October Book Club Pick: The Family's Firm's Four F's
At the start of the school year, we include a copy of Emily Oster’s “Family Firm” in our welcome basket to families. We’ve started adding this book into our gift bundle because it’s a tremendous resource in making the big school decision. Oster frames the decision-making process in a way that is tangible and practical—while allowing us parents grace if we misstep or need to re-evaluate. Take a look at her Four F’s (four steps to follow the your family faces a big choice. See our bolded examples below).
From Family Firm:
Design a framework for making big decisions
How can we make this choice well? Not: How can we make this choice correctly? You cannot guarantee that you’ll make the correct choice. Parenting involves mistakes. It’s inevitable that sometimes you’ll make a choice that turns out to be the wrong one. But what you can do is approach the choice correctly, and make the choice well.
Four F’s:
Frame the question: Often the hardest step. Don’t start off too vague (what kind of school is right?) Much better is “should we send our child to school A or school B?”
Scenario 1: In October (when applications open): Should we apply Johnny to independent schools this year or next year?
Scenario 2: In April (when decisions have been released): Should we send Johnny to Pace or Lovett?
Fact-Find: Gather evidence, data, and details you need. This may involve learning more about the logistics and thinking though how you could make this work (or not). Or it may involve data on benefits and risks of each option. This step (the longest one) is a chance to get all factors together, clearly, in one place.
Scenario 1: Start asking questions—What are the pros of starting the independent school search now (from a family perspective, student perspective, admissions perspective)? What would we be sacrificing if we start this process now (financially, logistically)? What would we need to get in place to start this process successfully? What do we need to do to kick off this process?
Scenario 2: Now that decisions have been released, go back to your list of non-negotiables that launched this process. Drive through the campuses again. Meet with your financial advisor to make sure the numbers work as you’re adding another line item for tuition in the family’s budget. Understand where/how you will need to outsource this summer and for Fall - drivers, nanny, coaches, tutors.
Final Decision: Once you have the evidence, have a meeting, and use that meeting to make a decision. May seem obvious, but people often fail to have this single decision meeting and instead revisit the question again and again with different information. Let the decision take a lot of headspace in a single moment, decide, and move on.
Scenario 1: We’ve decided to move forward with the independent school process this year. Let’s chunk the workload so we have manageable weekly goals until application deadlines. Or, we’ve decided to wait a year until applying to independent schools. We’re confident in leveraging this year as a “prep year” (both academic and non-academic) before adding the stress of applications.
Scenario 2: We’ve made our final decision! Let’s celebrate - we’ve bought school swag for the whole family, have shared the good news with friends and teachers, and have started having conversations about making a healthy transition into a new environment next year. We’re confident in our choice.
Follow-Up: Most decisions deserve follow-up. Once you’ve made a choice and implemented it, the last step is to make a concrete plan about when you’ll revisit your choice.