How to Survive and Thrive as a Busy Working Parent | Deb Liu (CEO Ancestry)

sometimes uh I see some parents who do stay at home who just go to all these events and I kind of feel bad guilty that I'm not part of all this sometimes your kids are like hey why didn't you come to my thing like how do you manage expectations I feel like we parent some guils and so I have this no regrets and model of parenting which is you know if you didn't spend enough time you miss something like how do you double down the next time and spend more time how do you know make it up and sometimes I tell the kids hey look I'm traveling that week I can't do X but Dad will be there do I wish I didn't have to say that I wish these things didn't happen but at the same time that's the reality and say you know one of us tries to be available at all times like when the kids were young I rarely ever traveled but you know when they got a little older and I freed up my schedule a little bit more I was able to travel for work but that also me some confidence and so you know we make choices and I don't want us to spend our time looking backwards I forward to what's next for our relationship okay welcome everyone my guest today is Deb blue Deb is the CE of ancestry and former V your product at Facebook but today I'm really excited to talk to Deb about a more personal topic how to survive and thrive as a working parent and have good relationships with your spouse your own elderly parents and also your kids so welcome Deb thank you Peter this is a very important topic and one close to my heart yeah great so let's

talk about building a great relationship with our spouse first you have this great post about how marriage should be a 6060 relationship and can you share more about what that means for you and David who Who's your H husband yeah so I met David when I was 18 my first weekend in college and we started dating when was about 19 and we decided to Embark in our marriage by actually learning about marriage you know by the way I read in my book that people spend more time planning their wedding than they plan their marriage and so we decided we're going to plan out our marriage we went to a number of we had U pre-marriage counseling for a long time we also went to a number of marriage retreats to try to understand the mechanics of this thing called marriage and it one of these Retreats I remember someone saying we have a 6060 marriage this whole 50/50 thing is wrong because you're constantly rubbing up against each other trying to figure out who did exactly 50% but if you have a 6060 marriage it means you're doing 60% but the other person's doing 60% and there's a lot of abundance in your marriage and that's something we have adopted over the years and I think that's good before you get married obviously to discussion but you know when both parents are busy working you know they have busy tech jobs and they have kids to at least for me it's really easy to fall into a trap of like oh you know I did more chores on this day than you so like you need to help me out or something like how do you guys get past this in like day life well funny actually I calculated because my husband was like you're traveling a lot this year and I actually looked at the number of trips and places I've been this year uh and for the full year I think I'll gone to 23 places so I'm traveling half the time which is a lot um I don't travel the whole week but it's usually Monday through Wednesday or Monday through Thursday so it's a lot for him but I think it's really important as you think about your relationship it's not to Bean count it's not I did this therefore you did that we actually have

something we also we call a swim Lane in our marriage and so if one of us does something and we commit to doing something we do it all the way but the other person doesn't get to complain and I think that helps a lot because you know we know who's responsible so there is no kind of different line so for example he does all the grocery shopping so he goes to Costco once a week and buys all the food I have no idea what he's going to buy when it comes home I do all the cooking and the cooking you know is based on what he buy but he never gets to play and you know we but we know each other so well now that it's an EV and flow when we go on vacation he spends months planning our vacations and then he hands me a Google doc and says here's where you need to be and here's I got to put on your calendar and to but my job is to make sure that our kids are all packed and ready to go and so again don't get to complain I have done many wag water rafting trips I've zip lined many places hyped many places that I would a non outdor person but he loves this sort of thing but the no complaints rule applies to that too but I think it's that trusting each other knowing each other and being able to have a relationship where the you know it's EV and flow it's a yin and yang where you're when you're in harmony you feel it yeah I think part of it is also like you know nobody's perfect and there's always pet peeves that we find in our stes like my example is you know I complained that my wife takes her time getting ready or like for to go out and then my wife complains that like I rush things too much and like I you know I attend to Bo stuff so yeah I don't know if that's your experience too just like getting I mean absolutely the other day so all of our trash always goes out to the Cur he makes sure it's taken out he always pulls the cans back but he never empties the recycling even when it's full because it's not time yet yeah so I just keep creating new boxes of recycling as