Why “Nurture Nature” Parenting is the Key to Maximizing Potential
Unquestionably, nurturing the nature of a child is the primary way to increase the chances of maximizing potential. Parenting any other way puts you at risk of facing the consequences of raising your kids to be someone they are not. History shows these risk aren’t worth it.
I didn’t always think this way however. Rather, it took researching the concepts of strengths psychology made popular by Don Clifton to convince me of this. Now I am extremely confident that fighting against the nature of children is a battle you can’t win.
With that said, in order to apply “nurture nature” thinking parents must be detectives and discover their child’s nature. In author Mary Reckmeyer’s Strengths Based Parenting book, she recommends four methods for discovering a child’s nature:
- Yearning: What activities or environments is your child repeatedly drawn to or eager to try?
- Rapid learning: What new skills or activities does your child pick up quickly and easily?
- Satisfaction: When is your child most enthusiastic and fulfilled? Which activities is he or she excited about doing again and again?
- Timelessness: When does your child become so engrossed that he or she seems to lose track of time?
Invest in the Nature to Nurture Potential
It’s in these areas of yearning, rapid learning, satisfaction, and timelessness where you’ll find what your child truly loves to do. These are the things parents must nurture by investing time and money in developing potential.
As I like to say, potential is the capacity to develop into something more in the future. So the longer, harder, and more focus one puts into developing into something more, the closer one gets to maximizing potential. Undeniably, this type of enduring and persistent toil is only done by those who truly love what they are doing.
Given this, when you invest in nurturing your child’s nature they will be willing to toil longer, harder and with more focus than they would if they were being forced to be something they are not. As a result, investing time and money in your child using this “nurtue nature” approach is without doubt the key to maximizing potential.