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| Children dressed up in Halloween costumes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Happy Halloween. These days it's scary to think about how kids are being raised. Most parents invest more in a child's Halloween costume than they do in the child's education. But investing in your child doesn't mean sending them to expensive private schools. Instead, as Mark Ford shares today, it is the “smaller skills” that we all can still learn that come in handy in life. We can all choose to continue learning and improving ourselves each day.
Craig Ballantyne
“We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.” – Unknown
Teach Your Children Well: How to Develop Successful Kids – Part One
By Mark Morgan Ford
By Mark Morgan Ford
Today’s essay was written specifically for people who have young children or grandchildren. But looking over it now, I see that it should be of interest to anyone who wants to become a better, more productive person.
When I was a young father, I wanted my young children to be very good at everything they did. I wanted them to be very good students, very good athletes, very good thinkers, etc.
Although they never took a great deal of interest in sports, they did well enough in school and became bright and athletic thinkers.
By the time they had become young men, my desire for them to excel at everything had evaporated. And in its place was something else: pride and satisfaction in knowing that they had become independent and kind.
Many parents, I believe, experience the same shift. When their children are small, they want to see them excel because they believe that childhood performance is an indicator of future success. But as time passes, they come to have a more realistic view of maturation.
One of the most important recognitions is that the most important stages of childhood development are all marked by the need to separate in some way from their parents.
This makes perfect sense when you consider us as creatures of evolution. When our children are helpless, our instinct is to nurture and protect them. As they grow older, they acquire habits (biting the nipples that feed them, breaking free of the hand that holds them, discovering music their parents abhor, etc.) that promote independence.
This is as it should be. A mentally healthy parent learns to accept and eventually desire his children’s independence.
Encouraging Co-dependence
But there are parents who can’t let go. They encourage dependence in their adult children by paying their bills or trying to remain “best friends.” They believe themselves to be good parents because they are always “there” for their kids. What they are really doing is making their children less able to take care of themselves.
Such behavior is unhealthy for both the parents and the children. It circumscribes the parents’ lives to a close orbit around their children. And it encourages a habit of dependency in their children that makes them less capable of independent action.
Kindness
As for kindness: I never consciously wanted my children to be kind when they were young, but I suppose I expected it. When they were rude to their friends or their elders, I chastised them. But I never taught them to be kind.
Still, I was delighted when I saw them, as adults, acting kindly toward their older relatives and less fortunate strangers. It made me proud. ... Continue to read. ...
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