Remember, your children can’t inherit your success.
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If your childhood was like mine, it probably involved mom dragging you out of bed, feeding you, writing a list of chores, listening to you gripe about it, and sending you back to redo the tasks hours later because you didn’t do them properly the first time.
But when you’re the parent, this routine can be tough to deal with — especially when you desperately want your child to become a successful, independent adult.
When children are young, it’s easy to see their potential and get excited for where it might lead. But at some point, things start to change. You expect your child to mature and become his own person, but instead, that happy-go-lucky kid becomes moody, withdrawn, and uninterested in just about everything.
Some of this is normal teenage behavior, but sometimes this behavior becomes extreme — chronic, even. This can persist through a child’s late teens and even keep him living under your roof long after he should’ve taken steps toward independence. The drive needed for a successful adult life just isn’t there.
A lot of parents whose teenagers lock themselves in their rooms to play video games or binge-watch TV worry that their children are depressed, but it’s often just a lack of motivation. This is caused by one of two things: a lack of desire or a lack of skill. Desire must precede skill, so focus on the desire first, and the skill will come.
Boost Motivation by Reducing Dependency
To encourage that desire, you need to challenge your teen by eliminating some of his dependencies. A dependency can be anything that allows him to escape responsibilities, such as video games, TV, or the gym.
Here are some ideas for eliminating dependencies and laying the groundwork for motivation:
- Make him help with the cooking. Teenagers love to eat, and they’ll live off of frozen pizzas if you let them. Stop bringing home his favorite frozen foods, and make him help with the cooking. If you remove quick fixes, he’ll be forced to help in the kitchen. Teaching him how to cook his own food will build his confidence and prepare him for the real world.
- Create a structured routine. A curfew may seem childish, but if your teen is shirking his responsibilities, he’s refusing to grow up. Set clear boundaries for when he needs to be up and when he needs to be home. A more structured routine will help him establish the grown-up behaviors he needs to become independent.
- Make him pay for the nonessentials. Essentials include food, water, and shelter. If he doesn’t have the money for gas or car insurance, he can get a bike or a bus pass. If he doesn’t have money to pay his cell phone bill, he can get an emergency prepaid phone. If he doesn’t have a job to pay for these comforts, he’ll have to get one.Unless you live in Detroit, he can’t blame his unemployment on the economy. The only reason your son doesn’t have a job is because he doesn’t want one. Once again, it’s a lack of desire, and the only way to create that desire is to make him uncomfortable.
Your Child Can’t Inherit Your Success
Once you establish some ground rules to build your child’s motivation, he should start making strides toward independence. Celebrate this growth rather than getting hung up on the fact that he isn’t on the path that you followed.
Too often, parents attach their children’s success to their own. I knew a man who was trying to get his 23-year-old son to move out of the house, get a job, and make friends. After spending some time with them, I realized they had a strange relationship: They would spend hours every day talking on the phone about their financial investments.
I realized that the son’s self-worth was built on his father’s definition of success — a high-yield investment portfolio — and that their entire relationship revolved around money. As a result, the son believed that money equaled success and success equaled acceptance. The son tried to make friends by impressing others with his investment portfolio, and when that didn’t work out, he went back to his father.
It’s important to remember that success means different things to different people, and no matter how much you may want good things for your child, he can’t inherit your success. So instead of focusing on success, encourage him to become a better version of himself by developing traits that create happiness, such as generosity, optimism, fairness, courage, and compassion.
If you’ve provided for your teen, put a roof over his head, and taught him how to live a meaningful life, you’ve done your job as a parent. The rest is up to him.
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