10-10-10 Parenting

Commentator and Best-Selling Author Suzy Welch

An Interview with commentator and best-selling author Suzy Welch

Published in baystateparent magazine and TulsaKids magazine

Ten minutes. Ten months. Ten years.

What will the consequences be of the parenting decisions you are faced with, right now, in the near future, and in the long-term? Have you ever thought about it that way? Or do you find yourself making haphazard decisions based on guilt, gut, expediency, or the stress of the moment?

Suzy Welch, author of the bestselling book, “10-10-10” believes that her simple, yet life-transforming decision-making tool, 10-10-10, can help parents bring clarity and consistency to their decisions. She should know. A single mom of four children before marrying world-renowned business leader Jack Welch in 2004, Suzy devised 10-10-10 out of her own personal need to take control of decisions, rather than letting them control her. She first published her 10-10-10 idea in Oprah’s O magazine in 2006. Since then, hundreds of individuals have benefited from incorporating her 10-10-10 life management tool in their lives.

I recently spoke with Suzy about how to use 10-10-10 to make better parenting decisions. Here are 10 key insights she shared with me:

1. Describe 10-10-10 in one sentence:

Suzy: 10-10-10 is a life management tool which makes your decisions more consistent and transparent, and allows you to live your life more proactively.

2. Tell us how did you come up with 10-10-10?

Suzy: In 1995, I had decided to “try” —try being the operative word—to mix business and pleasure by taking my two older children, who were six and seven at the time, on a business trip with me to Hawaii. It was a decision that was not well-thoughtout, to put it mildly, and it backfired. Nobody was happy. The kids weren’t happy, the client wasn’t happy, and in that muddle and mess that I created by that decision that was made because of guilt, I came up with an approach – a structure – that would help me make better decisions.

3. All parents want to make better decisions. How does 10-10-10 help them achieve that?

Suzy: 10-10-10 gives you a script. It gives you a way to talk about issues that’s not all over the place. And so it’s a wonderful process and structure to walk through. I always say to my kids, “At the end of this conversation there’s going to be a decision in the room.” And so it gives them a way to get unstuck to move from a dialogue of emotion to one of decision.

4. How do values play into 10-10-10 decision making?

Suzy: What 10-10-10 requires you to do is to understand and acknowledge your personal values – what really matters to you. And then, when you make your decisions, you make sure that you’re making them according to your chosen values.

5. What if my child values something different than what I value?

Suzy: Sometimes you’re going to find out that your kids have different values than you. That’s fine. They are not you. And you don’t want them to be you. But at least you’re talking about what’s important. You’re talking about the issues.

6. How can 10-10-10 reduce guilt-driven decision making?

Suzy: You’re always going to have guilt in parenting, because parenting is not a science, it’s an art. The way that 10-10-10 reduces guilt in parenting is that now you know why you are making your decisions. You’re making decisions on values that you really hold, and so you can say to your kids, ‘We’re doing this because I believe in these values. And you can’t guilt me into feeling bad about it. I made this decision using my best deeply felt values.’

7. You say in your book that 10-10- 10 makes thorny parenting decisions simpler. How?

Suzy: What your kids want from you is consistency. They want transparency, and of course they always want you to agree with them! That’s not going to happen, but you know, really, your kids just want to understand where you’re coming from. The third thing that kids really want is voice. They want input; they want to know that you’re taking them seriously, and that you care about what they’re saying. 10-10-10 delivers that.

8. How would you explain 10-10-10 decisions to a young child, say four years old, who only cares about the present and has not developed a true long-term perspective?

Suzy: Every child is different. Some children understand “long-term” a lot better than you would think. Our stereotypes of children are that they are impulsive and only care about the lollipop right now. I haven’t found that to be true. My son Roscoe was always a very big thinker. He always was talking about his life legacy when he was eleven! But even if your child is thinking about “immediate gratification” it’s a great way to introduce them to the concept of medium- and longterm. Young kids’ minds are more flexible than we may give them credit for.

9. I’ve got four kids — each with his or her own agenda. Saying “yes” to one childsometimes means saying no to another. How can 10-10-10 help me multi-task as a parent without losing my mind?

Suzy: It’s the antidote to losing your mind. There are many times when you can’t do it all. You can choose to lose your mind over it, or you can choose to make a transparent decision with all your kids. It’s true whether you have four children or one. Every child you have is a total unique individual. No child wants the same thing as the others want. They have different needs. They’re totally different people. So you have multiple relationships going on. You can constantly be transparent about your reasons for doing things and then stick to what you’re going to do. Say what you’re going to do. And then do it. You feel good. They feel good. There’s no unpredictability to it, and the trust that grows out of that—what a gift to give your kids!

10. If you could reach out and talk directly to the parent reading this article right now, what would you say?

Suzy: How much fun parenting is, and what a joy it is. And how parenting – although it may start to overwhelm us – that’s a signal to us to own our parenting and take it back and say “I can be the confident parent I want to be and it’s up to me.” We can shed things from our life and we can add things into our life, but we need to own it. 10-10-10 gives us back the accountability and the responsibility of what kind of parents we are.

Trish Reske is an award-winning freelance writer and mother of four living in Westborough, Massachusetts.  For more information, visit her blog at www.trishreske.com