice, which you should follow carefully: never try to “moralise” your children. Morality lectures and preaching are always counterproductive. Learning by doing and leading by example are the only solutions.

If you say mistakes are fine but become angry whenever something is broken, you are teaching something.

If you tell your child to think independently but become offended when they disagree with you, you are teaching something.

If you tell them that kindness matters but they watch you treat weaker people badly, you are teaching something.

The parenting question is therefore less:

“What should I teach my child?”

and more:

“What map is the child constructing from repeated exposure to me?”

You cannot directly program another brain. You can, however, influence what it repeatedly experiences, notices, values and expects. So a parent should rely much more heavily on environment, modelling, experiences and conversations than on moral lectures.

Language Use and the Trap-words

The language you use is crucial to your child’s early development. That is how we learn. Speak to your babies and children, and always try to use the right words. There should be a unique and understandable Meaning – and Truth – behind every word you use. This not only prepares your children for life but also helps  prevent them from falling into common language traps. We can consciously give them – and their brains – an excellent start in the fight against Trap-words.

Human potential

And … always remember that your child has unlimited human potential!