Raising children has never been easy, but parents today face unique challenges. And the stakes could not be higher, as reflected in the rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among both children and teens over the past 20 years.
The collision between technology, rapidly changing cultural norms, and child-rearing has created an unusually complex array of problems that parents must navigate.
Added to these pressures are the unrealistically high expectations attached to parenting. Mothers and fathers are expected to be closely involved in nearly all aspects of their child’s life. This includes attending every athletic event, making homemade/organically grown meals, keeping children occupied with state-of-the-art toys that are both educational and engaging, monitoring their child’s every emotional shift, encouraging academic excellence from the earliest grades, but teaching them that their self-esteem is independent of achievement.
All of these concerns must be pursued cheerfully while being ever mindful to keep a healthy work/home life balance, maintain a strong marriage, continue to advance at work and, just for good measure, get to the gym several times a week.
Within this dizzying kaleidoscope of pressures, it is easy to lose sight of parenting’s main goal – to prepare children to succeed in adulthood. Although what it means to succeed as an adult has many nuances, most would agree that at its core, this includes becoming a productive, independent, and emotionally stable individual capable of forming mature, rewarding relationships.
For children to grow into this type of adult they must first build the skills that are required for the task. This is no different than other endeavors in life. If, for example, you wish to own a successful business, you must first acquire a variety of business-related skills. If your goal is to stand astride the peak of the Matterhorn, you must learn mountaineering skills.
The same is true when thinking of how best to help a child grow into a strong, healthy adult.
Childhood is the training ground where ‘adulting’ skills are first forged and sharpened. This occurs as young boys and girls grapple with the myriad setbacks, insecurities, and frustrations that confront every child.
Parents who wisely guide their children in solving these problems (eventually on their own) are simply preparing their sons and daughters for adulthood.
On the other hand, parents who shield their youngsters from these hardships deprive them of the experiences necessary to build the capacity to deal with the more difficult challenges they will face later in life.
Building Strong Children
Although there are many elements of child rearing involved in effective parenting, let’s examine three essentials: instilling the capacity for hard work, delaying gratification, and building self-discipline.
Hard Work
For young children, work normally consists of household chores. Older children may babysit, mow lawns in their neighborhood, or volunteer with a church or civic organization. In their teens, job opportunities in a formal work setting become available.
Each of these forms of work plays a crucial role in building a youngster’s sense of competency, self-esteem, work ethic, and even their ability to get along with others.
The powerful effects of work derive from requiring a child to focus on a task, persevere while completing it, judge whether it was done correctly, and most often have others make the same judgment.
Success brings a sense of pride and accomplishment, while failure teaches the child how to make corrections and the importance of persistence when success is not immediate.
When chores are assigned to be completed by two or more children, it has the added benefit of teaching them how to work as a team, and promotes essential skills of accepting the interpersonal give and take required to reach a goal.
For some ideas on what chores are a good fit for specific ages, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has developed guidelines.
Delayed Gratification
Patience, the ability to delay gratification, is a virtue acquired through repeated denial. Acquiring this capacity, that is to deny acting on strong urges, is essential for success as an adult. A Chinese proverb states “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.”
To delay gratification is to go against your basic instincts. We know this to be true, because every infant you’ve ever seen lacks patience. It is a quality that one is not born with, but must be learned.
Research shows that the ability to delay gratification at a very young age ultimately leads to higher academic success and fewer emotional problems in the future.
Having the capacity to wait for a reward is essential if one is to develop the ability to persist toward a goal despite setbacks and the inevitable frustrations that arise when pursuing a significant achievement. This is true in business, academics, hobbies and relationships.
Impatience, and the need to have one’s desires fulfilled immediately, lead to bad choices. Having the capacity to ‘play the long game’ and persist in the face of adversity, is essential for many of the goals each of us strives for in life.
Self-Discipline
Whereas exercising patience (delayed gratification) is most often a passive act, self-discipline can be active or passive. At times, it requires one to do that which you would prefer to avoid (studying for long hours, completing a difficult workout, confronting a fearful situation). At other times, it involves not doing the thing you desperately desire to do (binge-watching Netflix, sleeping in till noon, eating another five donuts… especially eating donuts).
If self-discipline is absent or weak, children will never fully utilize their abilities and unique gifts - nor will they be as likely to successfully transition into adulthood.
This is not surprising, given the pivotal role that self-discipline plays in various areas of life, including the pursuit of professional goals, sustaining healthy relationships, maintaining personal fitness, and more.
Building a child’s capacity for self-discipline can be achieved through various activities, including music lessons, sports, assigning chores, learning to save money for a purchase, and setting specific academic goals.
Conclusion
Mothers and fathers are most helpful to their children when the primary goal of parenting is clear and serves as a guide for their child-rearing decisions. Although such clarity will not make the task of turning your child into a healthy, productive, and happy adult easy, it will increase your chances of success. Achieving that goal is a precious gift that will impact your child for a lifetime.
