Do You Get a Passing Grade as a Parent?
When you hear the word success, does you mind immediately go to money, status, and material items? The cheers from my old high school ring in my ears: S-U-C-C-E-S-S, That’s the way we spell success! Great – so we know how to spell it, but can we achieve it as parents? Parenting for success is more reliant on the definition than how it is spelled, and while each of us has varying definitions, there are certain common characteristics of parenting for success.
Sometimes there is debate over parenting for success is whether or not success is a measurement of the child, the parent, or the relationship between the two? Parenting for success means raising a child who is capable of living his most extraordinary life – of reaching goals and creating a life of limitless possibilities. For him – not us. We are just the launching pad. If we can raise our children to be successful with this definition, then we can call our parenting a success.
5 Ingredients for Parenting for Success
There are many ways to parent for success, and these 5 specific ways help lead me in the right direction. There are tangible, reliable ways to incorporate these ingredients into your parenting styles as you parent for success. Just keep in mind you are the launch pad, not the flight attendant who is there to serve or the pilot who takes control.
- Emotion coaching. If you haven’t heard of it and it sounds like something from a hyped-up talk show, don’t dismiss the idea. Emotion coaching is just one parenting style, but its effectiveness is one of a kind. It is centered on the idea that teaching our children to identify and positively deal with and communicate about emotions is the best way to prepare them for life.
- Social teaching. We live in a social world. An extremely important part of emotion coaching is laying the foundation on which social teaching can occur. Social teaching includes helping our children develop empathy and the ability to relate to others in our world. If you think of successful people in your life, most likely have the abilities to interact with others confidently and draw others into their ideas. It means teaching our kids to pay attention to social cues, listen to others, and be able to communicate their own needs and thoughts.
- Intellectual advancement. At their current levels, most public schools are not equipped to offer amazing opportunities for intellectual advancement. This doesn’t mean you need to find a private school in order to raise a successful child, but you do need to be proactive in your child’s education. Surround them with opportunities to learn more about the things they love, and make sure they have the foundational skills necessary to achieve academically.
- Open doors. Just because your neighbor’s son found success by attending the private school and participating in every sport under the son does not mean this is the equation for success. It is imperative that we pay attention to the interests of our kids and then encourage them to open doors in those directions. If your daughter loves art, find ways to help her surround herself with people, environments, and opportunities to further these passions.
- Will power. True success isn’t handed to you on a platter, but achieved through hard work and determination. One of the most important things we can do is teach our children how to prevail and replace self-doubt with self-confidence. Don’t do things for your kids that they can safely do for themselves, and don’t freak out when they have minor bumps along the way. A child who falls and is “rescued” by a parent learns to rely on someone else to pick him up and set him right. Instead, calmly observe to see that he is physically OK, and then let him figure out how to get back on his feet.
My mother has always given me great advice, including that we can’t define ourselves by the individual successes of our children, but whether or not they successfully live each day to their fullest extents. Parenting for success is focusing on specific ways to raise children who can independently think, act, and live with passion and integrity.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BetterParenting/~3/19SnuH_3gxA/