How can a parent help program their children while they are young so that we can enable them to succeed?
In thinking about and researching this question that was posed to me by a pupil, I found a few things that help create success in not only children but everyone.
1) A sense of wonder and curiosity
Children are naturally curious; almost everything in the world is new to them. From a worm slowly crawling across the sidewalk to jets flying through the sky. If you look at yourself and times gone by you were probably just as curious about everything as the next child. It seems that at some point in our lives we lost that curiosity. Now we seem to rush to get everything done. We rush to get our kids to the babysitter. We rush to get projects done for our bosses. Through all of this rushing we have pushed out our natural curiosity. Somewhere we have unlearned curiosity.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.†– Albert Einstein
Sometimes in our lives things become hectic and we stifle the desire for our children to learn. It is up to us to reaffirm and build their desire. It is up to us to help our children to be curious and learn from everything that is around them.
I found some great suggestions on http://www.babycentre.co.uk to help open our children exercise their creative tendencies.
2) Self discipline
All children misbehave at some point when they are young. This is part of finding out what appropriate behavior is and where they can stretch the limit to. The list of things that a child will do to test boundaries is only limited by their imaginations. The purpose for discipline is helping them to understand self control, a sense of limits and clear expectations for appropriate behavior. Sometimes we take this misbehavior as a personal insult. We believe that our children are trying to push our buttons and directly challenge our authority. Sometimes this may be the case but the reasoning behind this behavior is still to test boundaries and should not be taken personally. When we take these things personally we lose our temper and our own behavior becomes inappropriate thus enabling our children’s bad behavior.
“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.†-Harry S. Truman
How can we stop this cycle and teach our children where the expectations and limits are and enable their own sense of self?
If you want considerate, cooperative, and flexible children, you should be their model. There are many styles of discipline. We all need to take a look at how we do this and what we can improve.
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.†– James Baldwin
There is a wonderful article written about this subject by Anita Gurian, Ph.D. and Robin F. Goodman, Ph.D. on http://www.aboutourkids.org
3) Good social skills
Studies have shown that children with positive social skills are more likely to succeed in school and in life. On the other end of the spectrum children with poor social skills tend to act out, show aggressive and violent behavior and generally can’t express themselves in an appropriate format.
Some of the things that children can learn at a young age to help develop good social skills are sharing, taking turns, expressing feelings appropriately, showing concern for others and learning to play. These may seem like very basic behaviors that should come naturally, but they are all things that we can all learn to do better.
A great source of information to give you ideas that will help you teach your children social skills can be found at http://extension.oregonstate.edu
“Developing excellent communication skills is absolutely essential to effective leadership. The leader must be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others. If a leader can’t get a message across clearly and motivate others to act on it, then having a message doesn’t even matter.” – Gilbert Amelio
4) Family involvement
Several studies indicate that children are more successful in every area that their parents are involved in. Parents and families are the children’s first teachers. Just think about how many things that a child learns at home without the benefit of formal school. According to studies parental involvement at home and school boosts educational effectiveness and promotes all aspects of school rediness including math and language skills, motivation and social skills.
“The school will teach children how to read, but the environment of the home must teach them what to read. The school can teach them how to think, but the home must teach them what to believe.†– Charles A. Wells
The Michigan department of education has a great paper on what research says about parent involvement in children’s education. http://www.michigan.gov
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. What better way to promote children’s development than to invest yourself in learning how.
