Giving kids tools to succeed
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Loading ...The guest speaker at our preschool was a really interesting and funny woman. I have heard her before and I really appreciate her point of view on parents and children. Her feeling is that parents focus too much on trying to be perfect parents and don’t spend enough time working on giving their children the skills and tools to succeed as healthy, vibrant, human beings. I was reminded that not very long ago, children as young as four or five years of age would have helped with the daily running of the household including milking the cow, gathering eggs, doing the cleaning. Now however, in most cases, both parents work, they do the house work, and all the while the children play. The result is a generation of children with no work ethic, no sense of responsibility, and no basic life skills.
This subject has always been very close to my heart. As a young person, I was very active in the Cadet program and, later, with the YMCA youth leadership programs. Both programs are designed for youth and are meant to provide young people with tools such as leadership skills, citizenship, and teamwork. What I saw working with many young people between the ages of 12 and 18, was a lack of what I would consider basic life skills. In many cases, these were children who had never done any household chores, were surrounded with material wealth, and lacked social skills. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part these were good kids, but they had no concept of volunteerism, empathy, compassion, or participating in the community. What I saw as these kids went through the various programs was an overall increase in self confidence, self-awareness, discipline, and community spirit.
So why are kids today so lacking in self-esteem despite all the books, tapes, videos, and magazines that tell parents how to increase their children’s self-confidence? My feeling, based on my experiences with kids, is that self-esteem and self-confidence grow with accomplishment and experiences (whether positive or negative). By providing too many things for our children, by doing too much for them, and by limiting their exposure to risk, we are creating children who have no sense of self-value. Children learn from experience and from example. I hope the example I set for them is positive and that the experiences I provide for them give them the confidence to trust in themselves.
I’ll give them the tools… what they do with the tools is up to them.
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