Everything
else flows from this. It’s why you care more about their success than your own.
It’s tricky though, this doesn’t mean simply telling them each day (although
that’s a good idea), and it certainly doesn’t mean giving in to their every
whim.
Instead, it’s all about honesty and maturity. Can you
honestly say that when they’re 20 or 30 or 40 or more, they’ll recognise that
you do what you do because you always want the best for them?
You
want to treat your kids like adults so they’ll behave like adults, but kids by
definition aren’t adults. Yet, it seems a lot of parents, in the hope of
respecting their kids’ choices and encouraging them to make decisions, wind up
stepping aside and meekly letting their children make adult decisions.
You want your kids to learn to turn problems into
opportunities. When they’re immature however, they’re more likely to turn
opportunities into trouble and there’s probably no place in the 21st Century
that’s more of a minefield than in personal technology. We’re not just talking
about kids stumbling into the netherworlds of the Internet and seeing things
that are clearly inappropriate; we’re also talking about the sheer addiction to
screens that is even adults to succumb to.
You now find kids at 10, 12, 14, 16 years of age who have
their phone in their bedroom at two (o’clock) in the morning. No child should
have a phone in their bedroom unsupervised.
We all
have a lot of things going on. Yet, kids need you often to set those ambitions
aside in order simply to spend time with them. Rule number one to make that
clear. Eat dinner together every single day.
By communicating that time at home as a family is our highest
priority, you are sending the message that family matters. So many kids are in
the race to nowhere, trying to add things on to their resume through
extracurricular activities with no sense of why. They just burn out at 15 years
of age.
Offer support all the time, but offer real praise when it’s
really worthy. The first thing is to teach humility, because so many kids have
been indoctrinated in their own awesomeness with no understanding of how this
culture of bloated self-esteem leads to resentment.
Money is important. Even Bernie Sanders would agree with
that. Having it opens a world of choices; not having it forecloses opportunity.
But is money more important than everything else? Teach the meaning of life. It
cannot be just about getting a good job. It’s not just about achievement. It’s
about who you are as a human being. You must have an answer.