In Who Do You Think You’re Kidding? Founder of Kangaroo Kids Education Limited Lina shows you how to prepare your child for a competitive new world and discover your child’s true potential. Here’s her guest blog on ten tips to tap the innate greatness in your child, you’re welcome 🙂
Change has never been as accelerated as it is now. What is technology today is redundant in a few months. If we think today’s world is cutting edge and ‘fast’, we’d better think twice because the social and economic world of tomorrow is going to be nothing like we’ve ever imagined. Can you conjure up the world that is waiting for our children? I’m sure not. We as parents cannot exist in our own ivory tower. We need to keep up. So in this era of abundant technology and globalization the question arises—what becomes of our children? How do you parent the child in this era of constant flux?
Parenting has a whole new meaning to it. Today, the challenge of bringing up a child has increased tenfold. It’s not just about your child getting the best grades in school anymore or turning out ‘okay’, it’s about raising a global citizen who is intelligent and aware of his situation and that of others.
Each individual has a unique parenting style. And this usually reflects the way they were parented. Understanding that can help us understand our children better and in the process be a better parent. Usually we tend to see demographic styles of parenting. At the cost of generalization, there is a stark difference in the parenting styles of the East and West. Parenting a global citizen will need a global approach. The future is as unknown to a parent as it is to a child. Experiences of our parents and grandparents may not suffice as they were parenting for stability and conformity. What worked for your parent may not work for you! We are parenting for non-conformity. Today, parenting needs to be customized and personalized. Parenting is a matter of walking the tight rope… being both taut and subtle.
Our focus should be to prepare our children and youth for adult ‘life’ success. Success tomorrow will depend on how our children ultimately make use of the knowledge and information that they get today. How we educate our children may prove to be more important than what we are educating them. Are we teaching them to tap their innate greatness?
Ten tips to tap the innate greatness in your child:
1. Be connected with your child. Children are wired to the latest gadgets these days. Turn these into communication tools. If they love to chat through the virtual media, then so be it. As long as you connect with your child, the medium is immaterial.
2. Discipline should be non-threatening. Your child should never fear to tell you the truth. This begins at a young age when they break things accidentally and know that they are safe in saying “I broke this” to when they are experimenting with smoking in their teenage years and are able to discuss it with you.
3. Teach children, while they are learning to handle competition, how to develop their self esteem. Self esteem refers to how the child feels about himself or herself. If he feels confident and good about himself, he has a healthy self esteem. Teach him to compete with the self before competing with others.
4. We programme our children with all our verbal and non-verbal communication. Our children will acquire their first perception of self, positive or negative, directly from us. So ensure you encourage the positive in your child.
5. Positive affirmations and gratitude are great for raising one’s energy. Teach your kids how to experience both.
6. Show children that the ways we grow, change, and develop through life are strongly influenced by the choices we make. Each one of our children needs to have a strong sense of ‘the kind of me I’d like to be.’
7. The power to empathize is also important, if not vital, in leadership as it enables us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and think and feel like the other person. Empathy also just makes the world a better place to live in. Kids who work in groups are more empathetic and collaborate and share more easily than others who don’t. Involve your children in experiences that increase empathy like interacting with orphans.
8. Heed to a ‘child’s aspiration over any parental ambition you may have. Be mindful that the main purpose of being 4 is to only be 4 and not to get ready for being 25.
9. Teach kids that positive and negative thoughts are equally powerful. Teach kids to be mindful of their thoughts and be able to identify the positive thought from the negative one.
10. Teach kids to develop perspective. A different view of things always helps. Develop their skills of observation. The future is about Life Mastery. Invest time in developing successful habits of thought, attitude and behaviour over sending children to tuition classes.
To read more about parenting in the modern day, read Lina Ashar’s book, Who Do You Think You Are Kidding?