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The following are some examples of how I’ve applied the strategies and advice in The Family Firm by Emily Oster to my own parenting. If you haven’t already, I recommend looking at the Summary or Quick Look to get an understanding of the strategies I mention.      

Big Picture

Here are examples of how I’d answer the priorities and values questions Oster presents in the beginning of the book.

• Our Family’s Mission Statement is: To enjoy being together as a family as we help our kids grow into kind, resilient, self-confident and curious humans.

• Main Goals for our Kids: To learn compassion and empathy, to learn, pursue and practice a skill (music, sport, drawing, etc.), to build a strong bond with their sibling and parents.

• Priorities to make time for: Family meal time, “alone time” (time for the kids to entertain themselves), outside time, 1:1 time with each kid.

• Must do activities on most weekdays: family dinner time, chores (putting laundry away/vacuum kitchen), practicing an instrument, bedtime routine of reading books and doing mindfulness.

• Must do activities for most weekends: Family “wrestling,” down time (free play together without screens), church, sports/outside time.

Data: Nutrition

• We often pair veggies and proteins with dips. Ketchup is popular of course, but I like to limit it because it’s so high in sugar. We use a lot of hummos, occasionally guacamole, and also my kids like sweet potatoes and beets dipped in almond or peanut butter (it’s actually pretty good!)

• As for “exposure matters,” we require the kids to at least taste something, even if they decide they don’t like it and won’t eat it. I also prepare the same veggies in different ways, because sometimes they like one thing cooked but not raw, or vice versa.

• We don’t necessarily always have a back up meal, though I like that idea, but instead we offer an alternative that is healthy and has been previously accepted. It’s often beans, yogurt, a roasted veggie like sweet potatoes, carrots, apple or banana and peanut butter, avocado toast, etc.

• I am guilty of having my kids eat their meal before doing dessert, but I’ve sometimes tried adding a little dessert to their main meal plate, or offering a little dessert/sweet when they ask but haven’t eaten much of their meal (they don’t have to clean their plates). Then if they want more dessert/sweet, I say “are you still hungry?” and if they say, “yes,” I offer more dinner food as an option rather than more dessert.

Data: Parenting

•  One aspect of parenting I reflected on personally in this chapter was the question of responsibilities. Though my kids are on the young end of elementary aged kids, I thought I could have them do a bit more.

• First, I looked at chores. My kids had to put away their laundry, but that was about it. We added vacuuming the kitchen; my son has to vacuum the kitchen after dinner and my daughter does it after breakfast. I also occasionally ask them to weed with me, or help wash dishes or fruits and veggies.

• I have also thought about preparing food (the example of the college aged kid not being able to prepare food for himself scared me!). Both kids will sometimes help me make baked goods with me, but it’s definitely not independent. Last summer, I had the kids help me prepare dinner and it went really well. They’d chop veggies, add spices, oil, broth or grains to the pan. They mashed potatoes. And for things they couldn’t yet do, I’d explain what I was doing so they at least learned. When school and activities started, it became very hard to maintain this! I am working on finding time (maybe weekends?) to have them help me with meals again.

Data: School

Frame the Question: My kid’s birthday is in late May, so my husband and I had to discuss whether or not they should go to kindergarten at 5 and 3 months, or 6 and 3 months. Our plan was to talk to their preschool director, my friend who is a preschool director elsewhere, and parents in similar situations. We also discussed the possible issue involved, which was the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic threw off their last year of preschool, and affected other parents’ decisions to have their kids repeat or delay kindergarten.

Fact-Find: I called the two preschool directors and they both told me about their experiences teaching and observing kids in transition classes (5-turning-6-year-olds waiting to enter kindergarten) and seeing kids go to kindergarten soon after turning 5. They both ended up concluding that either decision would be OK, it really depended on our kid and our instinct. This was hard to hear! I was hoping for more solid data, but as Oster notes, that’s not often an option when it comes to parenting decisions.

I also posted on a local parents’ group on Facebook to get an idea of what other parents of young 5’s were doing, given the pandemic. It was almost 50/50 split; some were keeping kids back a year, others felt strongly that their kids were ready and it didn’t make sense to delay. Again, there was a lot of emphasis on our gut instinct about our kid.

