In my previous post, 5 Things That All Great Parents Do I talk about my observations of the basic tenets of being a successful parent. I recently took those observations further by surveying a panel of successful parents, and asked them the following question:
“What kind of culture should we create in our homes to produce powerful children?”
What follows is the advice of some of the most successful parents I know. What they shared out of their great humility and lessons learned is that successful parenting isn’t about techniques, or tactics, or the latest book that everyone is reading. It’s a day-in-day-out struggle of discipline and intention to create a culture in the family that is healthy from the top down (i.e. starting with the parents and then focusing on the kids).
A Culture of Teaching – One component to good parenting is teaching. Successful, conscientious parents are always teaching good principles, training in life skills, adjusting socially-unacceptable behavior, and providing guardrails for behavior and decision-making. Teaching (along with the Expectations bullet below) includes developing a sense of accountability and responsibility, and not allowing our children to walk all over us, to act defiant and unruly, or to make horrible decisions without allowing them to experience the full force of the consequences. In my humble observation, if we want to teach, we must set the example and model the behavior we want to see. “More is caught than taught.” Whatever we want our children to become, we must become it first.
A Culture of Positivity – Positive parents produce powerful kids. Happiness and positivity are synonymous with one another, and they are achieved when a person decides to be so on a daily basis. True happiness that comes from inside is self-generated, not buying ourselves new things or good circumstances, but rather a deep sense of faith, confidence, perspective, and a maturity that comes about when a person has experienced suffering and has overcome, or better yet when they take personal responsibility and realize that life really is what they make of it. This makes them happy and positive because they know it is all in their hands. This positive perspective allows people to ‘not sweat the small stuff’ but to focus on producing kids that are great humans vs. just compliant student-musician-artist-athletes. Their kids end up becoming all these things and more. Their children become joyful, sensitive, empathetic, in-touch leaders among their peers.
A Culture of Expectation – In the play-turned-movie “My Fair Lady” Professor Higgins is a well-known language professor who takes on the challenge of training a street urchin to become a lady of the upper class. He believes so fervently in his ability to teach anyone that he also believes she can do it. This positive belief about someone else’s ability is known as “The Pygmalion Effect”. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but our kids (and people in general) will live up or live down to what we expect of them. I will caveat by saying that we should be reasonable about the expectations we place on our children and take into account their personality, intelligence, and capacity.
A Culture of Ownership – Personal responsibility and ownership are not only keys to success as a parent, but also for success in every aspect of our lives. With parenting, there are no guarantees, but we increase our chances of turning out great children if we take ownership of them and not try to delegate our parenting duties to daycare workers, nannies, teachers, coaches, and other happenstance adult figures. If we want our kids to turn out well, we have to be active players with them in that game. We have to take ownership for raising them, and we need to teach them to take ownership as well. It is actually one of the most crucial life lessons that we can provide to them.
A Culture of Feedback – There is no shortage of external people in our lives who will provide us unsolicited input on our parenting and on our children. Regardless of whether they were successful parents or not, we should be open and listen gracefully when we get input or feedback from others. We should first look for the kernel of truth in their statement, and address it accordingly or simply discard it (away from their presence) if it is way off base. For example, my wife and I have had some friends, who have never had children, criticize us and give us parenting advice, and even in those cases, we would listen, thank them for the input, discuss it among ourselves, and then either accept it as valid or dismiss it. The importance is on the idea – regardless of the presenter. This concept, however, extends to the home internally in that you create a culture of giving children healthy, constructive, feedback the builds them into better human beings, AND allowing them to give you feedback as well. Our children are a conglomeration of our genetics, but they are also endowed with God-given uniqueness, so there are many things we can learn from them, and we would do well to listen to their observations of the home dynamic we create together. They are more insightful than we give them credit for.
A Culture of Humanness – Given the present age we live in, I think we as parents need to unite around the concept of restoring childhood, truth, beauty, and virtue for our children collectively. This includes getting them doing things that actually move them physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. This includes playing outside, reading good literature and poetry, taking vacations that have elements of rest, beauty, and history, going to museums, going to the theatre, drawing, painting, journaling, and developing skills of observation, reflection, and contemplation. These sound slow and boring to the modern adult – let alone the modern child who has been weaned on electronic devices and instant gratification. However, I think that these things have become lost in lieu of another unspoken goal – turning us and our children into industrial producers and commercial consumers, which I believe is our current trajectory as a society. Taking devices as an example, I do not believe there are any convincing studies that show that electronic devices have truly added to the quality of our lives or our humanity. They certainly add to our convenience, but I’m not a better human being by playing hours of Candy Crush or constantly checking in on social media. Andrew Kern, Founder of the CIRCE Institute, says, “We become what we behold.” Which means if all we behold is the junk of the internet, then that will influence us powerfully, and we will become shallow, vapid, isolated, and cynical.
A Culture of Spirituality – In my humble observation, our society is also trending away from the core essentials that built our nation and our part of history and western civilization. The things that built our country were concepts like faith, freedom, liberty, and independence. Our country was built on religious and political expression, and our fore-parents were deeply spiritual people that saw the hand of Providence in everything, and they understood that the human experience was not simply an empty, limited, humanistic experience, but rather it was deeply interwoven with the Divine and Spiritual. The quest for inner and outer peace was not just an ideal, but the very quest of the human experience and it was rooted in faith and Someone bigger than they. A culture of Spirituality is essential for ourselves and our families, many of the most successful families I have observed and surveyed have, at minimum had some spiritual culture in their home. Spirituality centers us in a relationship with the Divine, but also roots us in faith, ethics, and a morality that becomes a foundation for our thinking, speaking, and doing.
A Culture of Unity – When two or more people live under the same roof, or exist in the same family, there are bound to be disagreements and differences of opinion and perspective. This is actually healthy. However, despite differences, there needs to be a culture of unity. Unity isn’t unanimity, it doesn’t mean there is always agreement. It means that when push comes to shove, everyone is there for one another, they rally around the hurt and the wounded, they cheer on truth, effort, hard work, and success, and they have “each other’s back” in all circumstances. Our families should be a haven, a sanctuary, from the outside world where we are accepted, loved, and tied to one another’s fate despite our differences of opinion. Unfortunately, unity won’t always happen, but it’s something we should strive for.
The Most Important Culture
A Culture of Example – One if the hardest parts of being a parent is living by example. The most successful parents have emphasized that being a great individual and a great couple is first and foremost. If the parents are healthy, so are the kids. Too many parents put the children first and suffer for it in themselves and their marriages. The way we live as individuals and as a couple will influence how our children and our families live. My wise friend, Chris, told me,
On an airplane they tell you, ‘in an emergency strap on your air mask before helping out others with theirs’. Parenting is the same way. You need to be sure you and your significant other are the priority, before you’ll have credibility to raise your children.
Children are our mirror, and they magnify our flaws and our virtues 10 times over. I can point to direct habits my children have because of my wife and I. Even if we don’t have families, we have people who look to us at our jobs and businesses, at social events, and in all of our extra-curricular activities. Our example is the most powerful teacher of all, and a culture of living out who we are is the primary culture we need to establish in our homes and lives.
Question: What habits have you observed in the most successful homes and families? You can leave a comment by clicking here.