Our Children's Future: Ensuring Their Way

We worry about our kids: their well-being and a happy future is our main concern in life. We long for them to happy and successful at whatever they choose to do. We hope that we will be able to provide them with the help that many of us received from our own parents. How can we ensure that we have done everything in our power to see that all this might come to pass?

We need to take a few steps back and consider what we truly want for our kids. When I asked a client of mine recently to think carefully of the three things she wished for her children, her response was that she wanted them to be loving, compassionate and responsible adults. She didnt mention things like rich, famous or powerful. She really got to the root of what she knew to be the crucial characteristics necessary for a happy and fulfilling life.

Once we have clarity about the things we really want for our kids, we can then move forward towards instilling those traits in them. But first we must have clarity. Heres what to do:

1. Make a list of all the things you want for your kids. Financial security, love, happinesseven for them to be blessed with kids just like them! Thats what my Mother wished for me and it came true.

Once you have come up with a list of perhaps ten items, start from the top and compare the first two items. Which is most important? Take that choice and compare it to the next item on the list. Again, which is most important? Continue doing this until you have gone through your list and the item that remains is your number one choice.

Repeat the process for your number two, three, four and five choices. This is a list of the five most important things that you want for your kids. Now you can move towards ensuring you do your best to work towards a wonderful future for your kids.

2. Important rule: You are not making decisions about your childrens personal future. Thats their responsibility and right. You are making decisions as a parent concerning their future but you are not determining their future.

3. So lets say that one of the items on your list happens to be financial security. What do you know about what it takes to create financial security? Think of people who have managed to achieve financial security on their own. What traits do they share? Perhaps you determine that responsibility is one of those traits.

How do you create responsibility? What do you know to be true about responsible adults? My own personal opinion is that these adults were taught early on through actual experience about responsibility. For instance, most of them probably had specific chores they did at home. Most of them probably worked in the summers. Most of them probably learned early on to take responsibility for their own lives and not place blame others. Most of them, at the appropriate age, were undoubtedly taught to make decisions on their own and suffer the consequences. They learned not by being told what to do but in the actual doing.

Be forewarned: It is so much easier to just let them do what they want versus being a watchdog. Teaching a child responsibility, or anything else for that matter, takes patience, determination and commitment.

4. Be a role model. Our kids model themselves after their childhood experiences and especially how they saw their parents. As much as we said we would never be like our own parents, how many of us can see our parents in ourselves? If you want your son or daughter to be responsible, be responsible. There is not a more profound impact than a real role model.

5. Who is this child? I love the story a friend recently told me. Her son in New York City had a visitor, a young woman who was in her third year of college. After spending a week together, she admitted that her major, biology, was not what she wanted to do but rather what her Mother suggested. She wanted to be a fashion stylist! How could her Mother have missed that?

Do you know what excites your kid? What moves them? What they love to do? Who they really are at their core? Honoring them for who and what they truly are is the greatest gift you can give your son or daughter. Take the time to connect with them and really listen. Listen on a level where you really are hearing them.

6. Praise the positive and attempt to minimize the negative. That does not mean that you do not establish consequences for unacceptable behavior. It does mean that positive reinforcement is a powerful tool. Its Pavlovian conditioning and it works.

7. I love this quote: Expectations are predetermined resentments. Dont set yourself up for disappointment. If you are looking for fulfillment, look to yourself, not your children. Dont attempt to live vicariously through them. It will only end in unhappiness for everyone involved.

8. Try to remember what really ticked you off about your own parents when you were their age. Not that it was valid. Remember we were just kids and reacted in a childish manner much of the time. But it will help to empathize with how they are feeling, to understand their frustrations and to be able to communicate in a more effectual way.

We almost all find our way in life but it is so much easier if we have the necessary tools. You know now what you wish your parents had said or done back when. Break the chain. You are the most important person in your childs life who can give those tools to your kids. That is how we ensure that their future is bright.