Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Leadership is Language: Binary Parenting Questions

These are notes from L. David Marquet’s book: Leadership is Language. The first set of notes start at understanding Red & Blue.

From the last post, all of those questions I asked had binary answers:

Question Acceptable Response
Are you ready for school? Yes/No
Did you wash your hands? Yes/No
Was school fun? Yes/No
Did you see person at school? Yes/No
Did you play at school? Yes/No
Did the teacher give you homework? Yes/No
Are you ready for bed? Yes/No

If my child did not want to “get in trouble” - most of the time, they would answer “yes”.

If they answer “yes”, but they really lied or I knew better, then I would start digging deeper into it. Eventually, I would “catch them” in the lie and he would have to rebuild trust with me.

I share the problem with binary questions.