then cleaning our house and I'm like I don't know the box recycling looks pretty full but it always gets taken out on Wednesday night and he always ensures that it's recycled but I just like that pile and so you kind of just have to pick and choose your battles and for us it's not worth the fight and saying we just you know I just keep creating boxes and hinting at him and then he gets it done when but it does create a much better relationship where we're not managing each other yeah you don't want to manage each other in a personal relationship and I also find that sometimes when I go on my way to help my wife like she definitely reciprocates like a couple days later like last night my toddler was like screaming her head off and my wife was dealing with her and then and you know I had this thought process I was like hey should I just stay up with my older daughter or should I actually go down and help her and actually like went down help her and I think you know she definitely appreciates moments like that yeah

so what about when you know like you really stressful moments or like you know hopefully there's aren't too many AR arguments but like you know I find interesting how at least in my personal experience you have most people have one on with their manager they talk about like growing their career and stuff and like I don't know I found it kind of awkward to actually have a with my spouse but sometimes you do have to sit down and like talk it out for like 30 minutes or something like do you have a system for that or yeah for a long time we would go for a walk every night and it was a great way to kind of get a chance to reconnect with each other especially when we had young kids you know and my mom lived with us and even though she was sick for a long time she was able to stay with the kids and that gave us the opportunity to go out you know and walk every single night now we have a dog and so I walk with my daughter for the most part but once or twice a week he and I would go for a walk and it's a good reminder you have to reconnect that you're not just parents and we talk about kind of the things that we you know things are working but things that aren't working and also what's on our mind the other thing we do is we call it conscious renegotiation by the way when you name something and when you do it it's not kind of we need to talk about something no we say it's time for conscious renegotiation and so where we renegotiate the chores one example was last October I came home from a like super long trip it was like I was exhausted I come home and he said well we have two things we need to do we need to finish our taxes and we need to get our son into college which one do you want to do and I said I'd rather get our son into college the next morning I woke up and he's like actually you're on the board of been to it you are doing our taxes I will help our son get into college and you know I spent I don't know how many hours because that our paperwork was everywhere and you know by the time I got it done I was like I was exhausted but you know what he you know we sat down as we usually do and we do one hour look through before we submitted and he's like okay this is great same thing with the you know our son going to college I read his final essay looked at it and then he submitted it got into his first choice school early decision and we were done but I never spent any time on it but we trust each other completely and when we negotiate something like that we know that we own it completely just like you would you know you would not you nag your co-workers to get things done like when are you g to get this done did you finish this thing you would never do that right you trust each other and the same thing as a product manager for example like you want to go to your engineer well how far are you on theing what has this done you would say hey are we going to make the deadline great I look forward to actually doing the product review you know like those types of things right got it yeah and like yeah it makes sense for you to do tax yeah you are the board ofing it so like you kind of trust each other like different spouses are different things you know so that makes sense yeah what happens if you know one spouse is just like more busy at work than the other like you know I'm sure like you're really busy I'm not sure what your husband does but like you know like how can you still give 60 to the family or is kind of like a more broader trade-off that Happ yeah like I mean we have when we talk about conscious renegotiation has a lot to do with where we are in our careers you know when I had kids I went part-time and so I did a lot more stuff at home to care of everything you know for example when he used to do the mail and then the minute um I went on maternity leave I started checking the mail and by the way my son is 18 and I'm still actually going through the mail every day I have not gotten rid of that responsibility but you know cuz I was home like I was home Fridays and I was working when even when I went back to work after six months I was working four days a week and so I had a lot of flexibility and a lot of support but he was working like crazy at Google all the time and so you know it just is that season of our life when I had more time and then he had less time but now you know he works at a startup and so it Epsom flows it's like super busy then it flows down the super busy and it flows down whereas I travel a ton and I'm busy all the time but at the same time it's really important that we work on you know supporting each other and so for example he takes care of the carpool on Thursdays and Tuesdays you know he ensures that our kids get to the you know math camp and math program and things like that he does a lot of the things where you have to physically be at home to take them places and I take care of a lot of things that you can do offline basically or online basically and not have to physically be there got it that makes sense I

