Stay Tuned

May 6, 2021

I've spent the last 12 years trying to master the art of the tease.

If you listen to the radio, you may have noticed that DJs keep their audiences engaged by regularly inserting previews of upcoming content. A horizontal tease is designed to get you to tune in at another time, whether it's later today, tomorrow, or next week. A vertical tease is designed to keep you listening right now, through a segment, song, or commercial break. A well-done tease hints at something cool just around your corner: It's a gift of anticipation, connecting you to your future, investing you in guessing what it might be.

Each week since 2009, I've been the Friday morning guest on my city's local soft rock station, WARM 101.3. Typically on Thursday, one of the DJs horizontally teases my appearance, e.g., Make sure to tune in tomorrow morning at 7:40, when Debra Ross from KidsOutAndAbout.com will tell you why you'll want to look up, look back, and look out when you get out and about this weekend. At 7:30 the next morning, I'll do an on-air vertical tease; last week it was: Stay tuned, because on the other side of this break, I'll be showing you both the forest AND the trees, and why they matter to your family's weekend!

Good teases have a payoff embedded right within them: Even before you know the punch line, you see a pattern, you get the joke, you get a little zing of pleasure, and you want more. You're hooked, you're connected. And if the DJ has done her job, the payoff meets your expectations.

Parenting well is an art that we learn on the job, and a sense of humor is our second most useful tool after flexibility. Parenting, like DJ-ing, is essentially a sales job: To keep kids happy, healthy, learning, and growing, we have to sell them an investment in a future that is hard for them to imagine. Kids need to sense that good stuff is just around the bend, and that someone responsible is their tour guide to it all. Practicing teases for my radio gig has helped it become a playful habit in my own parenting approach: Planning interesting stuff to do together, and then making a game of dropping tantalizing hints about what it will be like, invests kids in the experience and gives them something exciting to anticipate. Plus it's a way of keeping fun alive even when current times are not so fun: If we can use the pandemic to plan for the future—even if the teases mostly have to be horizontal rather than vertical—we'll solidify our connections to each other, and to the future around the corner.

Something cool is coming up, just on the other side of the break. I promise.

—Deb