At the top of this list of unintentional teachers are kids, especially my own.

When the relationship between parents and their kids is discussed, “parent as teacher” is a common interpretation. There is no doubt that parents need to teach their children. But if we only see ouselves as teachers, whether it is because we are supposed to or because we really want to, we are missing out on some of the greatest learning opportunities we will ever be given the chance to experience.

This is especially true if your kids are different from you, or different from what you expected them to be. For example, if you are a “jock” and your kid a “geek” ( or vice versa). Or your kid is disabled and you’re not.

If you are a parent, take the time to learn from your kids. You’ll be amazed at what they can teach you.

In one episode, an old friend and mentor visits Gibbs for the first time in several years and sees a boat in progress in the basement:

“What’s this, number 3?”

“Four.”

“I thought you’d have enough practice by now.”

“There’s always something to learn.“

Truly words to live by, even if they do come from a fictional character.

Three things that Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) and Dan Pink (Drive) have written about in terms of meaningful work and a meaningful life aimed primarily at adults that are also important parts of growing up.

As infants and toddlers, the focus for kids is to learn, to master things like walking, language, and play. There is not a whole lot of autonomy, nor is there any long term purpose.

As kids grow through adolescence they start to accept, and demand, more and more autonomy. If they are lucky enough to discover a passion that demands all of their attention – sports, academics, music, writing – they will seek out mastery. Some will begin to see their purpose in life, and begin to move in that direction.

As teenagers and young adults our kids become completely autonomous – within bounds, of course – and are free to pursue their purpose and continued journey toward mastery.

For parents, it is all too easy – and tempting – to try to control, to MANAGE, our kids’ lives through each of these various stages. To decide what our kids should be interested in, what their purpose is. To make decisions for them, and not allow them the autonomy they crave. (“He’s only 10 years old, he can’t make a decision like that for himself.”)

Much more difficult – and, in my opinion, ultimately more rewarding – is for parents to be a LEADER for their kids. To observe and discover what our kids strengths are, what they are interested in, and encourage mastery in that. Even if it something we don’t understand or that we would never do. To always challenge our kids to reach just a little too far instead of always pulling them back from the edge. To accept the purpose they discover for their life, and encourage them to live that purpose even if it seems “stupid” to us.

Of course, being a leader is much harder work than being a manager. But a lot less frustrating and a lot more rewarding.

And yet, nearly anything worth doing – that results in growth or learning – is hard. The best you can really hope for from “easy” is to maintain what you’ve already got. At worse, you will lose something.

Does Google – or technology in general – make us stupid? No. But by being “easy”, it removes the need, and possibly the ability, to learn. Which some might say is the same thing.

But what exactly do we get from leadership? What is its purpose?

The first word that comes to mind is “effectiveness”. But most measures of effectiveness are based on a desired end-state, which to me makes this just a different way of measuring efficiency.

Is leadership just another way to get people to do what you want them to do so you can accomplish your own goals? Or is it something different, something more?

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Some thoughts:

When you “manage” something / someone, the best you can hope for is what you ask for. When you “lead” someone, there is no way to know ahead of time what you will end up with.

Maybe the question is better addressed in the context of the Cynefin framework:

Management : Simple :: Leadership : Chaotic

(and possibly disorder), with a sliding mix of the two being appropriate in complicated or complex situations.

Of course, I’m not the first person to consider this question. There are many (many many) more thoughts on this question out there, as you can see in the Google search results for leadership vs. management.

Someone who knows the value of  the hard days is Cesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer. On a recently aired episode of his show, while observing the behavior of a new client and assessing the difficulty ahead (which in this case was significant), Cesar looked at the camera and smiled.

“I love days like this.”

He knew it was going to be a hard day, not only for him but for the dog and its owners. But he wouldn’t have it any other way, because he understands that it is only on the hard days that you can achieve great things.

So, love the hard days when they come, they are a gift and your chance to shine.

My experience leads me to believe that many people don’t understand the concept of a spectrum unless they can clearly see the boundaries between the different layers of the spectrum.

This generated some interesting conversations that have helped me as I figure out what I think.

Of course, the problem I had with combining these separate diagnoses into a single one – that people would tend to see all autistics as “the same” – also exists with the more “specific” diagnoses. It’s just that now you’ve got several variations on the theme: all Asperger’s is the same, all PDD-NOS is the same, all Autism is the same.

Thinking about all this reminded me of the expression “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” We are making a lot of process in getting this message out, and identifying autism as a spectrum could help with this even more.