mean I think it's just really tough being two working parents you almost have to be two working parents living in a bay area to a certain extent and maybe you can talk about how the world is isn't ready set up for two work comp Paris yeah I mean that's absolutely true it's uh it's interesting by the way we set up a school system especially public school so you know the world isn't set up for two working parents I think it's really important that we realize that like public schools for example we'll have a publishing party at 10: a. m. you know or we have parent teacher conferences but it's at like noon you know how do you actually get that done right they have concerts but you have to drop the kids off at 3 and go back at 4 like it's just it's mading at the same time you know in our school system here there is no public transportation there's no buses and so you have to drop off your kids unless they're until they're old enough to B to school so again who's picking them up at 2:15 and by the way school ends at different times and different days CRA in elementary school and part Middle School there's like early dismissal and so suddenly you're thrown in for a loop and at one point in our lives we had three kids in four schools CU they were in like you know Elementary middle and high school they went to an after school Chinese school and just the logistics of getting people all the places at the right time was really hard and we were very lucky to have supportive parents but if you don't have parents you know around how do you do it what can you do you know we had a lot of help as well but that is really impossible and I think that we won't acknowledge that you know I think we just pretend that it just secretly happens but it's not I think we should talk about these things more and by the way 70% of women with children under 18 actually do work mostly full-time or at least um significant amount of parttime yeah like one I I tweeted this random thing saying like the only parenting hack is to live close to your grandparents and then like this is all true right so my in-law lived here in 2016 did make our lives a lot easier because we had they somebody got sick there was somebody picked them up because we were like who's gonna who's going to go like which one of us can cancel all of our meetings this after afternoon and show up and there was just so many of those things and so I do think that we by the way the parents that do have help don't talk about it enough so it makes it feel like the parents who don't have help are failing and so I talk a lot about the help that we've had because I can't be you know I couldn't have done what I've done in my career without significant amount of help for my family but also you know I talk about this very widely too for a long time getting the kids to school in

the morning mornings were the most stressful hour of our day getting three kids ready for school when somebody had lost their shoe and someone's homeworking the thinging and you know and finally I our Nanny had Nanny when we had since my son was born had retired and I begged her to come back just one hour a day to take them to school and she came and then suddenly our mornings were totally different yeah she actually came she cooked them breakfast as opposed to us throwing like a cereal Mar at them on the way out the door she cooked them breakfast she made their and then she drove them to school and suddenly our mornings were completely different and yes it was investment it was expensive but at the same time I don't think that we would have had the crew we not had that mobal support she was like their third grandmother and you know when she passed we really missed her but I think just having her and towards the end of her life be able to spend that time with my kids was really precious to both them and to us wow okay wow so so your Nanny actually passed away too yeah she passed away you know suddenly but I she was such a grandmother to them and part of our family that when she left when she retired we were so sad so actually being able to spend the last couple years just seeing them in the mornings yeah you know was really precious to us and you know we lost her too soon unfortunately wow yeah that's I have the same story like I'm jealous of people who like talk about like oh I'm gonna wake up I'm gonna have a cold shower and I'm gonna meditate like my mornings are orane just like getting the kids get up and like cooking breakfast making lunch by the way I wish people would talk about this more but I think we judge people who have help because we say well you've had all this help therefore you know but not everyone can do that but it if we don't talk about the help we had then for those who don't see that invisible help think that they're failing and I just think that's really unfair to those who don't see the invisible work that's done by people's families people are able to hire somebody in the morning I share that widely because I want people to see that you don't just succeed on your own you have so many people who help you and you know I've have been very blessed to have family you know at the same time I've had to take care of that family you know in the sandwich generation and so it's been both of thing but also something