I talked to close friends who were sending their summer birthday kids at 5, and ones who were waiting until 6. I picked everyone’s brain!

In Family Firm, there is actually a sample application of the 4 Fs for this exact question, which helped me think through things I read the data Oster presented about school entry age, but it wasn’t convincing either way. The higher incidence of a child being diagnosed with a learning disability wasn’t something I was particularly worried about because my kid has never had attention/focus problems or other difficult behaviors at preschool (or home).

Final Decision: Honestly, I went back and forth on the decision for a bit. But I realized a couple things that helped me decide. A lot of the fears I had about sending them to school as a young 5 year old were related to what others did; that there may be more 6-year-olds in her class due to the pandemic and the trends in my community, that others her age may get an advantage by having an additional year of preschool to be more prepared for kindergarten.

When I stepped back and reflected on them as a person, I thought about they would often sit with a pile of books, making up stories, and recently had started picking out character names and identifying them in the text. I thought about how when we went to the park, they made friends with kids easily, despite having missed out on the social development for her last year of preschool. And lastly, I remembered that the school cutoff guidelines would mean they would go to kindergarten after turning 5, and that holding them back was deviating from that. And that I didn’t have a good reason why I’d deviate from it, except to give them a potential advantage, which felt a bit unfair to be honest. So we decided to send them to kindergarten after they turned 5 in late May.

Follow-up: At my kid’s parent teacher conference, I made sure to ask how they were doing, and specifically expressed my concerns about their late birthday and that affecting their schooling. Their teacher was surprised because she hadn’t remembered my kid’s birthday was later in the school year; she said once they come into her classroom, they are all kindergarteners on the same level to her. Her teacher said they were learning and behaving well, and there were no concerns.

In first grade, they were the youngest in their class. There is no denying that most kids in our district “red-shirt” not just their August babies, but all the way to May/June. That being said, my kid is still doing fine in school and socially.

Data: Extracurriculars

Frame the Question: My kid had the opportunity to try out for travel soccer for the fall of third grade. My husband and I had to decide if we wanted them to play travel soccer. This was a relatively small decision at this point, because they were young and the travel wasn’t terribly far, but it was worth discussing to hear each other’s ideas and how the decision could fit into our larger family philosophies/mission.

Fact-Find: There wasn’t a lot of fact-finding for this question. I asked a parent about travel soccer in third grade. She said the try-outs are more of a formality; that kids aren’t cut at this age. She also said the travel wasn’t far (15-30 minutes, depending on traffic), though there may be one team that was out of state (about an hour away).

I also emailed the local soccer association’s registrar about what other soccer programs were offered in the fall other than travel. He said there was an in-house league in September that was popular and fun.

Lastly, my husband played soccer competitively in high school and for a year in college, so he has lots of experience and thoughts on the topic. He offered the opinion that a well-rounded athleticism, rather than focusing on one sport exclusively from a young age, is beneficial for athletes in any sport.

Final Decision: We decided not to pursue travel soccer this year. My kid loves soccer, and they’ll get a chance to play and learn and have fun doing the in-house league. Even for the closest travel games, an extra 10 minutes both ways is time I’m not spending doing something else. And I especially don’t want my kid’s extra long extracurricular to affect my other child’s ability to play a sport or even just spend time with her family and friends. That may happen in the future, but it doesn’t have to right now.

Follow up: The fall league was fun, but we ran into some issues. First, there were no coaches, so my husband had to coach. He played soccer through college and enjoyed working with the kids, but it was tricky to carve out the time from his time consuming job. And the kids on the team were undisciplined 8- and 9-year-olds, just trying to have fun, and not always interested in actually playing soccer. With no coaching background, this was tricky for my husband and I (who often functioned as an assistant coach). My kid also would get frustrated at the teammates who day dreamed or chatted during games.

In the winter, we heard that there were some openings on the spring travel soccer team. We signed up because that way we can try it for half a year rather than the whole year. I still have concerns about how much time will be involved, but I think it’ll be good to try. **Update: It ended up being a great choice; my kid loved it, made new friends, and the time involved wasn’t actually too bad.

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