365QOD-Day584

“If you could give you kids the best characteristics, what would you chose?”- my

question to my self

A while back I wrote a post in which I posed the question if parents had a choice to make whether their kid was a genius or a successful adult which one would they chose.  The choice would normally be a successful adult.  Most people realize that the skills to look like a genius as a kid do not translate into being a success in life.

But if you could enable your rug rat with the special skills that would lead to success what would they consist of?  In  a WSJ article by Paul Tough on Opting Out of the Rug Rat Race he mentions a University of Chicago economist, James Heckman, who concludes that information stuffing into the brain is not the answer.  The answer is to back off. 

Yup!  Allowing kids to ‘face adversity on their own, fall down and not be helped back up’ is the most valuable thing that a parent can do to help their children’s develop non-cognitive skills.  In other words, let little kids be kids and not hover over them when they fail and assure them that they succeeded even when they really failed by just trying.

Realize that college is too easy for most kids.  It is a matter of putting the time and minimal effort to get to the diploma.  The non-cognitive skills are what will make the kids a success.  So we all need to be less overprotective and more encouraging of failure and allowing kids to learn from it?

Today’s question is:

“Could you allow your kids to fail and not pick them up?”