that we've really struggled with too yeah I totally agree people ask me like you know how do you have a job and like do this new news that thing and like my answer is like you know my wife's parents helps cook dinner for us they help take care of kids I mean that that's the truth otherwise I would not have time for any of this stuff yeah but like how do you just to wrap this up know sometimes like you said the school system doesn't care like that you're working and they were like oh they were like Halloween parade at 10: a. m. or like a concert at 2 p. m. and then some sometimes I see some parents who do stay at home who just go to all these events I kind of feel bad guilty that I'm not part of all this so I guess like how do you doal with this or like sometimes your kids are like hey why didn't you come to my thing like how do you manage expectations yeah you know that's interesting I when our son was born before one in one of our walks we said I just really I feel like we parent through guilt and I said I don't want to do that and so I have this no regrets uh model of parenting which is you know if you didn't spend enough time or you miss something like how do you double down the next time and spend more time how do you know make up to make it up I think that's really important that we don't spend our time looking backwards but forward to what the next thing is that we can do and sometimes I tell the kids hey look I'm traveling that week I can't do X but Dad will be there like let's do something special together do I wish that I didn't have to say that I wish we you know these things didn't happen but at the same time that's the reality and say you know one of us tries to be available at all times like when the kids were young I rarely ever traveled actually and I never I you know I avoided travel like the plague for many years when the kids were young and I worked purposely on that but you know when they got a little older I freed up my schedule a little bit more I was able to travel for work but that also meant some compromises and so you know we make choices and I don't want us to spend our time looking backwards I forward to what's next for our relationship yeah that makes a lot of sense I mean maybe at some point the kids are like you know Mommy I don't want to hang out with you I have my own friends to hang out with yeah but I do think one thing I'm guilty of is like sometimes when I do spend time with them at night like I'm distracted I'm like on my phone or like checking email or something like it's really hard like the phone is like a vampire it just sucks up all your energy so I should have put it somewhere else yeah well what I tell people is like have rituals for us dinner together every night that is a that is something we sit down we have dinner and so whatever time the days we make time for that we have game nights we have movie nights and those are times we spend together just purely and we you know do not have our phones and we have an opportunity to spend time and I think it's important that you have those testones because that's what the kids remember you know they remember things where you spent the time you invested the time with them yeah and they'll remember if like you pretend to spend time with them but you're actually checking your phone they remember all that that's right well the other thing is randing like you know we say this is like phone free time this is dinner time like you know we actually take the time to do that and actually like reminding them and so it is really important got it so you know let's talk about the

sandwich generation right so basically what it means is I think you have kids you have young kids and you also have aging parents at the same time and it's actually pretty it's actually a pretty large phase of our live lives right it's like I don't know it's like 10 years or how long do you feel like you were part of the sandwich generation yeah you know and so when my dad passed away my daughter had my youngest she just turned 15 was born and my mom moved in with us so she lived with us for almost 12 years during that time and then for the last 8 years she was fighting cancer so she had stage four cancer for a long time and she defied the auns and you know for eight years and she recently passed away in 2016 my in-laws moved over you know my husbands only child and we wanted to spend more time with them but it was just really hard to haul the kids across the country in North Carolina two or three times a year so finally we asked them do you want to move and they agreed live in our old house and we were able to see them pretty regularly and they were able to spend a lot of time with their kids that's awesome time but my father-in-law was in the hospital for 7 months in ICU my mother-in-law passed away as well last year and so you know we lost all three of them in a 9month period but during that time we were able to spend time with them but it was also really insane like especially during covid where they couldn't get any help my mom had a caregiver that came kind of a couple hours a day to help her that like driving her to appointments getting the kids ready like it was just you know it was really stressful and I think that I appreciate the time you were we spent together that it was also like you know when there's an emergency like some you know my Momom broke her KN suddenly like our plans were completely upended because she couldn't walk for you know months and she to get surgery so there's just a lot that it just it's you know I feel like we my sister and I talked about how like we were one fall away from disaster all the