Editor's note: Few parents can claim to be child-rearing professionals. In this occasional series, we show what people have learned about parenting from their day jobs. If you have suggestions about other people or jobs to profile, let us know.
Jasmine May Yang has delivered a lot of mail since she went to work for the U.S. Postal Service in 1997.
You could also say she's delivered a lot of kids. She and her husband, Rich Vang, have five, ranging from age 15 down to 2 years old.
Yang draws three main parallels between doing her job and rearing her children: Organization, perseverance and dealing with varied personalities.
One of the first things she learned as a letter carrier: "Your mail has to be very organized," she said. "The post office, they don't like time-wasting practices."
"I like to put my mail in a certain way," Yang said. The way she sorts it in the office makes the delivery simple.
Being prepared helps at home, too.
"All my kids have chores and they know what to do every night," she said.
One sweeps and takes out trash. Another cleans the stove and picks up, so a third can vacuum. The fourth washes and dries the dishes.
The 2-year-old isn't yet on the chore crew.
Before Yang got organized at work, she was highly stressed and lost weight from the pressure.
"You don't know the area. You don't know the casing (sorting), you don't know where the heck you are," said Yang, who lives in Stockton but delivers in South Natomas.
"It was hard," she said. "I thought I was never going to make it."
Going through that taught her to have patience when her children get frustrated.
"Calvin had a project on a volcano," she said of his school project, but it wasn't going like he wanted. "He said, 'This is never going to look like my friend's (volcano).' "
She persuaded him to stick with it.
"You know as a parent (that) it gets better. I tell them never to give up."
The final thing Yang discovered is that both work and home involve juggling different personality types.
"You have five kids. You have five different personalities," she said.
The same is true at work, with more people.
Yang, who helps coordinate some of the social events at work – retirement parties, doughnut days and the like – interacts with all of them.
When it comes to doughnut day, there are the folks who won't contribute, the one who will eat only maple bars, and on and on.
"You have different personalities, different preferences, and you can't please everybody," she said.
At home, she has the picky eater, the volatile one, the sharer and the selective hearer.
"You'll be calling their name. If they don't want to answer you, they don't answer you," she said. "… You have to learn to deal with those."
Although Yang is sometimes inclined just to pump up the volume, experts say there are better ways to deal with kids who don't listen.
Their tips include:
• Be calm and no- nonsense.
• Be clear and specific, and use age-appropriate language.
• Make your kid a teammate, not an opponent. (Like the Yang cleaning team.)
• Compliment them when they behave well.
• Don't yell.
When the letter carrier uses the right approach, she finds her kids really deliver.
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