Give Your Child the Keys to Succeed
How can we effectively teach our children to succeed and give them the keys that will unlock their potential? That answer probably depends upon your definition of success. It also probably depends on how deeply you take your child’s success to be a part of your own, something from which you draw personal pride and rely on for your own self-fulfillment. If you truly want your child to succeed, you must first make sure it not for your own needs and reasons, but because you see the values of their endeavors for them – with or without the trophy at the end of the process. The lifelong ability to succeed also requires the premise that the success is not always external, not something that others can determine or measure for us.
What are the keys to success?
- Provide him with as many opportunities for self-directed learning as possible. When they pursue their own dreams and goals they are more likely to fight for the cause.
- Place emphasis on the success or failure of the task or activity, not on the child herself.
- Encourage him to look ahead and ask, “What do I see as a marker for success?” Once kids learn to define their own level of success for a given project, they can more easily form a path for getting there.
- Don’t do things for your child that he can reasonably and safely do for himself.
- Don’t take credit for your child’s successes, unless you also want to take all of the blame for their poor decisions and major blunders (thanks, Mom, for this wonderful piece of parenting advice!).
- Don’t emphasize the external rewards, such as colored ribbons or trophies. Focus on the process and the implications of the progress on the future.
- If something doesn’t go as planned, ask your child what she might do differently in the future. Sometimes the success comes from learning what not to do.
- Teach your children to be their own judges. Ask them questions about how they feel about their actions, words, or accomplishments, and their answers might surprise you.
- Teach your child to be gracious in both defeat and success, for we all experience some of both, and typically spend most of our time somewhere in between.
- Teach your child to be thankful for failures – they teach us to know when we are successful.
The risks of not letting our children fail
Teaching children how to succeed begins with teaching them how to set goals for themselves and providing them with opportunities to work for those goals. Let’s emphasize work here – we won’t be giving them the keys to success if we do the work for them. We can’t be the parents who create the science fair project or write the term paper, then consider the ribbon or A+ grade a success.
It is not easy to watch our children struggle – we have usually spent almost every minute since their births working to ease their paths in life. We want to set them up for success. However, sometimes our wants can get in the way of their abilities to find success on their own. I just spent 7 hours as a judge’s assistant at a local county fair where children in grades kindergarten through freshman in college proudly presented their projects for judging. The projects included everything from the standard fair vegetables, to rocketry, computer science, arts, photography, citizenship, and more. Sadly, amid all of the amazing accomplishments, there were tears from one child who couldn’t answer the interview questions because her mother had actually completed most of the project. Even had the child been able to do well in the interview process, she would always know that she wasn’t the one who worked hard on the project and got the blue ribbon. She was the one whose mother didn’t have enough faith in her to let her try.
The most successful child is one who can take the failure of an idea or plan and recognize the flaws, then do something to improve the outcome in the future. We need to give our children the room to grow, make mistakes, and then support them on their own adventures.
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