time yeah you know as they get older they were just less steady there was just so much on our minds but I do appreciate that I got that chance to spend time with her and like you know she taught me how to cook a lot of things and so when she stopped cooking I was able to cook the meals that you know she used to do when I was a kid so I do appreciate that we had that time but it was hard you know sometimes they were able to help but sometimes we were helping them and it was just you know something was wrong and so it is a kind of give and take and in any relationship and so it was really hard to lose some because we were so all so close and you know I wish that we had more time I do think like I don't know if it's like a Asian thing but I do think like our parents are already parents they not only raised us but they also basically helped raise our kids so I guess to me it's like you know I don't want to talk about guil but like I feel like double guilty because they they really without them would you know yeah be yeah I love the multigenerational household I know it's not for everybody but I you know we were actually building a house so all eight of us could live together in the same house and uh it's still not done so we were still working on it but you know unfortunately we lost three of them and my son is now in college and my son Joe know moving into an eight person house with four people so yeah unfortunately we weren't able to but they Liv down the street for many years and my mom lived in our house the last you know Dozen Years and it was really a precious time because they did help raise the kids you know they taught them a lot of things they you know cook them their favorite meals they were able to kind of you know spend time with them as well yeah that's interesting yeah and I'm not so sure about the in-laws and your own parents living in the same house it depends on if they get along or not but like they do actually like inance and my parents were friends we used to travel with both of them both said of parents all the time and they were really close to each other so it was actually great to have you know people that they could talk to and you know of the same age that shared something yeah that's awesome that do that's not always the case with the in-law I hear a lot of stories crazy in-law stories but actually I have amazing in-laws and I amazing parents got it so how do you have any advice for folks like maybe in their late 30s or early 40s who like are getting ready for this like really hectic period of their time right cuz like you have a demanding job you have parents are getting older and then you have these kids is it just about moving everyone close together or you have any advice that helps I think that

helps I actually think well first I just think we lost the concept of the village right yeah like we live in isolated communities like who can take care of your dog if you want on vacation who could watch your kids if you had an emergency like we just don't have that same list of you could just drop off your kids someplace and I wish we had more of that community and I think you know that isolation is actually not doing us good that if you had an emergency who would the three people you would call yeah and dar I think it's really having this that Community you know do have they so for us it's our Bible study like if anything ever happens we would just call them right and they you know they could drop their kids off at any time but it's you know who's that Community for you and you know whether it's your in-laws whether it's people you're related to I just think um you've got to find that Community find that family that you need and whether it's a chosen family or a family that you were born with I think it's so precious and I think we lose track to that and we don't realize how important that is until you need help yeah I totally agree I think you know when I was in was younger like I wanted to move away from my parents right like strike out on my own but now I realized that actually you know just having I mean family is a source of all happiness or most happiness than having your family around makes a huge difference so yeah and then just going back to our kind of like the elderly parents like you know like I mentioned I kind of feel like an obligation to try to make them happy or like I want to make them H happy and what's the best way to you know take care of a parents as they get older I guess it depends on the parent right yeah well I think part of it is you know they want independence right they want to have that Independence but they also want to be able to spend time with you and so making that time so you know for example every Sunday night we had dinner with my in-laws no matter what you know we would see them multiple times during the week but it was just nice to like sit down and have a meal and so my mother-in-law who was an amazing cook she would just would cook the best food would then give me the recipe and now I cook a lot of the recipes I was always afraid to try it when she was living because I was afraid I'd screw it out but afterwards I had to redo all the recipes so she would be I think she's intuitive cook but she wrote it down I'm like I don't know a springful of salt seems what is that you know that just being able to have had that time that they had favorite fruits that she made that I can now carry on that tradition it's so important and what they want is to be appreciated and to for you to spend time most of all and so that was really precious to us yeah and like sometimes they do want I feel like they care more about my kids than me