How to Share What You Learned With Other Families, Without Pressure

Many families learn useful things at home: a question that worked, a routine that held up, a phrase that changed an argument. Sharing it helps other people, always from your own experience. Chip and Dan Heath, in Made to Stick, explain that the ideas people remember are simple, concrete and arrive inside a story.

How to do it

You can share a routine with its schedule and length, like a 4-minute class after snack. You can share a question that opened the conversation at home, like "What would you do?" And you can tell a mistake you learned from and what you'd change. Mistakes told honestly build more trust than successes.

It helps to tell it with a scene and not an adjective. Instead of "it's excellent," tell what the child said, where you were and what you did. A three-line scene is remembered; an opinion is forgotten.

Protect your child's privacy. Share the idea and not the details: no full name, no school and no sheets with personal information. Asking your child whether they're okay with you telling what they said is also a way for them to decide about their own story.

If you have questions, support is in the help section.

What it's for

For your child, what's shared about them is a story with limits they also know. For you, telling the story of your home is a way to talk about what worked without needing to convince anyone.

What you'll see over time

The first few times it helps to share just one small scene. Between one and six months, the stories become more specific and the family's changes show. In the long run your own experience becomes the way you talk about the program with other families.

Signs it's working

You know sharing works when the story is concrete, when your child agrees with what's told and when what's told reflects what happened in your home.