What Is "High-Yield Parenting"? The Investment Strategy You’re Already Using on Your Kids
I have grown to love the term “high-yield parenting.” Simply defined, it’s the investment parents make in their children to help them optimize their lives: emotionally, physically, educationally, and socially. A big part of that investment is in helping their kids understand the meaning and value of investing in themselves.
The first time I heard the term high-yield parenting — which, if I’m being honest, was just last week when speaking with the SheKnows team about the different ways in which we parent — I paused. Parenting isn’t a business. It isn’t transactional. In fact, when I mentioned the term to my 19-year-old niece, she cringed. But when we started to break it down, it began to make sense.
High-yield investing is a common term used when investing money with the hope for a strong return. ROI goes hand-in-hand: it stands for “return on investment.” It’s how success is measured. So when it comes to high-yield investing, you want a strong ROI. Let’s be honest, when it comes to any kind of investment, whether that be with actual money or even your time, you want a strong ROI.
As parents, it’s fair to say 99% of what we do is an intentional investment in our children. We invest in them and in their future with every decision we make: Where we live. What we feed them. What extracurriculars we enroll them in. How we handle their phone time and social media use. What we allow them to watch. How we teach them to understand and deal with their strong emotions. The list is endless.
That’s what we’re supposed to do. We are the parents, after all. However, making kids realize that they’re taking actions every day that are investments in themselves — that’s powerful. Making sure that they understand there’s an ROI on those investments; that they are investing to actively improve themselves. When they choose to go for hitting lessons or they build that Lego set or they decide therapy is something they want to try — those are all investments they are making in themselves. When they are young you will be their primary driver, but the goal is for them to recognize there is an ROI for their efforts.
Suddenly, the term high-yield parenting makes total sense. Of course we want a strong return on the investments we make in our children. Of course we are purposeful and strategic about the investments we make. We want nothing more than for them to grow up and be well-adjusted teens, young adults, and caring, productive members of society. We just also really want them to understand this idea of investing in themselves so they can evaluate the risk of not doing something versus the reward of following through.
I’ve been talking to other writers, parenting experts, and therapists all week, introducing this term to them and talking through what it means. It’s the SAT course we sign our kids up for or the sports travel team we spend (what feels like) every last dime on or the theater rehearsals where we pick them up at midnight for three weeks in a row. These are our investments in their present and in their future. But their actions in working through each of those things — those are their investments. The ROI is their own.
Even if you’ve never worked in finance, we can all grasp the benefits of investing in our kids. Eventually, with some guidance, our kids will see it (and hopefully appreciate it!) too.