It takes you by surprise — that knock on the door. You reluctantly pull yourself away from the couch, pause your Netflix, and go see who it is.
The stranger there isn’t just any stranger. He’s a soothsayer with an important message: Your kid — yep, the same one whose report card was full of misconduct reports, wet the bed as a toddler, and sometimes seems borderline possessed as a teenager — will decide which of two futures mankind will have. In one future, things are “normal.” He’s happy with a job, but humankind becomes nothing but a stain on Earth’s evolutionary track. In the second future, he leads the fight against a tyrannically oppressive regime that would have destroyed humanity. He struggles, suffers, works hard, and has to lean on himself but eventually prevails, crushing that cruel regime, thus saving mankind’s future.
Now, while I may be borrowing some content from a famous movie franchise, Sarah Connor knew what she had to do. But you don’t have any idea how to raise a future president or legendary leader. What would you have to do and how do you go about finding out what to do and then start doing it? Doesn’t it make sense that we should prepare every child for whatever future might be ahead of them? After all, none of us know what the future holds for our children, so we need to prepare them for just that possibility.
This is exactly what your job is as a parent, and it shouldn’t take a soothsayer from the future to make that clear. Throughout history, we’ve witnessed that many parents fail their children. Hitler’s father frequently beat him, Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents after being raised in the lap of luxury, and Ted Bundy’s parents told him his mother was his sister. Alternatively, if you succeed, you can very well play a role in thwarting all kinds of disasters and heartache for the world.
From my own experience, it’s obvious that kids learn two things from their parents: what to do and what not to do. My ex-Marine father was an alcoholic smoker, while my drug-addict mother was married five times. Their addictive personalities offered plenty of examples of what not to do. To her credit, my mother eventually put her issues behind her and married a wonderful man. At this point, I started gaining a better understanding of my direction in life. My grandparents, who raised me, gave me a lot of excellent examples on the “what to do” side as well.
Not to mention, I’m also the proud parent of six amazing children of my own. They’ve all become wonderful contributing members of society. They all possess and exercise the qualities necessary to lead and help others.
Qualities we all must learn and teach to our children are: compassion, tolerance, strength, courage, integrity, honesty, self-confidence, delegation, decision-making, problem-solving, fairness, self-discipline, passion, resilience, and accountability.
Admittedly, every kid is different, and there’s no magic bullet that’s going to help you navigate everything thrown your way — but based on my experience, I can offer some advice to keep you moving toward your goals:
1. Don’t Give Your Kid Everything They Need if They Can Get It Themselves
Growing up, I noticed that most of my friends who came from wealthy families had major entitlement issues. They were royal jerks who thought they were always going to have it easy. Yet, today, I don’t know any of them who made anything of themselves.
Meanwhile, the people who had to work for everything wound up doing incredibly well in life (myself included). Because of this, I vowed to help my children through mentoring, not money. At restaurants, for example, I taught them to get an employee’s attention and ask for what they wanted — then they’d understand that being too shy means going without.
I would match what they saved but also required payback plans for loans, let them do chores for extra money, gave them jobs but paid them less as family members than I may have hired someone for, and made it clear that none of them were going to inherit anything in my will.
Once my kids started achieving things on their own, I was much more generous. I bought one of my sons a car on his 30th birthday, for example. He didn’t need it, but he sure appreciated it.
2. Teach Them to Question Authority
As a parent, you need to balance rules and authority. I let my kids do a lot of pushing, but there were limits. I required manners. They knew not to get on my bad side, since I was providing food and shelter. When they were out in public, I expected them to behave as ambassadors, representing the family name and reputation. And in the end, that gave them the right combination of respect and independence.
3. Expect Some Tough Stuff
Even with the best rules or intentions, it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows. My own kids walked us through our share of problems. Parties, bad behavior, teenage pregnancy — it was hardly easy. But the integrity, accountability, problem-solving, courage, and resilience you use to solve your family problems matters.
Don’t keep a tally of what went wrong, and don’t waste your energy trying to keep the track record flawless. Just make sure that your children have the skills to overcome those things. I wouldn’t wish some of my kids’ situations on anyone, but I loved them through it all and gave them the tools to claw their way out.
The Future Is What You Intentionally Decide It’s Going to Be
I wasn’t visited by a time traveler. I’m pretty certain you won’t be either. There’s no manual to guarantee the future of humanity. But what you’re doing now will affect the ability of your child — and others — to thrive in the future. You can be intentionally more aware of that and make deliberate choices on how to raise them. Think hard about what you’re teaching them right now, at this minute. Because you might not be raising the future leader of mankind. But then again, you just might be.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock