Does Your Child Work From a Checklist?

Pilots work from a checklist. There's a LOT to remember. Any one thing forgotten could cost lives and fortunes. Firemen, doctors, attorneys, great salesmen, even artists and dancers if you look closely enough... they all use checklists. True, some of them aren't on paper, in binders called Operating Manuals. Precisely my point...

We all do it, actually. We get up in the morning and we run our routine. When we go to take our shower we have a little routine that we run. Firs this, then this, then this... oh I better trim these... we are running through a mental checklist.

When I got up to leave the park yesterday my mind did a quick scan: keys, cash, cell phone and anything... anything... oh, yeah - sunglasses that I left in the grass!!! (That's actually what prompted today's post.)

What I was suddenly conscious of (though I've studied this application in personal and professional development for years) was the UN-consciuos process, or "checklist," that my mind went through to take care of me. I can think of LOTS of times in my life when I haven't had good checklists, and I forgot things... like deodorant ;-p

So, here's the insight:

If your child is developing checklists unconsciously, help make them conscious. I like to ask Corrina after she enthusiastically asks me to move on to the next activity, "What's gotta get done before we can do that?"

This puts her in a helpful, receptive state and she begins to seek answers to the question in her mind. She knows she can't proceed until certain things are complete, and she's apt to lay a shoulder in if she can help speed things along. This is a great parenting device, and it gets her thinking in checklists.

So, the next step is to make that checklist process conscious. I'll discuss that in my next post.

Cheers,

Craig

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