but like that's part of course they just they want to hang out with the kids too and how about like you know get a little bit more serious like how about you know parents get older eventually they'll they kind of pass away how do you kind of and I try not think about this but it's going to happen at some point right and it has happened to to your family how do you get ready for this or like deal with a G grief we want our kids our parents are invincible in our own minds right until they're not and so you know it just seems like there's never going to be a day when we won't have them and you know I lost my dad as I said like about 12 13 years ago and you know losing my mom and my in-laws all at the same time was hard like it was just I think it was really hard for my kids particularly as well but I also appreciate that we got to spend the last years of their lives seeing them all the time like when they lived so my parents lived in Georgia my in-law's to North Carolina like we just would see them two weeks at a time twice a year you know so now we can actually we appreciate being able to see them all the time and so appreciate that time you have together because it's not always going to be there you have them tell stories of their lies because you aren't going to ever have those stories told to you again I tried to scan my mom's photos towards the end of her life so she could actually she tell me who's in these photos and by the time I got them back she had passed away you know I so I sent them away to be scanned I started uploading to ancestry and you know I never got a chance to do the finish this someday project and so don't think about for me that somay tame too fast in a lot of ways and so don't wait till that somay to do those things yeah that makes a lot of sense and like I feel like our parents have really great stories to tell like stories of Courage like you know I kind of had a cudle childhood but my parents moved here you know they didn't have any money they had to like you know claw F and Claw their way to actually do anything so yeah I wish they share these stories more with my kids to kind of learn to kind of build courage in our kids yeah towards the end of their lives actually we had two of our kids talk to their grandparents and my daughter was doing this essay project for the Chinese American Museum and She interviewed her grandmother about what it was like to come to America with nothing and to just like go across the country and have no idea where she was going she'd never been in the country and you know she was like and what she's what my daughter took away was my mother-in-law was so grateful what this country meents to her and she just had such a love of America that you know it's very hard for even young people to imagine right because nowadays it's like cool to not to you know say these are all the problems but she just said you know I lived the American dream and my parents felt that way too and so I just feel like we you know just hearing their story and their struggles and you know the lives that they LED were just you know so important because you just you know they had never told that story to us and even looking at the After Effects like we've been going through their artifacts and all their things like I found a letter from my for my father-in-law from NC State where he eventually enrolled and they said we're sorry but you can't enroll here because you're getting here too late you know we didn't realize that he had a letter from U UCLA that you know he was going to go there and it just things that they never told us are in their artifacts and I just wish we had a chance to you know I found it in some boxed with like some old clothing and some you know towels and I thought I never knew this about them you know yeah I think it's like you mentioned showing genuine interest in their story and actually asking them to tell the stuff because like it's very easy for just to you know have them watch TV or something own yeah so that's really important I I think my dad wrote some LS my mom Somewhere In A Box P up some point that's funny yeah so

last topic you know you've had a res sucessful career yourself how do you think about do you have any advice for me or anyone else listen to this how do you raise like really good kids you know like do you have any like principles when it comes to raising kids or what do you do yeah you know one of the things is the say do ratio matters a lot what you say and what you do is one of the most important things and you know being consistent but when you make a mistake apologize you know when you get upset and it wasn't fair just say hey I'm sorry teach them that your parents are human and they're not Invincible I think that's so important the other part is really learning to listen you know one of the things I recently started doing with my middle child Bethany was we started writing a column together it's called the tiger mom and her cub and she has a lot of thoughts about everything like dating about you know her grandmother's funeral about recently about college applications and then her little sister Danielle she wrote about you know our Traditions our Christmas and birthday celebrations because it was her birthday recently and so really just seeing their point of view from their eyes written out is soting things that you would never really talk about and so you know do you think what we do it's strange like for example my parents never celebrated Santa Claus Christmas because we're Christian but like they didn't really understand this concept of Santa Claus because that's not really a thing and so we never had the