It is hard growing up these days. Life has become much more complex in the past few decades, with conflict in the world and an uncertain job market for young people to get started on their professional careers. Mental health issues in adolescence have increased as well.
Below are five areas where you, as a parent, can help guide your Child to a happy and successful future:
1. Open-mindedness for a successful professional career
Children are naturally open-minded and curious. Many, however, are influenced by adults who demonstrate behavior that goes against this open-mindedness, such as prejudice, racism, sexism and so on.
In order for a child to be a successful adult, they need to be open-minded and objective. Part of this open-mindedness can come naturally with travel. Experiencing other countries, cultures, languages, and behaviors can help children and adults appreciate that there are many different ways to live life and that one way is not better than the other.
2. Grateful children become empathic adults
Gratitude goes beyond goes manner, saying 'thank you' and respecting the elderly. Many kids who grow up in middle/upper-class households do not appreciate the opportunities provided to them. It is essential that your children realize that they are in a privileged situation and that most kids (and adults) are not as lucky as they are.
Only when they realize this, will they feel gratitude for their life and can show empathy to those less fortunate. This will also help them reach their full potential and look for ways to help others.
3. The importance of failure
Children are taught from a young age that failing is bad and to fear it. It is very tempting to always provide a safety net for your child to prevent it from failing.
However, you are not doing your child any favors by doing so. Failure is an important phase in a child's development. Children who have never been allowed fail before adulthood do not know how to deal with adversity and the impact is so much greater when your first failure is as an adult. Allow your kids to fail, they will learn valuable lessons from it, trust me.
4. Mastering life skills
There are many children today who, by the time they turn 18 do not master basic Life Skills, such as opening a bank account and managing money, cooking meals, doing laundry and fixing simple things around the house. There is nothing wrong with letting your 10-year old do his or her own laundry or asking your 14-year-old to make dinner. These are life skills they will need before they move out. You might be surprised to see pride and satisfaction in your children once they master these types of skills on their own.
5. Allow for a carefree childhood
As mentioned, life is hard and we want our children to not worry. However, many parents do now allow for the children to be kids by overbooking them with tutoring, music lessons, sports activities and so on, which are meant to help their child develop.
The problem is that these children feel the parents' high expectations, have no downtime and feel stressed year round. Leave time for kids to be bored sometimes.
Resist your parental instinct
Some of the advice above goes against natural parental instinct. You want to protect your child, guard it against tragic events in the world, provide it with every opportunity available and get him or her to adulthood safely. However, although you have the best intentions, you are actually not preparing your child for adulthood by doing so. Try to go against intuition in the best interest of your child, he or she will be grateful for it once they are old enough to appreciate it.