7 Traits Parents Must Cultivate to Help Children Have Success Later in Life
The Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, Professor William Damon, PhD, provides several insights about raising purposeful children all parents should know. Moreover, his book The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life is the first place I suggest parents start.
It is here where you will find Damon’s research on what leads to children having success later in life. In summary, Damon’s research suggests that children who cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset have the best long-term outcomes.
Contrary to popular belief, success later in life has nothing to do with being a valedictorian or getting a high GPA. Indeed, success later in life has very little to do with traditional academic metrics.
Damon writes:
One of the defining features of highly purposeful youth is their entrepreneurial manner of pursuing objectives. For the highly purposeful people profiled in chapter 4, entrepreneurship was a stronger common factor than usual measures of success such as school achievement. Although these youngsters generally did well enough in school, few of them were valedictorians or all-A students; but virtually all were superb entrepreneurs. As a predictor of later success in life, I would place my bet on strong entrepreneurial capacities.
He then goes further by providing parents an overview of 7 traits that they can cultivate in their children to encourage this entrepreneurial mindset. These traits include the following:
7 Traits Parents Must Cultivate for the Entrepreneurial Mindset
- “The ability to set clear goals and make realistic plans to accomplish them.”
- “An optimistic, can-do attitude.”
- “Persistence in the face of obstacles and difficulties.”
- “A tolerance –or more, even an appetite–for risk.”
- “Resilience in the face of failure.”
- “Determination to achieve measurable results.”
- “Resourcefulness and inventiveness in devising the means to achieve those results”
Damon goes further in sharing suggestions on how to cultivate each of these traits. I highly recommend that all parents grab his book and pay close attention to what Damon has to say.