Parents: Don’t Risk a Child’s Long-Term Success for Short-Term Success
There is a simple truth about parenting that’s hard to understand and accept. Children want success to please their parents, while adults want success for themselves. Therefore, pushing a child to be young superstars before they reach adulthood has limits and may even do harm.
These limits and the potential harm may not appear until it’s too late to self-correct. This is the cautionary tale that I’m warning you about today.
When a child is first starting to develop their independence around 3rd or 4th grade, pushing a child still works. At these younger ages you can push your child to achieve more than any other child in their age group. This early success can be very gratifying for a parent. Unfortunately, early success that’s a result of heavy-handed parental influence backfires.
As a child matures into the adolescent years, the playing field changes. It’s in this stage of development that true elite talent starts to emerge. This is because some adolescent children start to develop their true passions in life. Passion that fuels self-motivation, that in turn fuels determination.
Unquestionably, those who are self-motivated will always have an advantage over those who are pushed by external motivation. When you compare an adolescent that had early success because of heavy-handed parental influence against a self-motivated child that is a “late bloomer” there is a stark difference. More often than not, the early achiever will plateau at good, and the late bloomer will accelerate to great.
The best thing a parent can do when they can’t help themselves when it comes to pushing their child, is to push their child to find self-motivation. This means helping your child learn about their innate strengths and use those strengths. This also means helping your child with self-discovery and giving them the tools they need to tap into what uniquely makes them tick. Once a child develops the skills to motivate themselves, the sky’s the limit.
On the other hand, when you push your child too much with external motivation in the short-term, you sacrifice their long-term self-motivation. This may get them into a great college, but this may sacrifice their ability to graduate. Your child will look successful on paper before they turn 18, but this will sacrifice their actual success in their 20s and 30s.