Don’t we, as parents who love our children, want the best for them? And, if there was such a training manual as the Highly Effective Parenting Guide (that guarantees highly effective parenting by successful completion of the course), wouldn’t we jump at the chance to purchase it? And, wouldn’t we expect to see one of its guiding principles state that “a highly effective parent desires to see his or her child do better in all areas of life than he or she has done”? Then, you go on to read that the highly effective (notice how I’m not using the word “perfect”) parent readily imparts invaluable wisdom to the child in hopes of providing purposeful guidance in a positive direction.
Realistically speaking, I like to refer to the aforementioned wisdom as those “lessons learned” in life, the golden nuggets, that I want to share with my three children in order to better equip them for the wide spectrum of life events that will come their way. These golden nuggets of wisdom (hardships endured, obstacles overcome, knowledge gained, learning opps encountered, experiences enjoyed, successes achieved, and victories won) can make or break a person. So, Husband and I have made a conscious and dedicated effort to share with Toodlez, Junior, and Little Man some game-changing things we’ve learned and encountered in life to better position our children for success in their own personal as well as professional lives.
Jana’s Quotable:
Parents, take those “lessons learned” from life and share them with your children for their betterment.
One of those lessons learned/golden nuggets that Husband and I have shared with our children by actual implementation is beginning their training for success with the end in mind. You’ve probably heard the saying, “begin with the end in mind”. Well, we’ve taken that saying and applied it to the rearing of our children. It’s the kind of teaching philosophy we’d expect to see in this hypothetical Highly Effective Parenting Guide, if there was such a book to purchase. Our philosophy stresses the importance of the following: 1) identifying your child’s strengths, natural talents, skills, and interests (at as early an age as possible) and then, 2) providing them with opportunities to develop in those areas. And here’s where beginning with the ending in mind comes to life. The very things that your child (at a young age) gravitates toward, thoroughly enjoys doing, has a natural ability to perform, and keeps coming back to are those very things that they may find themselves successfully specializing in as personal and professional endeavors in their adult lives.
And, I’m going to add this supplemental advice to the whole idea of letting your children organically find out what they’re good at or enjoy doing. We, as parents, have to remember that we have quite a few more years of knowledge and experience in our repertoire than our children, so it’s okay for us to sometimes help the child talent development process along. Why? Because our children don’t know everything about everything and neither do we, but we know a little more about life than they do. It’s our responsibility to direct them in avenues that will allow them to discover areas of talents and interests that they may not have discovered automatically on their own. It’s perfectly acceptable to expose your children to different activities such as sports, the arts, scholastic competitions, special interests, and the like without knowing if they’re going to excel at them or not. You never know the possibilities for your child without exploring them. However, be careful not to force your children into doing or continuing to do something that they have a zero passion or inclination to do, because it just might be a failed attempt, on your part, to live out your own life through your child’s. You don’t want to make that mistake! I’ve seen that played out before and the results can be pretty devastating to both child and parent. We’re the adults and we’ve experienced our childhood; we certainly don’t want to rob our children of theirs.
There are more layers to this topic that I’d like to uncover, but I’ll stop here for now. However, I’m going to leave you with this little cliffhanger: the two steps highlighted above will be discussed, using my three children as the subjects. So, please visit my next blog installment for details. Hope to see you there.
degreesofmaternity.com 