How to get your children engaged.
As a 28 year old with Asian parents, engagement is a hot topic in our family. Nobody wants their child to be the pariah of the community, alone and unloved in the eyes of the law and/or God. And heaven forbid if I was female!
For my parents, as for many others worldwide, my engagement is their primary goal. The competition is strong, and in this post I highlight ways in which you as a parent can achieve your goals of getting your child engaged (and/or married).
Measure it.
Naturally, to be able to improve your child’s engagement, you first need to be able to measure it. There are two approaches to this.
1. Quantitative
Measuring whether they are actually engaged is a difficult task, but there has been a noticeable correlation between them dating, and them being engaged. So, we propose the following metric:
Where:
r = the last time they dated
f = in the last n days, how many days have they dated
v = total number of dates/days dating within the last n days.
2. Qualitative
This is the traditional route taken by most parents, and sometimes can be the most effective — just ask them if they are engaged.
This approach doesn’t have to be intrusive! Just pop up during or after their date and ask how it’s going, or to rate their partner out of five. It’s a quick win.
Improve it.
Now that you’ve got a baseline figure, your sole mission in life should be to improve that metric and nothing else. There are many ways to do this, but rather than risk innovation, here are some surefire wins that others have tried.
1. Recommendations
The surefire way to improve the ‘V’ in our metric is to get your child dating as many people as possible. Once they’ve started dating someone, present them three more people just incase they don’t like this one.
You’ll also want to work on the bounce rate. Nothing is worse than your child approaching the end of a relationship and then just moving on to other things. Have a dozen or so other prospects lined up immediately to see if you can keep them going. You can even try automatically getting them to date the next person before they’ve even decided!
Possible experiments that you can run in this area are whether to go for a breadth-first approach or to focus on their niche tastes, or perhaps whether or not to show an image of the prospect.
2. Notify them as soon as new prospects are available
Recommendations are all well and good, but they rely on your child already talking to you about the subject, and so might not have much of an effect on the ‘R’ parameter. Thanks to the awesome power of Whatsapp and Facebook, you have the power to change that! Be sure to notify them as soon as a new prospect is available — whether they want to know or not. Remember, you know what they want better than they do.
3. Change their name to something more catchy
Who wants to engage an Arjun when they could be engaging a Max Power, or a Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock. We’ve found that either short/snappy names, misleading names or promiscuous names work best.
4. Clap
This is a somewhat untested approach, but apparently getting them to clap randomly at other people helps them get engaged.
5. Social media
It is a known fact that if someone interacts with some person on social media, then they are more likely to get engaged to them.
Encourage them to add people on Facebook and Twitter, loudly and as often as possible. Perhaps even follow them around with Facebook open on an iPad, so they can just press a button whenever they like.
6. Make it fast
It has been proven that the longer people date, the more likely they are to drop off. Therefore it is imperative that you keep the dating period as quick as possible. Once they’ve been dating for weeks, or even days, start the pressure to get them engaged.
7. Onboarding
You should not take it for granted that when your child starts dating someone, that they know how to use your child. Consider an on boarding process which takes them through some of the key features of your child in a clear, concise and perhaps visual manner. Delight them!
8. Personalisation
In this day and age, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t really cut it — and, let’s face it, just isn’t cool anymore. Tailor your child’s personality to meet the needs of their partner. Are they into the arts? Enroll your child on an acting course! Are they bookish? Teach your child to read! Do they like the occasional drink? Make your child an alcoholic! Hairstyles, fashion, plastic surgery…the only limit is your imagination!
9. Pivot to video
If all else fails and your children are not engaging with real people, get them watching some videos!
