One of the things I find incredibly challenging as a parent is knowing how hard to “push” my kids. As the child of a fairly traditional “Asian Mom”, who was under immense pressure throughout my childhood to “excel”, I hated everything about it. I hated music, I hated most sports, I hated school. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-thirties when I realized that I didn’t hate all those things, I hated the pressure I felt, and the constant criticism and pummeling of my self-esteem that it all meant.

So with the kids, this is something I genuinely struggle with.

This morning, something came up, and I responded in a way that felt more like “my parents” and not “what I want to do”, and I struggled with that internally for a while, and then just talked to my older son specifically about *why* I responded the way I did, the specific pressure and difficulty of trying to walk this fine line of “push so that you butt up against your comfort zone and learn new things,” and “let you discover things that you love and build skill on your own”.

It was one of the first times that I’ve had this “meta” conversation about parenting with J – that it wasn’t the conversation about the actual thing, but the conversation about the pressure I felt as a parent and how difficult it was to navigate. And then we talked about what *he* wanted, and what his motivations were, and we reached a genuinely great conclusion.

And it reminded me of a time when our game, Fleck, was really struggling to stand on its own. At the time, I didn’t know whether to put on a brave face and power through it with positivity, or whether to have the frank discussion about the state of the game & the business side of things. The same kind of “meta” conversation about the game with the team.

I was shocked. People *wanted* that insight – they wanted to contribute at that level, and they responded incredibly well to an honest, open talk about vulnerability, the struggles we faced, etc. Everyone *knew* things weren’t peachy-keen, but I’d been told that the leader needs to be positive, help folks get through obstacles, etc.

I think the lesson I take from this is that in general, folks don’t mind the meta conversation. You don’t have to “play the game” and hope to get the right results with all the mechanics hidden away behind the scenes. If folks know how the machine works, you can all play the game together.