For now, we need to keep autism in the DSM, because it serves as the way for autism parents to help their children get the services they need to succeed in the world.

The current draft of the DSM V, available for review and comment, still includes autism – now referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder (instead of  Autistic Disorder). However, the DSM V proposal recommends that Asperger’s Disorder and Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) “be subsumed into an existing disorder: Autistic Disorder (Autism Spectrum Disorder)“.

As you might imagine, there has been a lot of discussion about this. I’m not really sure what I think of this change yet, there are so many aspects to consider:

• What is the impact to those already diagnosed with Asperger’s or PDD-NOS? In terms of available services? In terms of individual perceptions of self? Will they have to be rediagnosed, or will they be “grandfathered” in to an Autistic Spectrum Disorder?
• What is the impact to future diagnoses? Will there be fewer children diagnosed autistic, or more? Will a child who would have been diagnosed with Asperger’s or PDD-NOS be diagnosed as autistic? How will this affect funding of special education programs?
• Will parents accept a diagnoses of “autistic” for kids they believe are “too high functioning” to be autistic but whom they believe need the services that come with the diagnosis?
• How will special education programs be impacted? Will they be able to avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach to treating “autism” as if it is a singular thing, or will they remain flexible enough to develop education plans based on the needs of individuals?

And more, many more.

It is the last of my bullets above that most concerns me. Anyone who is involved in special education – as a parent, student, teacher, or administrator – knows that even now Individual Education Plans (IEP) are typically anything but individual. (There are, of course, exceptions, but you will find many many more horror stories than success stories about IEPs.)

I agree with Roy Richard Grinker when he writes that “the stigma of autism is fading”, though I’m not sure I agree with him that this is happening “fast”. I also agree that across the three current diagnoses there is a lot of commonality, both in terms of symptoms and “treatment”.  But there are differences, and I think that having the three separate diagnoses emphasizes the “spectrum” – or, as Grinker calls it, a “continuum”.

My experience leads me to believe that many people don’t understand the concept of a spectrum unless they can clearly see the boundaries between the different layers of the spectrum. Only when you see a rainbow of light coming out of a prism can you see that white light includes all of those colors, and that each of those colors has its own unique properties. We still need this prism effect with autism.

We are making progress in understanding, but we still have a long way to go. So for that reason, I’m leaning toward the opinion that Asperger’s and PDD-NOS should stay in the DSM. At least for now.

This was my experience at my first full Kendo class last week. I have not had that much fun starting on something new in a long time. In fact, it has been quite a while since I’ve started on anything so completely new to me.  I had forgotten how good it feels to take that first step into something new.

One of the many challenges of growing older is avoiding the ruts that await us. It is all too easy to settle into a certain routine, get comfortable, and never change it up. If you haven’t tried something completely new recently, I strongly encourage it.

It feels good.

It’s not rudeness of others that stresses you out, it is your reaction to what you think is rudeness that stresses you out.

Are you a presenter who gets stressed out – or pissed off – when you see people paying more attention to their electronic gadgets than to what you are saying?  Olivia Mitchell provides some insight to this in her article How to Handle a Texting Audience with an answer to the question, “Is it rude?”

Rude is in the mind of the beholder. Rude to you, not rude to them. To label a behavior as rude is to make a negative judgement about it, and that judgement will seep through in the way that you come across.

Your audience are adults. If their behavior is not distracting or annoying other people in the audience it’s up to them whether they pay attention or not, and how they pay attention.

Her advice: “If you want their attention, be more interesting than their cellphones.” It’s you, not them, that makes the difference.

As the parent of an autistic son, I’ve found myself in more than one situation where someone has become stressed about my son’s “rude” behavior. Of course, he’s not being rude, he’s just being himself. But people expect certain things from other people, and when they don’t get it they get upset.

In his new book Linchpin, Seth Godin addresses the question in a couple of short sections. In the one titled Teaching Fire a Lesson, Seth writes:

Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change any time soon either.

And yet, many (most?) people in organizations handle their interactions as though they are in charge of teaching people a lesson. We make policies and are vindictive and focus on the past because we worry that if we don’t, someone will get away with it.

It doesn’t do any good to get mad at fire, and it’s not any more useful to get mad at autistics, or anyone, who annoys you. As Seth writes in the section Annoyed at Intent:

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.

I have been as guilty of all of these things as anyone else through the years, and I’m working to improve (though I still get way too annoyed in traffic). Whenever I start to find myself getting annoyed, I take a deep breath and step back from the situation for just a moment to figure out what it is that is really bothering me.

Try it. You’ll be amazed at how much it helps.