7 year old daughter asked "How do I become popular?" and other learnings

My 7 year old wanted to learn how to be popular

My daughters love to belt out “Popular” from the Wicked soundtrack.

Some of the lyrics are a little suspect for a 7 year old to sing out loud, but my wife and I just go with it because she loves it so much:

But I was caught by surprise this week when my daughter asked me, “How do I become popular?”

As soon as she said that, my mind was locked in, focused, knowing that this could be a foundational lesson to her life.

I knew that I wanted to stay away from pop stars and social media as examples of popularity.

So in the spur of the moment, I reached over and picked up the book I’m currently reading, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

Now you may be thinking that I used Elon Musk as an example of being popular, but you’re wrong. Instead, I focused on the author, Walter Isaacson, as someone who is popular for writing biographies.

I continued with the theme of authors as examples of being popular and pulled another book from the shelf, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. I showed my daughters how R.F Kuang is a young woman who has published several award-winning fiction novels. When my 7 year old looked at R.F. Kuang’s picture in the back of the book, she leaned to her sister and whispered, “She’s so pretty” (girls will be girls).

But most of all, I focused on teaching them that the goal is not to be popular; rather, it’s to create something valuable for the world.

The kids worked to earn their first $5

Our kids each have their own wallets with money and gift cards that they’ve collected from birthdays and Christmas. Last weekend, we took them shopping and they absolutely loved spending their money (they take after their mom).

My 5 year old turned and asked me, “I want more money.”

“How do you make money?” I replied.

“Work!” she answered.

“Ok. When we get home, I’ll give you a job to do. If you complete it, you’ll earn $5.”

The girls were thrilled to be put to work.

Important: I didn’t want to turn their daily chores such as making their bed, cleaning their room, or setting the table into work. I wanted these chores to remain unmotivated by money. A great way for the kids to learn to separate chores from work is through an episode of Fancy Nancy called Shoe La La!

This week, I told them about their job: power wash the backyard.

So, the kids eagerly put on their rain boots, rain jacket, and had a blast spraying down the backyard tiles.

To top it off, I told the girls to make me an invoice to collect their payment. This is what they came up with:

5 year old finally learns self control

After 5 long, excruciating years, I finally implanted the lesson of self control into my 5 year old’s brain.

It was 8pm (bedtime) on a Sunday night, my brother was over, and my 5 year old wanted to keep playing.

“It’s bedtime niñas!” I proclaimed.

"I want to keep playing!” my 5 year old demanded.

“I want you girls upstairs to brush your teeth. You have 5 minutes”.

My 7 year old immediately went upstairs and brushed her teeth. 5 minutes passed and of course my 5 year old is still playing downstairs with her uncle.

I come down, without a word, swoop her up, and carry her to go brush her teeth.

My 5 year old is wailing, “I want to play!!! I want to play!!!”

“When you cry like that, no one can understand you.” I taught her for the millionth time. “If you want to communicate something, you need to learn self control and talk to me like a big girl.”

The crying continued.

But then, out of nowhere, as if something just snapped into place in her brain, my 5 year old stopped crying and calmly said, “Papi, after brushing my teeth, can I go play?”

I was bewildered.

“Of course.” I calmly replied.

And she triumphantly said a silent, “Yay.”

Lesson learned: persistence is the key.

The scene above has played out for what feels like hundreds of times, with my 5 year old just crying and crying. I kept teaching her the same thing about self control for years and nothing seemed to sink in. Until all of a sudden, one day, after all that persistence, it finally did.

Don’t give up. Keep repeating the same lesson over and over again — they’ll eventually get it.

This week was a bit different. Instead of diving deep on a topic, I wrote some quick learnings about lessons learned this week.

Let me know what you think.

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See you next Sunday,

Jun Loayza