Parenting Bumpers

The other day, I was at a friend’s 3-year-old son’s birthday party.

A few of us dads were able to break away for a cigar smoke in the front of the house for some “guy/dad talk.” (Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for this one?)

No need to turn into the fly, I’ll tell ya…

I’ve always said I’m lucky to be surrounded by the best dads.

The main topic was raising our kids, but raising our kids to be strong, resilient, and focused on their goals.

My best friend was there, and his first son is now 16, so he got to graduate and hang with the men. (No cigar for him😅)

He’ll be the first to admit that he gives his son some tough love from time to time.

In his words, “I’m hard on him sometimes because I don’t want him to make the same mistakes as me. I want him to be better than me!”

That made me think of a concept I learned from a business coach who authored a book called Bumpers.

Have you ever taken your little ones bowling?

Most bowling alleys install these bumpers in front of the gutters so that little kids can keep their bowling balls moving down the lane and avoid a “gutter ball.”

This pretty much guarantees they will hit some pins.

I explained to my friend’s son, your dad is your bumper.

When you start to veer off your lane, he bumps you back to keep you straight!

He’s keeping you out of the gutters!

It doesn’t mean we’re trying to force a completely perfect path. That would be pretty boring!

We make sure to keep ya out of the gutter so you can start knocking down pins and winning your points in life. (It also increases your chances of hitting some strikes in life!)

The other big concept of Bumpers is instead of always trying to raise the ceiling on what your child can achieve, try just raising the floor first.

Sometimes we put all this added pressure and stress to achieve, achieve, achieve…More, better, more…

What if we minimize the lows, or minimize the mistakes, minimize the things holding us back?

For example, what if we studied fewer hours but consistently set aside a good 30-minute focus time each day?

Or instead of trying to hit a home run every at-bat, we just focused on taking our best pitch to drive base hits.

Raising the floor with your family’s nutrition might be we don’t eat sweets (unless it’s fruit) during the week. That’s it!

Having fewer lows or a higher floor allows our kids to naturally start working towards higher achievement and a higher sense of self.

Be “the bumper” for your child.

In your corner,

Greg