How to shape your Kids into leaders?

What makes us great parents??

We want to give our children real love, security, moral foundation, mentorship, involvement in their lives, a listening ear, the best opportunities, education, environment, and full support. Discipline them when necessary, build their self-confidence, allow them to try and fail so that they can grow and achieve more than what they could imagine for themselves.?

As parents of children, their path to leadership is in our hands. We can model and teach the skills that will equip them to lead.

It’s a big responsibility—but when is being a parent not?

The beauty of building children into leaders is that the little things we do every day are the ones that mold them into the people they’ll become. Focus on the eight actions below, and you’ll build leadership in your children and yourself.

Focus on the six actions below, and you’ll build leadership in your kids and yourself.

Stop Obsessing about Achievements

According to Rich Karlgaard, the author of "Late Bloomers", our society's obsession with early achievement is doing kids wrong. No two kids are the same. They have different strengths, weaknesses, and passions. This is obvious, but it’s also not. Kids are put under enormous pressure to thrive at an early age. To go to the best college. To specialize. It’s all led by the assumption that early success is the only success. This is making kids stressed and anxious.

Parents are sucked into obsessing about achievement because they believe this will make their children high achievers. Focused on achievement creates all sorts of problems for kids. This is especially true when it comes to leadership, where focusing on individual achievement gives kids the wrong idea about how work is done.

Achievement-obsessed children are so focused on awards and outcomes that they never fully understand this. All they can see is the player who’s handed the trophy and the celebrity CEO who makes the news—they assume it’s all about the individual. It’s a rude awakening once they discover how real life works.

Stop Overpraising Child

Children need praise to build a healthy sense of self-esteem. Unfortunately, piling on the praise doesn’t give them extra self-esteem. Children need to believe in themselves and develop the self-confidence required to become successful leaders. But if you pressurize every time, (the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality), this creates confusion and false confidence. Always show your children how proud you are of their passion and effort; just don’t paint them as superstars when you know it isn’t true.

As leading researcher Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, puts it; praise also has a dark side. It is because praising the outcome (It’s beautiful) or the person (You’re so smart) encourages the child to focus on those things.?

He might feel performance anxiety. He might question the conditionality of your love. (If I am a smart boy when I do this, I must be a stupid boy when I don’t.) He might become more motivated by a parent’s pleasure than by the process that led to it.?

For a complete guide to praising or not praising your child, please inbox me for the link.

Let them fall down

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, the author of?The Good News About Bad Behavior,?spent five years researching how kids mess up, and how to help them learn to handle those failures, which ultimately will set them up for success. Here's her advice:?

The classic parenting comment when your kids play on the playground is, "be careful", which is not helpful. It just transmits a sense of worry and fear. A disturbing statistic Lewis quotes: 32 percent of children will have an anxiety diagnosis by the time they are 18. You can help them get over that fear by letting them take lots and lots of small risks and having them learn that they can survive a scratch.

If your child messes up on a test or misbehaves around their teachers or peers or grandparents, that doesn't mean you're a bad parent, Lewis says. We need to let them be imperfect and stop feeling that it is a negative reflection on us. Expecting our children to always behave perfectly to everyone is denying them the right to be human. If we do that, we are teaching our kids to shove down their emotions.

Childhood should be a time for experimentation, so encourage kids to try things they may not be naturally good. There is this idea that you should specialize early, that if you are not playing a sport at age eight, you will never make the varsity team. Make it OK if they don't make the team or if they decide to quit.

A pioneer can't face proper challenges until he knows the severe taste of disappointment. When you attempt to protect your kids from an inability to support their confidence, they experience difficulty meeting disappointment. Kids need your help when they fall flat. They need to realize you give it a second thought. They need to realize that you know how much disappointment stings. Your help permits them to accept the power of the experience and to realize that they'll endure it.

Letting kids solve their problems

If a child never learns how to walk because he is carried around all the time, he will never learn how to jump, climb stairs or ride a bike. It is essential to take things one step at a time. But, if you never learn to take steps, it is near impossible to do more difficult things later.

When parents constantly solve their children’s problems, children never develop an ability to stand on their own two feet. Children who always have someone dive in to rescue them and clean up their mess spend their whole lives waiting for this to happen.

Leaders take action. They take charge. They’re responsible and accountable. Make certain your children areas

· Solving problems prepares children for life.?

· Learning to deal with problems cultivates independence.?

· Solving their life problems helps them to think and understand.?

· By finding their solutions, children will gain confidence and self-esteem.

Say no.

Overindulging children is a surefire way to limit their development as leaders. To succeed as a leader, one must be able to delay gratification and work hard for important things. Children need to develop this patience. They need to set goals and experience the joy that comes with working diligently toward them. Saying no to your children will disappoint them momentarily, but they’ll get over that. They’ll never get over being spoiled.

Walk the talk (Be An example)

It all starts at home. Let your child look up to you as a leader and inspire him to become one. This is the greatest way to let your child move in the right direction.

Your children can develop this quality naturally, but only if it’s something they see you demonstrate. To be authentic, you must be honest in all things not, just in what you say and do but also in who you are.

When you walk your talk, your words and actions will align with whom you claim to be. Your children will see this and aspire to do the same.