kids you know believe that Santa Claus is real and you know they just and our kids just always thought that was normal we just said just don't tell the other and so you know I was interested in seeing what they thought about it and for them it was just every day right which is you know and so just smoothly seeing their point of view and asking them their point of view is really important there was a great book I read once it was how to talk to your kids so they will listen and how to listen to your kids so they we talk and it shares some of these techniques and I think it's very useful how did you get your daughter to want to write a column with you is just kind of like a family exercise she was telling you she started that essay contest with her mother with my mother-in-law so her grandmother and after she wrote it she got honorable mention and then she and her grandmother decided they wanted to write a column together unfortunately my mother mother-in-law got sick and passed away very quickly right after that got it and so she said you know I still want to write the column but I want to do it with you and I said whoa okay and she wanted to do one with her grandmother about Bridging the generations and asking her grandmother questions and so I said what do you want our col to be about and she's like we can talk about we can debate interesting topics and I'm like okay so we pick topics and they're you know about getting a dog maybe a second dog you know what like we just we talk about all of her feelings about all of things she wants to talk about and it's really interesting to hear how much pressure she feels about get going to college for example because the schools we went to and how successful we' then she said you know it's a lot of burden on us she's a junior in high school so it's top of mind you know and say you know how she and her brother reacted to our pressure you know and so it is very interesting to see her point of view and it's been a really rewarding experience because suddenly you see the world totally differently interesting and it probably also helps her process her own thinking you know writing out Pro Strat helps you process stuff right so it probably helps on that too it really does actually the way we write the column is we go for a walk so we walk the dog in the evening and we talk about the topic and we debate it and then she will go write the beginning and then I will write the next section and she I will write the next section and then she goes back and edits it and it's so interesting because you see the evolution of thinking from the time we talk about it to the time we write it and do you just keep this to yourself or like you kind of showed the rest of we published it on Asam news Asian-American news and we also publish on W so you know if you want to read it it's called tiger mom in her CB okay I'm going to check it out that's awesome you have tiger mom so let a quick question on being a tiger mom you know like I think as accomplished parents we want our kids to be I guess accomplished but like how do you balance that with like you know letting them pursue their own interests is this hard for like tiger moms right or tiger dads yeah you know I feel like there was a time when I was pushing too hard and finally I said to my daughter and to my son I said this is when you know they're going into High School how much do you want me to push you this because I don't want to push you so hard that you Rebel but I also don't want you to you know not push yourself and my son was like you know I do want you to push me but I don't want us to get in flights all the time which is helpful my daughter actually she said okay s eight and then she goes actually want to dial it back to a six you know and so I think at different points it's been at a different place but I do want them to feel like I'm you know so I there was a book I read a long time ago it's called something like the Carpenter and the gardener where you can be like a carpenter and you're sawing down your kids and you're forming them into some sort of furniture in the shape of what you want but the gardener is somebody who's actually you know cultivating right hey maybe they're Tomatoes or maybe they're orchids or maybe they're something else but you're actually making them grow now they can't stagnate The Gardener is there to help you grow so you can't just not do anything but you have to cultivate you have to invest you have to spend time and say that those two analogies are a way to think about Parenthood that a carpenter is about shaping your kids into what you want a gardener is about helping them grow to who they want to be and maximizing them and that analogy is as apt for parenting which is as a tiger parent as any parent you want your kids to grow you are there to make sure that they're not stagnating they're not wilting but at the same time you don't want to push so hard that it's actually d i think that's a really good analogy because I think your kids might not be interested in the same thing that you are and if they're not interested in it it's very hard for them to like be like really good at it you know so like I feel like you have to expose them because like I'm not sure about you but like parents in the Bay Area they like they send their kids to like five different activities every weekend and you have to figure out what your kids actually generate interesting and like kind of have them follow their curiosity I think that's what I kind of realized yeah and but of like I want to teach the kids grit so you know they had to all play an instrument and they all had to try a sport right but it's quit they had to negotiate with us with what they had replace it with so recently my daughter wanted to quit piano you know she's in eighth grade and she said I just do not enjoying it that much anymore and I said okay if you're G and so by the way Dad's the piano parent so I said okay here's how you negotiate with that I am going to agree to take this classic math class so she he wanted her to take a geometry class and do rose debate and model un and he she needed to go to him and say hey I'm doing model un and Rose debate which you wanted to do mom wanted me to do math class I will do those three things but I really need to quit piano because there's too many activities because I she also does Chinese School on Thursdays so every night was booked yeah and so you know so she said hey Dad and she actually talked him into it right that I taught her how to negotiate with him that she said I've put my time in I've learned how to play so I know how to play but I want to replace it with this other thing and so you know I'm teaching her the skills to actually navigate her own decision making but you know in the end my husband makes the call on piano to say yes that's funny I mean negotiation itself is a really important skill I mean maybe don't want to become them to become too good at it so just but it's actually an amazing skill for life actually to be able to ask for what you want but then also offer something that the other person wants in exchange for that yeah exactly that that's like a important yeah so having Beyond this

journey like um all your kids going to their first choice college or something and like you're like a successful CE yourself looking back what are you like really proud of and like do you have any like closing words of advice on like balancing career and family and all this stuff well I think it wasn't by the way for my son it was his first choice college but it was not my first choice college for him oh really and so the most important so he went to go to Boston College and he wanted to early decision I wanted him to apply to a number of schools and he said Mom I don't want to do this your way I want you to let me do this my way got it and it was hard because I wanted him to apply to Duke that's where I went and he just said look I want this is where I want to go I want to place with undergraduate Business Degree you know he had struggles and anxiety in during covid so there was he had some challenges and so I was really proud that he came to me and said this is what I want and I want you to back off and so in aine glaze that is a proud parenting moment also a moment when I was like oh but I want you go to do but I think you know you want them to have that moment when they say you know this is how I want to live my life and this is I need you to support me and so you know in some ways it's balancing that disappointment with also being proud that he was able to mark his ground and say this is what I want I don't want your help I want to do this on my own and you know I really appreciated that he was willing to say that and so I do think that as a parent you know those moments are what you're working towards in a lot of ways as you want them the whole point of you know cultivating them is so they'll be independent right and so that they would live their dreams and not yours and you know unfortunately none of my kids want to be Engineers I study engineering I H even when my husband was in I think he had graduated from Harvard Law School and his dad said to him it's never too late to go back and get an engineering degree so you have something to fall back on and he's like but I'm a lawyer and he goes but if that doesn't work out I was like okay you know he said lber down and she has reset okay but I think one of the things that's super important is really helping your kids and your you know find their passion and what success looks like for them and then from a parenting point of view is that your job is both short and long right in a lot of ways 18 years seems like a long time and in so many ways it seems really short too the time you do have influence is really cultivating that relationship and building a relationship where they can come to you and say whatever they want to say and it's okay and that you support them in whatever they want to do I love that advice because I think that independent thinking is really important because it's very easy in college or wherever to just like do what all other kids are doing right and if they actually have their own independent curiosity or thinking like they'll actually go in their own path you know like like I become a banker for a summer and I hat it because everyone else was just doing banking so yeah great well thanks so much de this is an awesome conversation I feel like I learn a lot hopefully I can become as good a parent as you I would say I think the people who are G to give me the performance review are the three kids and I'm not sure what say yeah that's true yes cool so thank you this was great I just hope all parents and you realize that you know this is the most important job that you have you know you're replaceable at work but at home you're not yeah it's the most impactful like you can grows on product for like a million users or a billion users But ultimately it's the three people in your life that matter the most yeah absolutely and where can people uh read more your awesome writing on family and parenting yeah say debl substock de. substock I have a newsletter and I published I post on LinkedIn a little bit of summary of that and you can follow me there awesome that thanks so much yeah thank you bye